"Marriage and Family in India"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that marriage in India, as described by Kanaiyal Motilal Kapadia in his book "Marriage and Family in India", is reminiscent of Western attitudes in the nineteenth century and earlier when women were generally treated as second class citizens and the property of their husbands to do with as they please. The author relates that Kapadia presents traditional religious values of Islam and Hindu, which are the two main religions in India, as a background for tracing their marriage customs from historic times into the twentieth century. The paper concludes that both Hindu and Moslem marriages, while having their differences, are both patriarchal; wives are second hand citizens, the property of their husbands, and property is unequally distributed in favor of male heirs, continuing the patriarchal pattern. Several long quotes.

From the Paper:

"Among Moslem families, cross cousin marriages are also common. In fact, "marriage with a father's brother's daughter is more or less obligatory. It is considered and insult, and in a certain measure an offence, to refuse to accept one's father's brother's daughter in marriage" (P. 135). In families that practice polygyny, the cousin is the husband's principal wife, in order to ensure purity of blood. Like Hindus, the Moslems also practice endogamous rules. Sunnis and Shiahs do not intermarry. "Also among the Sunnis there are various groups--Vohras, tais, etc., which are endogamous. The lower classes are strictly endogamous, and marriage outside a caste means excommunication from the caste. The amount of dowry in both Hindu and Moslem marriages is determined by the social and economic status of the future wife, and the husband."

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