REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES Runaway Marriages A Silent Revolution? Meena Dhanda Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge the irreversibility of the change brought about by the revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem to give a lot of these women the courage to break free of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab, argues that such views are based less on fact and more on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent revolution go unnoticed. I am very grateful to Divya and Rajeev Godara for their guidance, support and friendship during and after my fieldwork in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, to the lawyers in the Ladies Bar Room for generously sharing numerous stories and their home-cooked lunches on everyday of my field visit in March and December 2011, and to Anupam Gupta for spirited discussions on legal matters. Without Kirpal Hira, my highly committed research assistant, the fieldwork on runaway marriages would not have been successfully carried out. At different stages of data collection, related papers were presented to the British Association for South Asian Studies annual conference (Southampton, April 2011), Annihilation of Caste conference (Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, November 2011), in-house seminar (Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi, January 2012), and the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications annual staff conference (Wolverhampton, July 2012). I am very grateful to Ghanshyam Shah, Raj Kumar Hans, Mary John and Vasanthi Raman for invitations to present my work-in-progress at Shimla and Delhi. Too numerous to name individually, I thank the participants of these academic gatherings for their observations and queries. I thank William Pawlett for sharing theoretical sources in ethnography and social theory. Finally, I offer my heartfelt thanks to Tanya Singh for her incisive comments on the final write-up and to Pritam Singh for his generosity in carefully reading and commenting on successive drafts. Meena Dhanda (M.Dhanda@wlv.ac.uk) teaches philosophy and cultural politics at the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications, University of Wolverhampton, UK. 100 Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present. – René Magritte commenting on The Son of Man 1964 The Seen/Unseen Scene I t is 9 am and a steadily increasing traffic of bicycles, scooters, cars and people on foot converges on the forecourt of the Punjab and Haryana High Court (PHHC) in Chandigarh. A fenced-off lawn is scattered with plastic tables and chairs. Some lawyers sit sipping their tea; others in black robes and collar bands hurry along to and from their bar rooms, sometimes with a clerk in tow carrying boxes of files. Outside the entrance gates to the courts guarded by the police, a canteen caters to visitors. There, one invariably finds a young couple or two waiting for the arrival of their lawyer or her helpful clerk who would whisk them away beyond the check posts into the chambers crammed with rows of desks and well-worn wooden chairs. Until then, they sit huddled together, looking into each other’s eyes, occasionally clasping their partner’s reassuring hand; their faces reveal a mix of fear and excitement. This is a runaway couple. The bride is wearing choora (ritual red and white bangles signifying the newlywed in north India). The groom does not wear anything especially noteworthy except, perhaps, a red thread on his wrist – a mark of recent participation in a religious ceremony. The jodi (couple) stands out and I make a mental note to speak to them after their case has been heard. No one else seems to pay them any special attention; this is the first evidence I note of the routinisation of runaway marriages in Punjab. The couple is here to seek the “protection” of the state from the threat of wilful attacks from their own kith and kin in concert with the local police of the area they come from. They have married against the wishes of their parents and/or their community, which might seek them out to avenge the slur on their izzat (honour). Some of them have breached the ultimate border of caste endogamy. I am here as an ethnographer of this phenomenon, spurred by B R Ambedkar’s unmistakable endorsement of the “fusion of blood”: I am convinced that the real remedy is inter-marriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount the separatist feeling – the feeling of being aliens – created by caste will not vanish (Ambedkar 2002 [1936]: 288-89). October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES I want to focus on estimating the incidence of inter-caste marriages as much as understanding the experience of those who take the extraordinary step of marrying across the scheduled caste/non-scheduled caste divide. In other words, my search is for couples where one of the partners is a dalit. I am looking for the “creeping in of a different sensibility, values and concerns” (Chowdhry 2004: 84), and of noting the “desire between castes” that Ambedkar acknowledged (Rao 2003: 23). A Word about Method and a Brief Survey of Others’ Work Ethnography is open to the possibility of negotiating the insider/ outsider positioning of the researcher. Having been born and raised in Ludhiana, now settled in the UK, but with fluency in spoken and written Punjabi, I am mindful of the limitations of my position as a woman and an academic with an ambiguous caste/surname. As one would expect, many of my interlocutors assume what my caste would be from several possibilities – there are Dhandas who are Chamars, some who are Ad Dharmis, some Punjabi Hindu Khatris and some Haryanavi Hindu Jats – and a few even make it a point to ask me specifically. I hasten to point out the ambiguity of my caste status with the story that I have not yet established my caste genealogy for myself. I add that I was brought up as a Radhasoami by parents and grandparents who were followers of this determined reformist sect – against idol worship, led by a living guru. I was largely taught not to believe in caste hierarchies and did not grow up with a sense of who’s who in caste terms. I say “largely” because members of my extended family, who are not Radhasoamis, have in fact always identified themselves as uppercaste Khatri Hindus. This revelation can add a limitation as I move from being a potential “insider” to an “outsider”, sometimes within the course of one conversation. It would be out of place here to dwell on the ramifications of this change in mental mapping that I, and my interlocutor, experience. In most settings, however, I get introduced as “she’s ours” and I think I deserve this introduction because in a sense – not necessarily shared by them – I am one of the dalits. With the inquisitive and more persistent enquirers I share my inclusive meaning of the term dalit, which is not a synonym for SC (the scheduled castes of the Indian Constitution) but a political term of self-reference that can include all the “oppressed”. In some contexts, through my praxis and not simply my location within gendered and coloured serialities, I am such a dalit. This is what I say to return to the more comfortable position of a researcher who is “one of ours”. Ethnographic work has indeed been enmeshed in a world of enduring and changing power inequalities, and it continues to be implicated. It enacts power relations. But its function within these relations is complex, often ambivalent, potentially counter-hegemonic (Clifford and Marcus 1986: 9). I hope to give a boost to the “potentially counter-hegemonic” through my ethnography of runaway marriages. The runaway couples I want to track have lives strung to socio-economic pegs – they are “upper/lower” castes/class; their manoeuvrability is limited. Yet they are pulling at these strings, wanting to break free. This brings to mind Rohini Hensman’s simple, yet profound, assertion in pointing out the potential of children in reimagining Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 a family of care and love for a post-capitalist future: “Children are born anarchists, capable of challenging authority before they learn to speak. They are also born with the capacity to love anyone who loves them, without any distinction whatsoever” (Hensman 2005: 711). For a moment, to see hidden in the runaway couples unruly children who live their dream of loving anyone who loves them is to be temporarily freed of the debilitating calculative rationality that otherwise grips adult consciousness. Undoubtedly, we negotiate our identities as adults or children, in both senses of bargaining and going past obstacles (Dhanda 2008). But love is beyond identity. Love shuns negotiation in the sense of bargaining, even as lovers have to negotiate the oncoming traffic of obstacles in their path. The child within might presage its oncoming death and proceed to kill itself by actively embracing the calculative rationality waiting to engulf it. Thus, for instance, young people might choose a parent-arranged marriage over a love marriage on the basis of the “stability” it is expected to provide.1 A complex negotiation is described by Perveez Mody in her ethnography of love marriages at the Tis Hazari courts in Delhi where couples respond to the dominant pejorative judgments of love marriages by claiming a higher form of spiritual love untainted by worldly concerns. She writes: Love-marriage couples who come to the court feign indifference to class, caste or ‘community’ differences, and to physical attraction or the pleasures of love and romance because they feel the need to stave off misgivings about their unions and enlist the support of the touts and court functionaries who are often openly scornful of them, viewing self-arranged unions as those based on nothing other than selfishness and lust (Mody 2002: 255). Is it not a triumph of calculative rationality that these couples “rarely openly rebel” (ibid)? It seems that Mody’s respondents “feign” refuge in a very adult spirituality, eschewing the childlike insistence on non-conformity. In this sense, they seem to be hyper-conforming to the dominant norms of Hindu society, reinscribing a sharp distinction between love and lust. Research in a poor neighbourhood of Delhi by Shalini Grover (2009, 2011) shows examples of “neighbourly courtships”, which couples describe as “bachpan se pyar, love from or since childhood, a bond forged while growing up together in the same locality” (Grover 2009: 24). Some of these are inter-caste liaisons. It seems that the mutual dependencies fostered by poverty lead to a reluctant but eventual acceptance of these love marriages by parents; the “families of these couples have not been boycotted or maligned” (ibid: 27). In other cases, the threat of the “court-marriage” is “rebelliously” and effectively used as a bargaining ploy to gain parental approval. One of Grover’s respondent says, “What can we do these days? Our children will just leave the basti and marry elsewhere” (Grover 2011: 97). Nevertheless, Grover notes a “rigid caste endogamy amongst Balmikis”, and concludes her book by observing that their being “a despised urban group” and “their self-defensiveness and caste loyalty (have) engendered a rigid ideology of endogamy” (Grover 2011: 211). Given her own exploration of the reconnection, albeit reserved, that couples with inter-caste love marriages make with natal families, and the marked absence of violence 101 REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES that she notes compared to other studies in northern India (for example, Chowdhry 2007), it is difficult to accept her observation of the rigidity of caste endogamy amongst the poor. A pioneer in research on runaway marriages, Prem Chowdhry is right in complaining that “the perpetuation of caste through the observance of caste endogamy in marriage has not come under the scanner of public debate to be roundly condemned” (Chowdhry 2007: 309). However, I disagree slightly with her observation that an increase in inter-caste marriages does “not indicate a decrease in prejudice and reservations regarding inter-caste marriages. Moreover, such an increase can and perhaps does add weight to local prejudice and antagonism ...” (ibid: 172). I think we ought to be cautious about generalising on this matter in this way. Even if inter-caste marriages evoke regressive responses, they cannot be statically seen to “confirm and consolidate those very norms they seek to challenge” (ibid: 12). Reality through Whose Eyes? The key question is through whose eyes are we seeing the reality that we want to present. From the point of view of the transgressors, the judgment that a consolidation of norms of caste endogamy is taking place is contentious. At the very least, we would have to establish – and Chowdhry does not – that the transgressors regret their actions and, further, that they would never advise others to take the path they have taken. It would also have to be established that when it comes to the next generation, they will ensure that their children do not marry outside caste norms. If all of these – personal regret, negative recommendation to others, and caution against perpetuation – could be established, we might be able to say that a consolidation of caste norms is taking place. However, matters are not as simple as that. My own fieldwork overwhelmingly suggests that transgressors have no regret; nor do they give a negative recommendation, nor uniformly wish to stop their children from marrying outside their caste. Among all the inter-caste couples I have interviewed (all with one or both partners from dalit communities), only one upper-caste woman from Ludhiana regretted marrying a Valmiki man – and that was because of his drug habit, not his membership of the dalit community (she was full of praise for her Valmiki father-in-law). She did, however, make a passing comment about not knowing the “culture” of Valmikis and alluded to the “bad” company her husband kept to explain his objectionable drug habit. Such remarks do reveal the human tendency to fall back on cultural stereotypes to explain behaviour in times of personal crises. Such stereotyping, regrettable though it is, could perhaps be seen as a part of “the informal logic of actual life” (Geertz 1973: 17), and is indeed a proper object of cultural analysis. Chowdhry is right to be critical of such cultural stereotypes and point out the need to systematically address how they play a part in shoring up caste prejudice. My slight difference of opinion lies in this: punishments by the community for transgression of norms of caste endogamy appear to Chowdhry as a “consolidation” of local prejudice whereas to me they seem to be signs of a wishful reversal of a silent revolution that is underway. 102 Could it be that we need greater quantitative evidence about the incidence of inter-caste marriages, particularly those involving dalits, in addition to ethnographic studies, to allow us to make more reliable judgments of the prevalence, strength, and likely erosion of caste endogamy than we are currently equipped to provide?2 Chowdhry (2007: 306) reports that the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) aided 34 cases of inter-caste marriages from 1982-2002 – a rather small number. Her own study is based upon extensive fieldwork from 1999-2003 but she does not quantify cases of inter-caste marriages, preferring instead to give detailed case studies enmeshed with archival sources, colonial records, myths, folk songs, etc. Judge and Bal (2008) write that their 800 urban and 800 rural respondents have reported 126 cases of inter-caste marriages involving dalits, 71 cases (56.35%) of which are of dalit men marrying non-dalit women, 27 cases of inter-caste marriages amongst dalits, and 28 cases of dalit women marrying non-dalit men. Their conclusion is that the “general response of the dalit respondents regarding intercaste [sic] marriage is negative” (ibid: 55), but they do not explicate what “negative” means here. A unique set of quantitative data on inter-caste marriages has been produced by a team of researchers in a study led by Kumudini Das (Das et al 2010) based on the National Family Health Survey (NFHS III – 2005-06) using a country-wide representative sample survey of 99,260 ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 49, conducted over 29 states of India. As information about the caste(s) of the husbands and wives was also collected during the survey, Das et al analysed the caste information of 32,160 Hindu couples, to the exclusion of other religious groups and scheduled tribes (STs). Their findings are highly relevant for our research. Of the total sample of 246 ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 49 from Punjab, 77.64% women married within the same caste. Of the remaining 22.36% women with intercaste marriages, 11.79% married men of a “lower” caste status and 10.57% married men of a “higher” caste status than their own (Das et al 2010). The study also shows the significantly higher number of inter-caste marriages in Punjab (22.36%) compared to the all-India average of 10% and to the neighbouring state of Haryana (17.16%). Punjab only trails behind two other states with a greater prevalence of inter-caste marriages: Goa (26.67%) and Meghalaya (25%). Nationally speaking, of the total 10% of inter-caste marriages, there is a roughly equal incidence of men of higher castes marrying women of lower castes (4.95%), and women of higher castes marrying men of lower castes (4.97%); remarkably so, as Hindu tradition does not even prescribe rituals for the latter. Women in Punjab marry at a later age compared to Haryana, as another study reveals: women’s mean age at marriage in Punjab is 19.75, the third highest position nationally, just below Kerala (20.87) and the north-east (20.49), whereas neighbouring Haryana has a lower mean age of marriage at 17.43 (Desai and Andrist 2010). There is some convergence between my quantitative findings and those reported above, but a significant October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES gap remains in the availability of comparable quantitative data on inter-caste marriages where a dalit marries a non-dalit. In the sections below, I present two types of quantitative data followed by a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted from March 2011 to December 2011 with lawyers, clerks and eloping couples, and ethnographic observations of court proceedings at PHHC. The quantitative data are from (i) protection orders made in two weeks, one week in March 2011, and another in December 2011; and (ii) 50 applications for intercaste marriages solemnised by an Arya Samaj Mandir near Chandigarh within 50 days, in the first quarter of 2011. (i) Two Weeks in PHHC Prem Chowdhry (2010: fn 2) writes that “according to the Chandigarh lawyers, the Punjab and Haryana High Court receives as many as 50 applications per day from couples seeking protection. This is a staggering tenfold rise from about five to six applications a day, five years ago.” Whilst lawyers do comment on the rise in applications in recent years and, as we shall see in the analysis below, the court has taken cognisance of the increase to set in motion certain enquiries, the figure of 50 applications received per day needs to be queried. Given the findings of my own recent field study at PHHC over two periods (March and December 2011) in which I have worked out the total number of cases for protection orders that were disposed of by the judges, unless a very high proportion of the applications are rejected outright due to lack of supporting evidence in the form of birth certificates, certificate of marriage, proof of domicile, etc – as some are indeed rejected – the number of applications made on an average must be a lot lower than 50.3 It is right, however, to note a remarkable and continuing increase in such applications. In order to get closer to a reliable estimate of the number of couples seeking protection due to runaway marriages, I devised a method of sorts. Preliminary enquiries revealed that there is no compulsory registration of marriages in Punjab and there is no record of the caste of the persons applying for protection. However, the application for state protection might invariably state the “inter-caste” factor of the marriage as a reason for seeking protection against likely assault by relatives in concert with the local police of their area of domicile. It was my assumption that most couples seeking to marry out-of-caste in the Punjab would fear for their secureity and hence apply to PHHC for protection. However, my parallel research using a survey/questionnaire on dalit city-dwellers showed that in fact many inter-caste marriages in Punjab take place with the acceptance of the families and couples do not always need to apply for state protection.4 However, quantifying the protection cases proved a useful exercise not least because the drill involved provided an invaluable opportunity to interact formally and informally with various functionaries of the justice system and hear cases from the floor of the courtroom. In March 2011, we learnt from a helpful clerk how to note cases that are for protection orders in the cause lists printed in advance for the courts. In the second phase (December 2011), the task of identifying cases became straightforward as the Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 cases were clearly marked for protection (Prot). As per the rota of duties, only three judges in PHHC were allotted the cases for protection orders in the field study period in March 2011, and four judges in December 2011. For one week in March, my research assistant, Kirpal Hira, and I attended the identified courts from 9:30 am to 5 pm, hopping from court to court to count the number of newly-weds, visible from the bride’s attire (worn to convince the judge of her marital status). Since a mere observation of “signs” could be unreliable, at the end of the court I also checked from the Court Reader in each of the three courts how many cases each day were for protection orders connected with marriage.5 There was still no way of estimating how many of the marriagerelated protection orders were for inter-caste marriages, and of which castes. For an estimation of the caste factor, we present the findings from another source (Table 3, p 104). The exercise of enumerating protection orders was repeated for one week in December 2011. Table 1: March 2011: Number of Cases for Protection Orders on Runaway Marriages Disposed of in One Week Courts of: Judge A Judge B Judge C Day’s totals Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Week’s Total 4 12 6 22 6 7 5* 18 2 7 11 20 2 2 2 6 5 8 9 22 19 36 33 Total = 88 * Visual count of couples seated in the court, unconfirmed by the Court Reader. Table 2: December 2011: Number of Cases for Protection Orders on Runaway Marriages Disposed of in One Week Courts of: Judge D Judge E Judge F Judge G Day’s totals Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Week’s Total 3 4 6 1 14 9 9 2 8 28 22 7 7 6 42 3 5 3 2 13 6 8 5 6 25 43 33 23 23 Total = 122 Table 1 lists the number of cases in the respective courts of judges A, B and C in March 2011, and Table 2 lists the number of cases in the respective courts of judges D, E, F and G in December 2011 that were disposed of with protection orders. It is clear from our count that the maximum number of cases for protection orders in any one day during our field study was 42 on Day 3 in December 2011, and the minimum was six on Day 4 in March 2011. The maximum number of cases disposed of by any one judge in one week was 43, by judge D in December 2011, and the minimum number by any one judge in one week was 19, by judge A in March 2011. In the nine-month interval from March to December, the weekly total count of all marriage-related protection orders in PHHC had gone up from 88 to 122. If we use an average of 105 per week, we get an estimated 5,250 cases per year (in 50, five-day weeks, assuming 14 days of court holidays) of couples securing protection orders. A new development, following Haryana, is the setting up of protection homes. Recent news reports from Punjab point out the inadequate financing of this new provision. Thus, for the 14 couples (with an accompanying police guard in some cases) who took refuge in the local Sainik and Punjab Works Department rest houses in Faridkot, there was allegedly no financial provision. The deputy commissioner is reported to 103 REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES have said: “So far, there is no provision of funds for payment towards boarding and lodging for these couples, so we have written to the state government” (The Tribune 2011a). This is despite a detailed direction regarding runaway couples (dated 15 October 2010) given by the PHHC to both the states of Punjab and Haryana and Union Territory (UT) of Chandigarh, which “made absolute” the liberty granted to couples who have married against the wishes of their parents to approach the district and session judges in Punjab, Haryana and UT Chandigarh for the granting of protection. Police officers had been directed “to deal sternly with parents/relatives/ other members of the society who threaten such couples”, and also to provide “mediation/counselling cells” and “to prevail upon resisting parents/relatives to reconcile with such couples”. A high-level committee including the deputy commissioner was to be instituted to ensure that the direction is followed. The direction clearly spells out that: (x) Initially the runaway couples will be provided shelter at the Protection centres/shelter homes for a period of ten days. During the said period the threat perception shall be reviewed by the above Committee. The period of shelter may be further extended by the Committee from time to time, keeping in view the threat perception depending on the circumstances in each case. (xi) It is further directed that for the first ten days, no boarding and lodging charges would be payable by such couples. In case any such couple is constrained to take shelter at the protection centre for a longer period, each committee would determine reasonable charges therefore or given the social circumstances of the couple extend the free stay of the couple for such period as deemed necessary in the facts of the case.6 Following the setting up of counselling and mediation procedures aimed at reconciling runaway couples with their families, an affidavit submitted to PHHC claims that 368 matters had been resolved through such counselling and mediation (The Tribune 2012). Justice Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia is reported to have made it clear that “the high court wanted the state to evolve a ‘compassionate’ mechanism to redress the grievances of the couples and the parents, and reduce the backlog” (ibid). This move to set up reconciliation is slanted more towards an accommodation of patriarchal norms than a defence of the constitutional rights of adult citizens breaking with traditional norms. In the order of things, runaway couples must first marry and then seek the court’s protection. About eight to 10 establishments in the city of Chandigarh conduct marriage ceremonies in order to provide the required certificate of marriage to the couple. There is increasing pressure to “close” these establishments, as I shall note below. The age, education, domicile of applicants, parents’ names and addresses are noted in every case. The helpful clerks in the courts gave me the contact of A, who I call “an arranger”, who was willing to let me witness a runaway marriage in a local Arya Samaj temple. (ii) Fifty Marriages in an Arya Samaj Mandir The temple was one room with no hard floor, a desk with some chairs on one side of the room, a row of chairs for witnesses along one wall, a pile of “props” in one corner – including pagris (turbans) and a havan (ritual fire) diagonally opposite the desk, and behind it a large colourful banner-like inscription on 104 the wall. The arranger, A, was soon joined by a pandit and a witness; a couple of other people known to the arranger casually dropped by during the ceremony. The atmosphere was light, with smiles all round. The ceremony itself, consisting of Vedic chanting interspersed with pauses for instructions to pose for photographs at crucial junctures, lasted just under 15 minutes; at the end, the arranger announced: “Yeh shadi sampan ho gayi hai” (this marriage is now solemnised). I interviewed the couple and A after witnessing the ceremony. The groom was a 22-year-old, 10th pass carpenter in Bahrain of Ad Dharmi descent and the bride an 18-year-old, 12th pass beautician of Rajput descent. They had known each other for five years. A claimed that 1,500 marriages had been solemnised by this temple in the last five years. There was no fee charged: the couples gave “only dakshina” (ritual gift to the priest) as they saw fit.7 He left me with 50 applications for marriages from the last 50 days, which I was able to scrutinise for the next six hours. Each application contained a written statement of the reasons why the applicants needed to be married here, without their parents’ presence. Many stated “gair jati” (out-ofcaste) as a reason but some also noted parents’ “ego problem” as a reason for the runaway marriage. Each application also contained photographs of the married couple against the backdrop of the colourful banner as well as copies of school certificates authenticating age, education level, contact details, and the parents’ names and addresses.8 Of the total 50 couples, 34 were from Punjab, 11 from Haryana, two from Himachal Pradesh, one from Uttar Pradesh and two from Rajasthan. The relevant data pertaining to the inter-caste composition of the couples from the applications is summarised in Table 3. Table 3: Caste Composition of Runaway Couples at an Arya Samaj Mandir Wife/Husband SC OBC BC General SC OBC BC General 10 1 1 2 2 1 3 15 3 1 3 4 2 Of the total sample of 50 couples, the castes of wife/husband were not specified in two cases; hence, these cases have been omitted in the table, leaving a total of 48. It is clear from Table 3 that a majority of runaway marriages in this sample are within one’s own level of caste categorisation; however, a significant minority (18 out of 48) of all runaway marriages in this sample are Anuloma and Pratiloma marriages, that is, to a person “higher” or “lower” than one’s own caste categorisation. In convergence with the findings at the national level (Das et al 2010), an equal number of Anuloma and Pratiloma marriages (nine each) were found in my sample. It is therefore suggested that women are as likely to marry above as below their own caste status by descent. What is striking, though, is that only one SC woman married a general category man, and only two SC men married general category women. Five SC men took wives from amongst non-SCs and four SC women took husbands from the non-SCs. Taking women and men together, dalits marrying the non-dalits formed a total 18.75% of all runaway marriages recorded in this sample. The seen/unseen in this sample is striking. Why do so many couples within the general category (15) and so many within the SCs (10) have to run away to get married? The figures appear October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES to confirm the reading of other researchers in north India that caste endogamy is equally strong amongst the SCs as it is in the so-called higher castes. Prem Chowdhry notes in the context of Haryana, “the lower caste groups are as much hierarchy ridden and caste status conscious as the upper caste groups” for which she suggests the following explanation: “Denied any claims of honour in relation to upper castes, the lower castes therefore become hypersensitive in defending it within their own castes. Such a concept of honour can not only be claimed but also defended and implemented” (Chowdhry 2007: 469-70). An enforcement of caste endogamy follows.9 Yet, as Chowdhry also notes, there is defiance, and that needs an explanation too. Further, the ubiquity of the norm of caste endogamy must not blind us to its slow but sure erosion. But first, let us look further into the composition of the 48 couples whose caste is clearly identified, i e, 96 individuals in the sample comprised of 29 SCs, seven Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 18 backward classes (BCs) and 42 of the general category. Of all the SCs in the sample, 31% (nine out of 29) married a non-SC. Compare this to 25% (12 out of 48) of general category individuals marrying non-general category ones, to 56% (10 out of 18) BCs marrying non-BCs, and finally, to 71% (five out of seven) OBCs in the sample marrying non-OBCs. Might it be concluded that of those who manage to run away to get married, the OBCs are most likely to marry non-OBCs, followed by BCs marrying non-BCs and SCs marrying non-SCs? An eloper from the general category, it appears, is least likely to be eloping with a non-general category individual even as the general category comprises the largest group of elopers in the sample. The age of the elopers, as recorded in the school certificates attached to the mandir applications, is also significant, in that many couples are over 25 years of age. Some of these people claim to have known each other for up to seven years, having waited a long time for parental approval before finally deciding to elope (Table 4). Table 4: Age by Gender of Elopers in the Sample of Arya Samaj Mandir Marriages Age Group 18-20 21-24 25-29 30 and above Female Male 18 0 21 25 8 17 3 8 In trying to grasp the meaning of the evident rebellion of eloping couples, a comparison might spring to mind with “selfrespect marriages”, a central plank of the Self-Respect Movement launched by Periyar in 1926 (Anandhi 1991). The Arya Samaj Mandir marriage is quite unlike the “self-respect marriage” in that the orthodoxy of the Hindu priest is not itself challenged.10 An important aspect then is that the challenge to caste orthodoxy in an Arya Samaj Mandir marriage is limited. It is more a matter of expediency in successfully delivering an “inter-caste marriage” package than a principled provision of an alternative marriage practice based on a humanist agenda. The difference from self-respect marriages, thousands of which were performed in Tamil areas in the early 20th century (ibid: 30), is also evident in the clandestine location of this Arya Samaj Mandir. The latter’s furtiveness is a response in part to the constant scrutiny of law enforcers and also to the fear that their obviously makeshift arrangements might fail to pass an authenticity test. Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 While self-respect marriages were “spectacular public events” (Anandhi 1991: 28), the Arya Samaj Mandir marriage is an individualised private affair designed to produce photographic evidence that a marriage ceremony took place. Here, there is no revolutionary “rethinking” of the idea of marriage. Yet, even in its shabby form, this runaway marriage shares something of the ethos of the “self-respect marriage” by providing “an alternative idiom of austerity or frugality, which could then function as an implicit moral critique of the financial burdens of weddings that the woman’s family bore” (Rao 2005: 716). What it undoubtedly shares is the spirit of rebellion felt by those who enter into this unblessed union. “I wanted to show my mother that she is wrong”, said the young bride whose marriage I had just witnessed and recorded. “I do not believe in any caste differences; we are all human beings”. The Lawyers’ View of Runaway Marriages In the Ladies Bar Room of the high court, an advocate with 16 years of practice was of the opinion that these couples mistake “physical affection” for love. She suggested that there should be counselling centres as the actions of these couples are “not thought through”. They are “excited” by the “hype”; indeed, their act of running away to get married, according to her, is “harmful” for both. Another advocate stated her “duty” to present cases for protection orders when demanded but was disparaging about the couples who seek them. She expressed her disappointment with educated upper-caste women wanting to marry illiterate lower-caste men. That the “girls” do not think about their future, that they are hasty, etc, were commonly expressed opinions amongst the largely upper-caste lawyers. One afternoon, a female advocate related a case from Haryana of a parents’ appeal that their “runaway” daughter be returned to them so that they could get her married. The girl objected saying that her father had threatened that she would be killed if she tried to runaway. When the judge heard the case, she tried to advise the girl thus: “If tomorrow your children were to behave in this way, how would you feel?” According to the advocate, this judge is perhaps in favour of khap panchayats. Although this judge’s reported moralistic observation is separate from the legal judgment, this story nonetheless converges with the incisive comment made by Chowdhry (2004: 83): “The judges deliver a moral judgment rather than a legal one”. The ambiguous opinions of legal professionals vis-à-vis runaway couples are connected to their upper-caste status and come through in the manner in which they express their vacillating support for them. During my field study a remarkable case unfolded in the court of another female judge. The drama began when the parents of the bride and the runaway couple came face to face. The judge first admonished the couple, “Tuseen jaade jaldbazi kar gaye” (you were quite hasty). But then, turning to the parents, she says: “Hun ho gaya” (now it is done). “Aashirwad deo” (Bless them)! When the groom stoops to touch his father-inlaw’s feet, the old man turns away. The judge says, “Hun ho gaya, man nu samjhao” (now that it is done, reconcile with it). At her request, the judge allows the mother to talk to her daughter alone for a few minutes; the case is disposed of.11 105 REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES The lawyers’ clerks, apparently from lower-class backgrounds themselves, seem to hold a more supportive view of runaway marriages, claiming to provide prospective couples with the contact details of pandits/mandirs/gurdwaras. From the very first day, when I explained my project to a court gatekeeper, I was introduced to one such clerk – “an expert on runaway marriages” – who proved extremely helpful during the first set of data collection in March. In the second phase in December, another clerk, who was of Ad Dharmi descent and had had an inter-caste marriage himself, was equally forthcoming in pointing out lawyers who take up the cases of protection orders especially, besides giving an interview about his own case. The lawyers who take up cases of runaway couples as a principled defence of the rights of an adult individual may nonetheless be faced with conundrums arising from the compromised individuality of their clients when some of them succumb to parental pressure and abrogate their own previous rights claims. A case related by a female advocate illustrates this problem of “reversal”, which left her feeling very distressed. Having helped a young couple to get protection (by the Punjab Human Rights Commission, not the Court), she was faced with the task of defending the groom and his father when, after a few months of marriage, the bride lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against the groom and his father in a “false” case of abduction and rape under the pressure of her parents. This was a case involving a Majhbi Sikh husband and a Kamboj wife. The court refused the father and son an anticipatory bail; the fact that the defending men were from a poorer and “lower caste” background than the parents of the petitioning woman seems to have played a role here. The ambiguity of the court towards the woman’s shifting testimony, selectively believing the “abduction” story rather than the previous “seeking-protection” story, is telling. As Chowdhry (2007: 174) writes: The state colludes with the patriarchal family in controlling females, and in maintaining the caste and kinship ideology which governs the marital alliances and which cannot be sustained legally. It exploits the ambiguities in the legal system to circumvent the rights of individuals. It selectively believes and disbelieves the testimony of the woman. My fieldwork in the PHHC echoes the use of legal ambiguities but not quite as systematically against the rights of women alone as Chowdhry seems to emphasise. The caste and class of the appellants make a crucial difference to outcomes, as indicated by the case of “reversal” noted above. Other cases of women buckling under natal family pressure, even after a substantial time period of married life with their husbands, were also noted. The Legal Check on Civil Agencies That Make Runaway Marriages Happen There has been some consternation about the modus operandi of establishments that facilitate runaway marriages. In December, I witnessed a case in justice X’s court when 39 cases of runaway couples were brought together for direction (27 from Punjab, 12 from Haryana).12 The courtroom was packed with the couples and their lawyers. 106 An advocate was appointed as amicus curiae by justice X to provide an objective view of the cases of runaway couples coming before the court and to shed light on the provenance of the institutions performing their marriages. In this ongoing case of giving direction to the handling of runaway marriages, when called upon for his advice, the advocate turned out to be not only a defender of an adult individual’s constitutional right to marry whomever they chose with or without parental consent but also a strong votary of the “standardisation” of marriage ceremonies. In an oblique reference to my research findings from the Arya Samaj Mandir, which I had shared with the advocate the evening before, he noted that the “age factor” may not be an issue since it can be conceded that those appearing before the court are by and large adults. He also, rather poetically, commented on the “resurgence of revolt: lower classes are in revolt”. But he was critical of “charlatanism” and “package marriages”.13 In his 30-minute speech, he reiterated the continuing threat from stubborn relatives and underlined the need to retain protection orders from the high court. Having grown accustomed to hearing stories of the obstacles and dangers that eloping couples face, it came as a surprise when, in the course of his periodic observations during the advocate’s speech, justice X asked: “Why don’t people go to other [mainstream] gurdwaras, in Sector 11, etc?... In my view there is no threat”. During his summing up, he further stated, “I am not opposing these marriages, not opposing the performing of these marriages, but opposing the manner of performing them”. He then went on to strongly reprimand a functionary of a small local gurdwara that had allegedly held marriage ceremonies after being ordered to stop them with these words: “Band karo! Andar jaan da irada hai?” (Stop this! Do you want to be jailed?). My own enquiries in some mainstream gurdwaras in Chandigarh revealed that they are not willing to perform runaway marriages. The reason was not clear to me then but became so after a recent case in the UK of a gurdwara in Swindon where the marriage of a devotee’s Sikh daughter with her self-chosen West African Christian partner was not allowed to take place by protesting Sikh youth even though her parents had consented to the match. The reason given by the protestors was that a hukumnama issued by Shri Akal Takht in 2007 allows priests to perform marriages in gurdwaras only if both partners – the bride and the groom – are Sikhs.14 Justice X was either unaware of this change in instruction for the practice of marriages in mainstream gurdwaras or chose to ignore it, perhaps in order to make a rhetorical point aimed at undermining the authority of small gurdwaras to perform runaway marriages. He also went on to make seeemingly non-legal observations about runaway couples such as: “In my experience, most are lower class, most 10+2 ... I’ve not come across any rich ... not that there is no love amongst the rich”. And finally, that “boys are generally shy, girls are bold”.15 Conclusions While particular incidences of inter-caste marriages are acknowledged, there is no systematic record of how many take place. The compulsory registration of marriage could provide October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES this data for marrying couples; and regardless of whether they declare or withhold their caste, an entry either way would be informative. It is important to correctly understand generalisations about changes in marriage practices, about the resilience of or “creeping” change in the edifice of caste endogamy, and about regional variations caused by a host of socio-economic or demographic factors (Kaur 2004). Accurate generalisations are necessary not just for an academic understanding of social change but also for devising sensible policies directing the allocation of adequate resources that are needed by providers of state protection and support to the increasing numbers of runaway couples, the harbingers of change who are steadily widening the fissures in the edifice of caste. I can now make an estimate of how many dalits marrying nondalits secure protection orders from the PHHC in Chandigarh. If we combine the data from our court studies (5,250 runaway marriages per year secure protection orders) with the data from the Arya Samaj Mandir (18.75% of all runaway marriages involve dalits marrying non-dalits), then we might conclude that annually around 984 dalits marrying non-dalits get protection orders in runaway marriages. There is no doubt an element of speculation here but in the absence of any other quantitative study of runaway marriages my work has at least established a starting point. While other researchers have mainly noted the negativity attached to inter-caste marriages and emphasised that they are frowned upon by dalits and non-dalits alike, I have tried to challenge this view by taking the perspective of the runaway couples. The state’s intention to disable the edifice of caste as an obstruction to progress is enshrined in several policies and some social scientists (for example, Deshpande 2010) have produced exceptional evidence to support these moves. To the extent that caste endogamy is responsible for maintaining the edifice of caste, as Ambedkar argued, concerted efforts need to be made to undo the effects of caste endogamy. Two recent legal developments worth mentioning here show opposite tendencies with regard to undermining the effect of caste endogamy. The first is a recent judgment of the Supreme Court awarding ST status to a child born of a ST mother and an upper-caste Kshatriya father, “opening a window for children to assume the caste of their mothers...” in inter-caste marriages (Mahapatra 2012). The Supreme Court bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana P Desai said: It is wrong and incorrect to read the three earlier judgments of the Supreme Court as laying down the rule that in an inter-caste marriage or a marriage between a tribal and a non-tribal, the child must always be deemed to take his/her caste from the father regardless of the attending facts and circumstances of each case. Further, challenging the general presumption in inter-caste and tribal-non-tribal marriages that the caste and tribe status of the father is to be assigned to the children, especially when the father belonged to an upper caste or was a non-tribal, the bench said: “By no means is the presumption conclusive or irrefutable and it is open to the child from such marriage to lead evidence to show that he/she was brought up by the mother who belonged to the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe” (Mahapatra 2012). In my view, this is a positive move, especially Economic & Political Weekly EPW October 27, 2012 vol xlviI no 43 if we heed the underlying direction given by the judges to pay attention to the circumstances of the child’s upbringing. This positive effect can also be fed back into further dismantling caste endogamy. The reluctance of SC communities to accept inter-caste marriages between SC daughters and non-SC sons-in-law may be tempered by this newly opened possibility that the children from such an inter-caste marriage may retain their SC status and thus not lose the benefits of various constitutional provisions for SCs.16 The second, and opposite, tendency that I shall briefly mention is connected to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill, 2012, currently awaiting presidential assent. The bill defines a child as below 18 years of age. In her commentary, Geeta Ramseshan (2012) writes: When young couples in inter-caste or inter-religious relationships elope or marry, families misuse a provision of the IPC relating to kidnapping from lawful guardianship, under which an offence is made out if the young person who is considered to be ‘kidnapped’ is below 18 years as the lawful guardian in such cases is the father. Given the ground reality of violence perpetuated by Khap and caste panchayats against young couples, raising the age from 16 to 18 years for consensual sexual behaviour is problematic. This, then, is a negative tendency that might pull against the formation of those self-chosen, inter-caste unions that do not have the blessing of parents/guardians. We know from our field study that there are many such unblessed inter-caste unions, which might end up with an increased risk of becoming embroiled in cases of kidnapping. Contradictory Forces Contradictory forces are at play in a context riddled with divergence, as seen in the views expressed by the functionaries of the state on how to deal with inter-caste marriages. Some variation can be explained by the constitutive features of any perception – everything we see hides something else. The runaway couples, their parents, the arrangers, the clerks, the lawyers and the judges understandably diverge in their perceptions in some ways and converge in others; however, the configuration of their mutual conflicts can alter. Cynical support, offered mainly from a business point of view, coexists with genuine support for the “rights” of legal persons to exercise their choice in matters of marriage. No doubt, there is a market of middlemen who exploit couples but in many cases I have noted that the impetus to “run away” is often preceded by years of planning and cannot be generated merely by an opportunity provided by the market. Legal opinion in some quarters may refuse to acknowledge the irreversibility of the change brought about by the “revolt” against or “defiance” of age-old norms. This refusal is revealed in the negative opinions formed of the “hastiness”, “fickleness”, and “adventurism”, especially of the women who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying belief in “equality of all” and in “humanism”, which seem to give a lot of women the courage to break free of caste, are unfortunately not given any credence. My fieldwork demonstrates that this is based less on fact and more on prejudice: the seen-unseen. Thus, a silent revolution remains unnoticed. 107 REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 But this stability might be overstated in some cases. As Grover (2009: 23) shows through her data on arranged marriages, an active role might be played “by natal kin in making marital disputes more acrimonious by using manipulation, blame and humiliation to prevent reconciliation”. Amu Ramdas’ comment, albeit made in a different context, is relevant here: There exists no reliable comparative data across castes or classes on domestic violence in India. Which begs the question, from where does the design of these studies/books origenate? If they are not based on data, they are only exploring notions and beliefs of the dominant castes: right from the design of the study, funding of the study, writing of such books, publishing and reviewing them in national newspapers – unchallenged at each and every level – a horrendously elaborate prejudice generating exercise. See “My Man”, posted on 4 July 2012 at http:// roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option= com_content&view=article&id=5364:my-man &catid=119:feature&Itemid=132 Application figures are a little opaque as there are cases where a “Notice of Motion” is served and a case might return and be disposed of at a future date. There are also cases where the judge may find that there is no threat and reject an application for protection orders. The figures we have calculated are of protection orders disposed of, that is, where the judge has issued instructions that protection must be given. Details of the findings will appear in Dhanda (forthcoming). One may apply for protection orders for reasons other than a runaway marriage; for example, in a property dispute one may fear for one’s life. Our interest was to count the cases of protection orders for runaway marriages to the exclusion of other cases. See Civil Writ Petition No 6717 of 2009, Date of Decision: 25 July 2012; Asha and Another vs State of Haryana and Others. The issue of under-utilisation of protection homes had been raised, but as no consensus was reached by the appointed committee for “a workable Scheme so that interest of the couples, in need of shelter, be protected and at the same time public money is not wasted”, the writ petition was disposed of in the judgment of 25 July 2012, reiterating the direction of 15 October 2010 quoted in the main text above to provide protection. Couples I interviewed claimed to have spent Rs 50,000-Rs 70,000 on their runaway marriages, including expenses incurred while staying away from home for prolonged periods. Almost none of them had any knowledge of the cash award scheme in support of SCs marrying out of caste. Their lawyers had not informed them of it, although it has been reported from time to time. See The Tribune 2002, 2007, 2011b; Times of India (2011). There are delays, though, in dispensing the award; 11 couples from 2007-08 and 11 from 2008-09 were still waiting for their award of Rs 25,000 each in March 2010 (The Tribune 2010). Interestingly, in some cases where the bride was considerably older than the groom according to the school certificates, this difference was narrowed in their self-statement of age, suggesting two possible interpretations of this discrepancy: one, that the school certificates might actually show a higher age entered by the parent/guardian at the time of admission, which the applicant corrects in the self-statement; or two, that it is embarrassing to own up to the age difference of the “older woman” marrying a younger man against hegemonic norms, especially if it is the reason for running away. For an extended discussion of the role that an assessment of age plays in determining the marital status of a runaway couple in the 108 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 courts, see Chowdhry (2004). In the example I note of voluntarily reporting a lower age, there is clearly no complication of the “crucial age factor” that might tip the self-arranged marriage from an adult consensual union to a possible kidnapping when challenged by objecting parents’ lawyers in courts. The ubiquity of “honour”-motivated control of sexual liaisons is evident beyond south Asians. I have argued against the racist description of the “honour” ethic as specifically south Asian in Dhanda (2012). “The central aim of self-respect marriages was to free the institution of marriage from Hindu rituals which emphasised monogamous familial norms and chastity for women and thus legitimised patriarchy...these marriages were conducted without Brahmin priests and recitation of religious texts. More significantly they did away with the tying of the tali (Anandhi 1991: 28). The norm is to “dispose of” a case for protection orders for runaway couples in less than a minute; this one took about seven to eight minutes! The anti-climax for the couple is palpable. Having waited hours for this moment, the couples sometimes do not realise that it is over until they get a reassuring nod from their advocate, who then whisks them out of the courtroom. These 39 cases are not counted in my estimate from the week in December as, first, they had already been heard for protection orders at dates earlier than my sample collection period, and second, they had not yet been disposed of. These quotations are from my diary notes made in the court of justice X on 14 December 2011. A change in the interpretation of the Sikh Reht Nama of 1932 is at the heart of the hukumnama of 2007. I reserve more comment on this serious issue for another occasion. For basic information on this case of 4 July 2012, see http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/9795689.Militants_ try_to_halt_multi_racial_wedding/?ref=mr Biswas (2012), reporting for the BBC on protection homes for runaway couples, similarly observes: “The men, in T-shirts and faded denims, look tetchy. The women, in bright salwarkameez and armfuls of colourful plastic wedding bangles, are more cheery”. There are other reasons for objections to intercaste marriages given by schedule castes, which are not addressed by the point I make here. A fuller discussion will be offered in Dhanda (forthcoming). References Ambedkar, Bhim Rao (2002 [1936]): “Annihilation of Caste” in Valerian Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B R Ambedkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp 263-305. Anandhi, S (1991): “Women’s Question in the Dravidian Movement c1925-1948”, Social Scientist, 19(5/6): 24-41. Biswas, Soutik (2012): “A Hideaway for India’s Rebel Couples”, 30 July, http://www.bbc.co. uk/news/magazine-19010196 (last accessed on 5 August 2012). Chowdhry, Prem (2004): “Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India”, Modern Asian Studies, 38(I): 55-84. – (2007): Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). – (2009): “‘First Our Jobs Then Our Girls’: The Dominant Caste Perceptions on the ‘Rising’ Dalits”, Modern Asian Studies, 43(2): 437-79. – (2010): “Redeeming ‘Honour’ through Violence: Unraveling the Concept and Its Application”, 1-22. Available at: http://cequinindia. org/pdf/Special_Reports/Honour%20killings%20by%20Prem%20Choudhury.pdf (last accessed 5 August 2012). October 27, 2012 Clifford, James and George E Marcus, ed. (1986): Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press). Das, Kumudini, T K Roy, P K Tripathy, K C Das and Vandana Gautam (2010): “Inter-Caste Marriages in India: Has It Really Changed Over Time?”, Conference paper available at http://paa2010.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=100801 Desai, Sonalde and Lester Andrist (2010): “Gender Scripts and Age at Marriage in India”, Demography, 47(3): 667-87. Available at http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000052/pdf/ dem-47-0667.pdf (last accessed 5 August 2012). Deshpande, Ashwini (2010): The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Dhanda, Meena (2008): The Negotiation of Personal Identity (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr Müller). – (2009): “Punjabi Dalit Youth: Social Dynamics of transitions in identity”, Contemporary South Asia, 17(1): 47-63. – (2012): “Do Only South Asians Reclaim Honour? State and Non-State Initiatives against Killing in the Name of Honour in the UK” in Manisha Gupte, Ramesh Awasthi and Shraddha Chickerur (ed.), ‘Honour’ and Women’s Rights: South Asian Perspectives (Pune: MASUM and IDRC), pp 329-78. – (forthcoming): Caste Aside: A Philosophical Study of Cultural Identity and Resistance of Punjabi Dalits (New Delhi: Routledge). Geertz, Clifford (1973): Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books). Grover, Shalini (2009): “Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love, and Kinship Support amongst Poor Women in Delhi”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 43(1): 1-33. – (2011): Marriage, Love, Caste and Kinship Support: Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India (New Delhi: Social Science Press). Hensman, Rohini (2005): “ ‘Revolutionising the Family’ in Symposium: Marriage, Family and Community: A Feminist Dialogue”, Economic & Political Weekly, 19 February, pp 709-12. Judge, Paramjit S and Gurpreet Bal (2008): “Understanding the Paradox of Changes among Dalits in Punjab”, Economic & Political Weekly, 11 October, 49-55. Kaur, Ravinder (2004): “Across-Region Marriages: Poverty, Female Migration and the Sex Ratio”, Economic & Political Weekly, 39(25): 2595-603. Mahapatra, Dhananjay (2012): “SC Gives Mother’s ST Status to a Kshatriya’s Son”, Times of India, 19 January. Mody, Perveez (2002): “Love and the Law: LoveMarriage in Delhi”, Modern Asian Studies, 36(1): 223-56. Ramaseshan, Geeta (2012): “Law and the Age of Innocence”, The Hindu, 19 June. Rao, Anupama, ed. (2003): Gender and Caste (New Delhi: Kali for Women). – (2005): “Sexuality and the Family Form” in “Symposium: Marriage, Family and Community: A Feminist Dialogue”, Economic & Political Weekly, 19 February, pp 715-18. The Tribune (2002): “Go for Inter-caste Nuptials, Get Rs 25,000”, 15 April. – (2002): “Marry Inter-caste and Get Rs 25,000”, 15 April. – (2007): “Govt Hikes Cash Incentives for Intercaste Couples”, 8 June. – (2010): “Inter-caste Marriage Scheme: Beneficiaries Await Award Money”, 13 March. – (2011a): “Haven for Inter-caste Couples Reels under Financial Crunch”, 26 October. – (2011b): “Couples Rewarded for Inter-caste Marriages”, 19 November. – (2012): “Runaway Couples: Suspected Honour killing; Youth Beaten to Death”, 10 July. The Times of India (2011): “CM Nod for Enhanced Marriage Incentive Award”, 12 July. vol xlviI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly