Introduction

Anthropological work on India has been predominantly community-specifi c. By this I mean that the point of departure is more often than not a particular caste or a particular community, often the classic community of the Indian village. Looking in particular at the study of family and kinship and the work done on marriages, some trends can be identifi ed. Firstly, the study of marriage forms has been largely confi ned to the study of particular castes or ethno-religious ‘communities’ and the ways in which their rituals and ceremonies fi t into their larger cosmologies (for instance Dumont 1998; Fruzzetti 1982; Srinivas 1952). Secondly, and in relation to this work, many anthropologists have encountered the practice of intermarriage between castes and ‘communities’ (Béteille 1997: 150-77; Dube 1996; Dumont 1998: 126-29; Fruzzetti 1982: xxii-iii; Fuller 1992: 14). Invariably some mention is made of the fact that a study of such marriages could reveal important dynamics of social change; but the task of actually researching such marriages has been left relatively untouched.1 One salient point emerges from this: that the lens through which so-called ‘lovemarriages’2 are viewed is always that of the community as monolith which marks as renegades those who have violated its boundaries. Hence the subjective, lived experience of being marginal or even excommunicated from one’s caste or community is never addressed. Instead we fi nd that the widespread prominence of the dominant view that such marriages are necessarily illegitimate, unusual and the westernised practice of an urban deracinated elite, has led anthropologists to ignore the potential for ethnography of changing marital forms. As Susan Bayly (1999: 54) has pointed out, the marital aspect of caste has been a key concept in twentieth century anthropology. By defi ning the marriage bond as an index of caste status (‘who will take one’s kin as brides or grooms’), and ‘caste’ in turn as an overarching principle of Indian social relations, the post-Dumontian ethnographic record has been reluctant even to

register the modern phenomenon of love-marriages, or what Singh and Uberoi coin as ‘self-arranged’ marriages (1994: 101). This book attempts to correct this imbalance by demonstrating the importance of such marriages for our understanding of changing marriage forms, kinship structures, gender relations, and communal and caste politics in urban India.