ABSTRACT
Marriage in India is a resilient social institution because of its presumed significance in providing socio-economic security to its members, integrating groups or communities, and ensuring social mobility, circulation of wealth, socially sanctioned filial ties, and biological reproduction. Marriage payments have been intrinsic to the matrimonial process among Hindus for centuries. However, scholars have argued that marriage among the minority Christians in India has been adopting dominant Hindu practices with changing lifestyle, employment opportunities, class mobility, and demographic circumstances, thus, reflecting entrenched social inequalities. Therefore, this chapter first explores the institutional relationship between the practices and ideas of Christians and their embeddedness in a Hindu society in southern India with reference to property exchanges. Second, it analyzes the proliferation and extent of these property transactions and the growth of the urban class among Christians in India. Third, it examines the institutional connection between these marriage payments and the sustenance of endogamous groups among the Christians. The shifting nature of marriage payments is fundamental to the intricacies of inter-personal relationships among concerned marrying groups. Finally, this chapter explores the implications that such marriage payments have for the status of both Christian men and women in southern India, but especially for Christian women, as exchange of wealth runs parallel to the exchange of women through marriages.
