Abstract
Marriage as a social as well as political institution has been studied by a wide range of scholars from across disciplines. In the context of Rajasthan and in particular Rajputs, the theme has been dominated by the focus on Rajput–Mughal marital alliances. The Politics of Marriage in Medieval India by Sabita Singh explores marriage histories, practices and rituals across communities in medieval Rajasthan. She brings together perspectives from a vast archive in Rajasthan, to argue that what are today viewed as timeless attitudes towards marriage evolved slowly with socioeconomic and political exigencies.
The book has five chapters along with an Introduction and Conclusion. The Introduction seeks to lay the historiographic context by discussing some of the works that focus on the question of marriage from the Annals tradition, as well as works that focus on gender relations in Rajasthan. The first chapter titled ‘Political and Social Structure of Medieval Rajasthan’ explores the social and political context of medieval Rajasthan within which the author seeks to explore the institution of marriage. This chapter largely focuses details of medieval Rajput polity, locations of various clans and their interrelationships. The second chapter ‘Socio-political and Economic Aspects of Marriage’ explores different dimensions of marital practices across different social groups. The third chapter, ‘Interpretation of Marriage Rituals in Medieval Rajasthan’ explores meaning behind rituals and customs practiced in medieval Rajasthan. The chapter on ‘Sati, Widowhood and Remarriage’ delves into the complex question of practice of sati, and its prevalence across communities, as well as rules and customs around practice of remarriage. The final chapter ‘Marital and Sexual Morality’ engages with the question of role of state and community in the regulation of morality within and outside of the institution of marriage.
This is a fairly comprehensive attempt to bring together multiple questions around the institution of marriage. Singh attempts to break several assumptions around the institution of marriage and how it was practiced within communities. She furthers the argument that pre-modern marriage cannot be viewed through a lens of modernity where marriage is considered a companionate relationship between individuals, but one where marriage is just another form of wider social, economic and political relationships contracted in the society. In disagreement with the accepted notion that marriages in medieval Rajasthan were associated with sense of honour between the contracting parties, the author argues that pursuit of power, convenience and exigency were some important reasons for which marital alliances among the Rajput clans were decided upon. Not only were marriages contracted to most practical ends, marital arrangements could at times become the ruse for carrying out long-awaited reparations. At other times, marriage became a way of extending the influence of the clan by insisting that a son born of the daughter of the clan inherited the father’s throne, thus ensuring that his maternal clan continued to be a powerful party. This can be seen through a range of examples cited by the author ranging from intra-Rajput marriages to the kind of influence exercised by Rajputs like Man Singh in the Mughal court. This, however, did not mean that social decision-making around a relationship, that ultimately involved individuals, did not impact them, and sometimes this resulted in breaking of social balance leading to conflict among various parties. Singh demonstrates through examples how Rajput women could also exercise choices like indicating the choice of husband, abandoning a marital relationship which was abusive, as well as remarriage. However, it is clear by the rarity of instances that these were exceptions rather than rule.
When it came to non-Rajput communities, while it appears that greater flexibility could be exercised in marital decision-making, it did not mean that decisions were independent of community or state control. Marriages could only be contracted within the accepted norms, which included caste boundaries. Breach of norms invited heavy censure as well as monetary punishment from both the caste panchayat as well as the state, both of which appear to be the upholders of the accepted, or wajabi. In cases of acts that were considered outside of normative, like abandonment of spouse, elopement, adultery, these were also punishable by the state, often by levying of fines, though very rarely by corporal punishment.
Singh’s arguments across the chapters show that marriage rituals and practices also became a means for groups to seek higher positions in social hierarchy. In the chapter on marriage rituals and sati and widowhood, the author argues that while some groups like the merchant castes attempted to emulate Rajput practices, among peasant castes like Jats, the practice of marital customs like bride price, remarriage, levirate continued as these groups placed greater premium on female labour. This meant that women in these communities perhaps exercised greater freedom, though this freedom could only be exercised within accepted parameters. This did not mean that women among lower castes were free from gendered oppression. On the other hand, they could be victimised both by men of their own community as well as become targets of sexual violence by upper castes. Lower caste women inducted into Rajput households as concubines or slaves did not overcome their own caste, and their progeny were often placed in ambiguous caste locations.
As stated earlier in this review, this book attempts to bring many ideas together to create an overarching idea of functioning of the institution of marriage in medieval Rajasthan. However, even while discussing the role of marriage in politics, the book refuses to engage with the idea of marriage as politics. Given that marriage was one of the foremost mechanisms of creating social and political alliances, the book could have explored dynamics of marriage as politics among Rajput clans. Caste endogamy, clan exogamy and hypergamy were ways of creating exclusions and inclusions that went on to define Rajputs as a social group. Marriage rituals and practices such as bride price, remarriage and levirate came to be seen as means of hierarchical distinction between caste groups. The second and third chapters which discuss practices and rituals do not stretch the descriptions to make substantive arguments. For example, the ritual of striking the toran, or the entrance of bride’s house with a sword, is a ritual that points to the fact that marriages were seen as acts of military victory for the groom’s side. Daughters were given as surety in acts of submission in wars. This was as true of intra-Rajput marriages, as it was of Rajput–Muslim marriages. The emergence and expansion of Rajputs depended upon the ability to access kin based and military labour. Marriage-based affinity was the other way of compounding military force and was used extensively all across Rajputana, and also very effectively by Mughals. While the author has put together a great number of examples of marriage as political and diplomatic tool, she does not pull these together to make a comprehensive argument. In fact, details which are a strength of this book, also become its weakness, as very often the argument gets buried in detail.
The author also uses non-Rajput sources from different princely states, particularly in the fourth and the fifth chapters to explore how the institution of marriage functioned among the common people. Here she argues that community practices varied between Sanskritic tradition of the dharma vivah, which implied hypergamous marriage where the bride’s family paid dowry to local practices where marriages could be contracted and annulled by observing community rules, which often involved payment of fines to the community panchayat and the state. Here again, the larger argument of how observance of rituals and practices around marriage embody and demonstrate social hierarchies around caste is not drawn clearly. For example, even today a number of news reports around caste atrocities in Rajasthan feature the act of riding a mare by a Dalit groom, which is normally a prerogative of dominant upper caste men. Historically, traditions and practices around marriage were designed to exercise control over female body as well as to ensure that it is not defiled by other men, particularly from lower castes. Nainsi’s Khyat lists several instances where Rajputs attacked groups like Mers and Meenas because they were seen as disturbing the social order by attempting marriage or sexual relationships with upper caste women.
The rigidity of control over female sexuality and reproduction among the upper caste including Rajputs prevented women from being remarried, as well as led to practices like sati and female infanticide. Over time, lower caste groups adopted Sanskritic rituals abandoning practices such as bride price and widow remarriage, as means to claim higher caste status. This would have impinged on the limited freedoms exercised by lower caste women. Thus, control over female body and sexuality was an important part of exercise of caste hierarchy in the region. While the author provides numerous evidences of this process, she somehow pulls back from drawing a conclusion about the processes of social change through the study of marriage rituals.
One of the shortcomings of the book is that it does not engage with some of the important writings that discuss some of these key arguments around marriage in the region. Ramya Sreenivasan’s article ‘Honoring the Family: Narratives and Politics of Rajput Kinship in pre-modern Rajasthan’ in Indrani Chatterjee (2004) ed. Unfamilar Relations: Family and History in South Asia raises some of these issues and could have helped in framing of arguments. Nandita Prasad Sahai’s work on caste panchayats could have been used in the sections which deal with the relationship between caste panchayats and state. Reference to Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar’s Subaltern Studies article ‘A Poetics of Resistance’ which discusses politics of female infanticide and the marginalisation of charans in the politics of marriage is also missing. Dirk Kolff’s Naukar Rajput and Sepoy is a big omission from the bibliography.
This book is attempting to cover a large arena and has accessed a very vast archive. While the vastness of the archive is expected to lend credence to arguments, the reader ends up attempting to sift an argument from the instances cited. Nevertheless, the fact that so much evidence has been put together adds to the growing field of study of gender relations in medieval India.