Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-t6st2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-18T02:08:50.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doing it our Way: Love and marriage in Kolkata middle-class families*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

HENRIKE DONNER
HENRIKE DONNER*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom Email: h.donner@gold.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With the exception of a few anthropologists working on gender, much of the recent literature on emerging intimate modernities in South Asia, and the middle class in India in particular, seems to support a view of social relationships evolving in a kind of linear development towards free choice, individualism, and identities based on sexual preference. This imagery is particularly prominent in the representation and self-representation of metropolitan, educated middle-class youths, whose views dominate popular media representations and are associated with secularism, individualism, and independence from family and community. In this article I argue that apart from the ostensibly overwhelming transformations that discourses on coupledom, love, choice and self-realization bring in their wake, new ways of choosing a spouse and of conducting conjugal relations among middle-class urbanites have to be interpreted in relation to much more subtle and long-standing social transformations as well as existing institutional forms, in particular the practical implications of patrilocality and the ideology and reality of the joint family. Based on fieldwork with Bengali-speaking middle-class families in Kolkata spanning two decades, the article charts continuities and subtle shifts in the way ‘love’ and ‘marriage’ are related in conversations, and how young women and their parents negotiate marriage in the context of middle-class consumerism, status competition, and uncertainty.

Information

Type
Anxieties
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4: Love, Marriage, and Intimate Citizenship in Contemporary China and India , July 2016 , pp. 1147 - 1189
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

Extended periods of fieldwork were undertaken in 1995–1996, 1999–2000, and 2001–2002 and were generously supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. Shorter periods of fieldwork followed. Earlier versions of this article were presented at seminars at the Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics, the Centre of Modern Indian Studies Göttingen, and the conference of the European Association of South Asian Studies in Nanterre. I am grateful for all comments made on these different occasions. Special thanks are due to Geert De Neve and Jonathan Parry for detailed suggestions on the draft.

References

1 Donner, H., ‘One's Own Marriage: Love Marriages in a Calcutta Neighbourhood’, South Asia Research, 22 (1), 2002, pp. 79–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Oza, R., The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization, Routledge, New York, 2006Google Scholar.

3 The dominant role that middle-class culture plays in this respect is discussed in Dwyer, R., ‘“Zara hatke!”: The New Middle Classes and the Segmentation of Hindi Cinema’ in Donner, H. (ed.), Being Middle Class in India: A Way of Life, Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 184–208Google Scholar.

4 See Uberoi, P., Family, Kinship and Marriage in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1993, pp. 1–44, p. 36Google Scholar.

5 See Appadurai, A. and Breckenridge, C., ‘Why Public Culture?’, Public Culture, 1, 1988, pp. 5–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Majumdar, R., Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Donner, H., Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India, Ashgate , Aldershot, 2008Google Scholar.

8 See Derne, S., ‘The (Limited) Effect of Cultural Globalization in India: Implications for Culture Theory’, Poetics, 33 (1), 2005, pp. 33–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 As discussed in Donner, ‘One's Own Marriage’, these ideas are closely related to the different forms of devotion and worship within a region where more egalitarian bhakti cults are influential.

10 See Donner, ‘One's Own Marriage’ for details.

11 See Twamley, K., Love, Marriage and Intimacy among Gujarati Indians: A Suitable Match, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 This excellent study was conducted between 2007 and 2009 by a team from Jadavpur University's Women's Studies Department and combined selected interviews with survey data. The participants were drawn from 164 municipal wards and 5,939 individuals, half of them women, from different age groups were included. See Sen, S. et al., Re-negotiating Gender Relations in Marriage: Family, Class and Community in Kolkata in an Era of Globalisation, Jadavpur University, Department of Women's Studies, Kolkata, n.d.Google Scholar

13 See Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

14 See the excellent discussion in Liechty, M., Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003Google Scholar.

15 Examples are Liechty, Suitably Modern, and Hirsch, J. S. and Wardlow, H. (eds), Modern Loves: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship and Companionate Marriage, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Ahearn, L. M., Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See Parry, J. P., ‘Ankalu's Errant Wife: Sex, Marriage, and Industry in Contemporary Chhattisgarh’, Modern Asian Studies, 35 (4), 2001, pp. 783–820CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See Sen et al., Re-negotiating Gender Relations, p. 10.

19 These matches are formalized by priests in the famous Kalighat temple and are common in working-class communities, Ibid., p. 31.

20 See Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

21 See Shaw, A., ‘Kinship, Cultural Preference and Immigration: Consanguineous Marriage among British Pakistanis’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7 (2), 2001, pp. 315–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Osella, C., ‘Desires under Reform: Contemporary Reconfigurations of Family, Marriage, Love and Gendering in a Transnational South Indian Matrilineal Muslim Community’, Culture and Religion, 13 (2), 2012, pp. 241–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 See Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, H., ‘Companionate Marriage in India: The Changing Marriage System in a Middle-Class Brahman Subcaste’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (4), 2008, pp. 736–754CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See Derne, ‘The (Limited) Effect’.

24 Donner, ‘One's Own Marriage’.

25 See Sen et al., Re-negotiating Gender Relations.

26 See Sen et al., Re-negotiating Gender Relations.

27 See Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy, and Heitmeyer, this issue.

28 See H. Wardlow and J. S. Hirsch, ‘Introduction’ in Hirsch and Wardlow (eds), Modern Loves, pp. 1–17, p. 4.

29 See Donner, H., ‘Gender and Property in Middle-class Kolkata: Of Untold Riches and Unruly Homes’ in Fernandes, L. (ed.), Handbook of Gender in South Asia, Routledge, London, 2014, pp. 189–203Google Scholar.

30 See Ahearn, Invitations to Love, for a historical take, along with Orsini, F. (ed.), Love in South Asia: A Cultural History, University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, 2006Google Scholar and P. Chatterjee's seminal book on colonial reconfigurations of gender and the family, Chatterjee, P., The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993Google Scholar.

31 See H. Wardlow and J. S. Hirsch, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.

32 See Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, and Uberoi, P., ‘When is a Marriage not a Marriage?: Sex, Sacrament and Contract in Hindu Marriages’ in Uberoi, P. (ed.), Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, Sage, Delhi, 1996, pp. 315–345Google Scholar.

33 A wealth of articles on variations charts these from the pre-colonial time to the present. See, for example, Chatterjee, I. (ed.), Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, Rutgers University Press, Brunswick, 2004Google Scholar; Tiwari, G., ‘Interplay of Love, Sex, and Marriage in a Polyandrous Society in the High Himalayas of India’ in Jankowiak, W. R. (ed.), Intimacies: Love and Sex across Cultures, Routledge, New York, 2008, pp. 122–147Google Scholar; Holden, L., ‘Custom and Law Practices in Central India: Some Case Studies’, South Asia Research, 23 (2), 2003, pp. 115–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parry, ‘Ankalu's Errant Wife’; Raheja, G. G. and Gold, A. G., Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994Google Scholar; and Trawick, M., Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992Google Scholar.

34 See Stoler, A. L., Carnal Knowledge: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002Google Scholar.

35 See Wardlow and Hirsch, ‘Introduction’.

36 See the comparative approach presented in Hirsch and Wardlow (eds), Modern Loves.

37 Thus intimacy features prominently in modernization theory. See, for example, Giddens, A., The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, London, 1999Google Scholar and popularized in Giddens, A., Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping our Lives, Profile Books, London, 2000Google Scholar.

38 Povinelli, E., ‘Notes on Gridlock: Genealogy, Intimacy, Sexuality’, Public Culture, 14 (1), 2002, pp. 215–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 See for instance, Hirsch and Wardlow (eds), Modern Loves.

40 See Ahearn, Invitations to Love.

41 See Puri, J., Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India: Narratives of Gender and Sexuality, Routledge, New York, 1999Google Scholar.

42 See Liechty, Suitably Modern.

43 See Chatterjee, The Nation, and Borthwick, M., ‘The Bhadramahila and Changing Conjugal Relations in Bengal 1850–1900’ in Allen, M. and Mukherjee, S. N. (eds), Women in India and Nepal, Sterling Publishers, Delhi, 1990, pp. 105–135Google Scholar.

44 See Parry ‘Ankalu's Errant Wife’; Mody, P., ‘Love and the Law: Love-marriage in Delhi’, Modern Asian Studies, 36 (1), 2002, pp. 223–256CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Osella, ‘Desires under Reform’; Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

45 The range of ethnographic examples presented in Puri, Woman, Body, Desire; Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage’; and Osella, ‘Desires under Reform’ provides an insight into the diversity of middle-class segments and the degree to which women's autonomy varies. However, it also proves how important the idiom of love marriage has become to all those eager to identify as ‘suitably modern’ and middle class.

46 See Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments for a general overview and Borthwick, M., The Reluctant Debutante: The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1875–1927, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984Google Scholar; as well as Walsh, J., Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave them Advice, Rowan & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 2004Google Scholar, for detailed practices.

47 The circularity of the argument that links marriage with the joint family, and the family with tradition, and therefore tradition with arranged marriage, is prominently displayed in popular culture, as Patricia Uberoi's ethnographic analysis of a popular Hindi film shows; see Uberoi, P., ‘Imagining the Family: An Ethnography of Viewing Hum Aapke Hain Koun. . .!’ in Dwyer, R. and Pinney, C. (eds), Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp. 309–351Google Scholar.

48 Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

49 See Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage’.

50 See Uberoi, ‘Imagining the Family’.

51 This much publicized case involved a Marwari woman and her Muslim lover, Riznavur, who was found dead on a railway track in August 2007 after allegedly being threatened by his wife's family. His family filed a case against the woman's family.

52 A more detailed discussion of the coexistence and ambivalent relationship of different terms can be found in Donner, Domestic Goddesses, p. 84.

53 Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

54 See Derne, S. ‘Structural Realities, Persistent Dilemmas, and the Construction of Emotional Paradigms: Love in Three Cultures’ in Wentworth, W. M. and Ryan, J. (eds), Social Perspectives on Emotions, Emerald Group, Bingley, 1994, pp. 281–308, p. 289Google Scholar.

55 See Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

56 See Hirsch and Wardlow (eds), Modern Loves, and Jankowiak, Intimacies.

57 See Wardlow and Hirsch, ‘Introduction’.

58 See Povinelli, E., The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality, Duke University Press, Durham, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Ibid., p. 72.

60 Interestingly, this text has been widely adopted in teaching about India abroad, perpetuating essentializing views; see Nanda, S., ‘Arranging a Marriage in India’ in DeVita, P. (ed.), The Naked Anthropologist: Tales from around the World, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1992, pp. 139–143Google Scholar.

61 See an early article by Corwin, L. A., ‘Caste, Class and Love-Marriage: Social Change in India’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 39 (4), 1977, pp. 823–831CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 A typical example is provided by van Wessel, M., ‘Talking about Consumption: How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life’, Cultural Dynamics, 16 (1), 2004, pp. 93–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 See Ganguly-Scrase, R. and Scrase, T., Globalization and the Middle Classes in India: The Social and Cultural Impact of Neoliberal Reforms, Routledge, London, 2009Google Scholar.

64 See Ahearn, Invitations to Love.

65 See Heitmeyer in this issue.

66 I have provided a detailed account of the role of grandparents in Donner, H., ‘Children are Capital, Grandchildren are Interest: Changing Educational Strategies and Parenting in Calcutta's Middle-class Families’ in Assayag, J. and Fuller, C. J. (eds), Globalizing India: Perspectives From Below, Anthem Press, London, 2005, pp. 119–139Google Scholar.

67 See Derne, ‘Structural Realities’.

68 See, for example, Dwyer, R., All you Want is Money, All you Need is Love, Cassell: London, 2000Google Scholar.

69 See Uberoi, ‘Imagining the Family’.

70 See Liechty, Suitably Modern.

71 See Hirsch and Wardlow, Modern Loves; and Jankowiak, Intimacies.

72 Examples are provided in Parry, ‘Ankalu's Errant Wife’, and Kapila, K., ‘Conjugating Marriage: State Legislation and Gaddy Kinship’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 38 (3), 2004, pp. 379–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 See Vatuk, S., Kinship and Urbanization: White Collar Migrants in North India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972Google Scholar.

74 Roy's ethnography of Bengali middle-class women based on data from the same period discusses love only in the context of post-marital intrafamilial affairs; see Roy, M., Bengali Women, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972Google Scholar.

75 See Donner, ‘One's Own Marriage’.

76 Mody, ‘Love and the Law’.

77 See Lukose, R., Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in India, Duke University Press, Durham, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 See Caplan, L., ‘Cupid in Colonial and Post-Colonial South India: Changing “Marriage” Practices among Anglo-Indians in Madras’, South Asia, 21 (2), 1998, pp. 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 See Fruzzetti, L., The Gift of a Virgin: Women, Marriage, and Ritual in a Bengali Society, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982Google Scholar.

80 See also Debi, B., Middle-class Working Women of Calcutta: A Study in Continuity and Change, Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta, 1988Google Scholar; and Donner, ‘One's Own Marriage’. Elite families belonging to the Brahmo sect constituted the exception that proves the rule for a long time and are overrepresented in historical accounts of middle-class lifestyles.

81 See Liechty, Suitably Modern.

82 Ibid.

83 See Giddens, Consequences of Modernity; and Povinelli, ‘Notes on Gridlock’.

84 See Giddens, Consequences of Modernity.

85 See Povinelli, ‘Notes on Gridlock’.

86 See Lukose, Liberalization's Children.

87 Examples are Vanita, R., Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, Routledge, Delhi, 2002Google Scholar; Srivastava, S., Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia, Sage, Delhi, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reddy, G., With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in India, University of Chicago Press, Chigaco, 2004Google Scholar; and Dave, N., Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics, Duke University Press, Durham, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 See, for example, Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage’.

89 See Twamley, Love, Marriage and Intimacy.

90 Donner, ‘Gender and Property’.

91 See Sen et al., Re-negotiating Gender.

92 See Plummer, K., ‘Intimate Citizenship and the Culture of Sexual Story Telling’ in Weekes, J., Holland, J., and Waites, M. (eds), Sexualities and Society: A Reader, Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 33–41Google Scholar.

93 See Uberoi, ‘When is a Marriage’.

94 See Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage’.

95 I have commented on the multiple variations on the theme of patrilocality in this context elsewhere; see Donner, ‘Gender and Property’.

96 How ‘letters to the editor’ are providing a platform for women struggling with existing norms regarding marriage and sexual conduct has been discussed in relation to print media and television serials, as well as, more recently, the possibility of joining moderated chat rooms. Veena Das’ analysis of audience responses to soap opera in the 1980s rightly emphasizes the liberating effect of such feedback and the possibility of voicing dissent; see Das, V., ‘On Soap Opera: What Kind of Anthropological Object Is It?’ in Miller, D. (ed.), Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local, Routledge, London, 1995, pp. 169–189Google Scholar. However, Basu's discussion of the limitations of feminist interventions based on individualized feedback and advice shows that on the level of vernacular, often more conservative media, marriage may be critically assessed, but filial duty is prioritized over self-fulfilment. These findings challenge Dave's reading of archives containing letters to an English-language gay newsletter, dating back to roughly the same period. See Basu, S., ‘The Blunt Cutting Edge: The Construction of Sexuality in the Bengali “Feminist” Magazine Sananda’, Feminist Media Studies, 1 (2), 2001, pp. 179–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Dave, Queer Activism.

97 See Williams, R., Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978Google Scholar.

98 Hallward, P., Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing between the Singular and the Specific, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2001, p. 4Google Scholar.

99 Bloch, M. and Parry, J. P., ‘Introduction’ in Bloch, M. and Parry, J. P. (eds), Money and the Morality of Exchange, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 24–25Google Scholar.