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Article Excerpt
Abstract: Much has been written about the importance of recognizing and understanding resistance as it is experienced by members of Other and/or marginalized worlds. In this essay, I discuss resistance as enacted by middle-class women of a Punjabi community in contemporary Hindu arranged marriages who live in South Delhi, India. Accessing life-history narratives of women currently involved in these marriages, I argue that the structure of the Hindu marriage creates a constraining framework of power within which women are placed in disadvantaged positions. It is within and from these positions that women resist filial relationships in structural, relational, and interactional ways. I explore two emergent forms of resistance--Marital Self-definitions and Addressing the Mother-in-law. I explore these forms as truncated resistances because my participants resisted 'what they could' within the constraints of a filial reality. Finally, I conclude by merging my voice with contemporary transnational conversations about the problematics of interpretation and naming resistance.
Introduction
Arranged marriages continue to be normative in many Asian cultures, such as Japan, India, Korea, and so on (Applbaum, 1995). Specifically, among Hindus in India, they continue to be the most popular form of organizing a marital relationship (Mullatti, 1995). Despite globalization, modernization, and urbanization, the number of arranged marriages continues to outnumber 'love' or 'self-arranged' marriages. In fact, an estimated 95% of all Hindu marriages in India are still arranged marriages (Bumiller, 1990; Chawla, 2004; Kapadia, 1958; Kapur, 1970; Mullatti, 1995).
Research on the arranged marriage in the humanities and social sciences has been limited to historical and comparative sociological analyses. Historical literature has generally emphasized the structure of the family, Hindu norms, traditions, caste, and so on. Social-scientific work on the arranged marriage in the last five decades includes socio-psychological surveys that focus upon comparisons between 'arranged' and 'self-arranged' marriages in India (see Chandak & Sprecher, 1992; Dhyani & Kumar, 1996; Kapadia, 1958; Kapur, 1970; Rao & Rao, 1975; Ross, 1961). More recently, sociologists and historians at the University of Delhi have explored issues surrounding kinship, sexuality, same-sex marriages, marital laws, and the state (Uberoi, 1993, 1996).
Within sociological research, a few seminal studies examined urbanization and Hindu family life. In 1958, Kapadia traced the history of the marriage up to the early 1950s (the study was first published in 1955), and concluded that although there were changes in marital trends with industrialization and urbanization, marriage among Hindus remained a holy sacrament, an obligation and a duty that went beyond industrial progress. A decade later, Gore (1968) looked at urbanization and family change, and found that Hindu traditions won over forces of urbanization and industrialization in both rural and urban areas (see Ross, 1961 and Kapur, 1970 for similar findings). These studies are invaluable because they explore change and also because they describe Hindu family structure and member roles. I rely upon these, among others, in a subsequent section to explore the structure and role distribution of a typical Hindu family.
Other social scientific research on Hindu arranged marriage has dealt with marital satisfaction, adjustment, attitude change of college students about the arranged marriage, and more comparisons between love and arranged marriages. The results, based on urban samples, are often contradictory. For instance, in a study about attitudes toward the arranged marriage, Rao & Rao (1975) found that 91% of the college student sample (n=182, evenly distributed by gender) disapproved of the traditional form of 'arranged' marriage, and the high 'disapproval' rate was attributed to factors such as modernization, industrialization, education and the breakdown of the joint family system. A similar study conducted almost two decades later by Chandak & Sprecher (1992) found that in a survey sample of 66 respondents (n=66, 48 women and 18 men) over half approved of traditional system. This study, conducted two decades after the Rao & Rao (1975) study, points to a reversal in the modernization trend. It has an unevenly distributed sample with three times more women, but that is left unexplored and unexplained.
At the same time, studies on marital adjustment and satisfaction display some consistent results. Sociologist Promilla Kapur's (1970) socio-psychological survey entitled, Marriage and the Working Woman in India, investigated marital adjustment among Indian urban working women (n=300), and concluded that women in self-arranged marriages did not adjust better or worse than those in arranged marriages. Kapur's study remains the most descriptive document available as she used a combination of qualitative and quantitative data in presenting her conclusions. However, her qualitative data is merely used to support her findings, and is not analyzed per se. Moreover, Kapur's study, though seminal, is now over three decades old. A more recent study by Dhyani & Kumar (1992) also examined the relationship between type of marriage, marital duration, sexual satisfaction, and adjustment (n=240, urban women married for at least one year). They found that type of marriage and marital duration had no significant relationship with marital adjustment. In sum, while these studies offer valuable insights into the socio-psychological processes that factor into an arranged marriage, less attention has been given to women's contextual experiences in these marriages.
This paper contributes to contextual research about family experiences of contemporary Indian women in Hindu arranged marriages, in examining narratives of resistance which emerged in my ethnographic life history study of 20 urban women in a South Delhi Punjabi community in India, I show how my participants accessed different marital self-definitions, silence, and an embodied material resistance against the central figure of the mother-in-law in their marital homes. The significance of this essay lies in its addition to literature on gender, marriage, and family in some crucial ways.
First and broadly, I provide discussions about a highly understudied context in marriage and family life--the Hindu arranged marriage. The study answers Turner & West's (2006) recent and urgent call for expanding the contexts of the study of family life in their new Family Communication Sourcebook. Much family research has assumed that family communication issues are similar across groups thereby overlooking unique issues, and glazing over religious contexts (Galvin, 2004). This study undoubtedly expands the context of family research, alongside it unravels the intricacies of Hindu marriages arranged by kin. For instance, the notion of women self-defining marriage within arranged marriages problematizes the idea of arranged marriages as a structural continuity in this community. In redefining their marriages, these women dislocate as well as reinvent common perceptions about such family systems.
More specifically, this study is significant because it also dislocates the notion of family conflict which has for the last thirty years focused upon spousal, parent-child, and sibling conflict (see Roloff & Miller (2006) for an overview of family conflict research). Even though mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships have been studied, conflict between these family members is generally used to predict low or high marital satisfaction (see Bryant, Conger, & Meehan, 2001; Turner, Young, & Black, 2006). My study, however, shows how such conflicts are a product of the structural/historical context and are fundamental to understanding women's experiences and marital interactions in these contexts. Moreover, in showing conflict and resistance as symbiotically linked, this essay moves us beyond a study of family conflict styles (such as avoidance and engagement) and power into addressing resistance as a means to live 'with' the conflict or to help bring out a 'new' resolution. Finally, this resistance is framed as discursive thereby contributing to Third World feminist sensibilities that privilege the local means/actions/ practices un/consciously employed by women to cope in their daily lives.
In the following sections, I highlight the history of Hindu marriage and structure of the Hindu family before proceeding to describe my fieldwork which took place in Delhi, India. Following this, I explore in-depth two forms of resistance that emerged in the stories narrated to me in the field. I conclude my essay with a discussion about how my study merges with contemporary transnational conversation/s about the problematics of interpreting and representing resistance.
Hindu Marriage in History
The Hindu arranged marriage and family are a case in point for looking at the family as ideology and a site in which power relations are structured and distributed in constraining ways. Historically, all Hindu marriages were premised upon similarity of social standing, which often included the caste, class, religion, and education of the prospective couple. Despite forces of modernization, urbanization, and liberalization, the number of arranged marriages in India far outnumbers 'love' or 'self-arranged' marriages (Chawla 2004; Bumiller, 1990). In this section, I rely on historical literature, to explore the roots of the Hindu marriage. Further, I describe the basic construction of the Hindu family to explain the context in which the narratives in my study emerged.
In a simple understanding, arranged marriages among Hindus were marriages generally organized by parents and elderly kin (Sur, 1973). In earlier times, intermediaries called sambhalas, or traditional matchmakers, were employed to keep the genealogical history of each family, and ensure that the bride and groom were not related from five to seven generations (Sur, 1973). In more recent times, these criteria have stretched. For example, Mullatti (1995) outlines seven criteria that are currently followed by matchmakers: kin; parents and relatives; caste; social structure; moral value compatibility; academic compatibility; occupational compatibility; the family's moral history; and horoscope compatibility (though not necessarily in this order). In the past two decades, parents have begun seeking matches for their children through matrimonial columns in newspapers, magazines, and now even via internet (Mullatti, 1995; see also "Rearranging Marriage" in the weekly magazine India Today, 2004). The criteria, rules, and other norms for arranging Hindu marriages differ from region to region within India. So, for instance, in urban areas such as Delhi, young men and women have begun meeting via internet matrimonial websites. These sites match people using some of the basic criteria explored above. However, it is important to note that these are not dating websites, and parents/kin have a say in the meetings that occur through these mechanisms. As any social phenomenon, Hindu marriage has evolved over time and it is important to examine its socio-historic construction to comprehend the distribution of power in the home.
Hindu marriage is said to be derived from laws interpreted in the Dharmashastras which in turn have their roots in the 3000-year-old hyms called Vedas and Smritis. The Vedas and the Smritis are considered the oldest surviving documents from the Vedic and Epic age (what are considered the first recorded periods of Indian civilization from 4000B.C.-1200 A.D; see Kapadia, 1958; Shattuck, 1999; Lipner, 1994; Zysk, 1989). These texts tell us that Hindu marriage dates as far back as 4000 B.C (1). Written by holy men of the time period, these scriptures (as are scriptures across most religions) are a collection of rules and conducts for society at the time (Zysk, 1989).
A general theme across these scriptures was that marriage was a duty and a religious sacrament that was required of all human beings for the well being of the community. Through different periods of Indian history, these texts underwent various interpretations. All predominant interpretations (which were male until very recently) outlined four main aims of life for Hindus (tailored for men). These were: dharma, artha, kama and moksha (Kapadia, 1958; Lipner, 1994). Kama represented the instinctive, and was connected with satisfying the emotional, sexual, and aesthetic urges of man. Artha referred to the acquisitive instinct, and signified man's enjoyment of wealth. Dharma was of primary concern because it aimed to balance the instinctive and acquisitive. Dharma was achieved by gaining the knowledge that artha and kama were means, not ends. Dharma represented the harmony between "temporal interests and spiritual freedom" and is a key element in Hindu life (Kapadia, 1958, p.27). Moksha represented the end of life and the realization of an inner spirituality in man.
The four aims of life were to be accomplished by conducting life in four stages which were--bhramacharya, grahastha, vanaspratha and samnyasa. The second stage, grahastha, dealt with marriage and included the goals of dharma, progeny, and sex. Even though marriage was required of all Hindus, its advantages were enjoyed by men, who benefited both spiritually and economically (Mukherjee, 1978). Men were spiritual beneficiaries because they married in order to beget sons who would light their funeral pyre. In ancient Hindu philosophy, having one's pyre lit by a son ensures the male line a place in heaven, and more importantly rebirth in the next life as a human being (said to liberate future generations of the family). A male heir was also an economic necessity-he was desired because he alone could continue the family line and inherit ancestral property (see footnote 2 for the revised laws on property). Therefore, historically, the Hindu marriage was, according to Mukherjee (1978), 'male-emphasized.' In fact, the...
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