Inquiries into marital patterns can serve as an effective lens to analyze social structures and material cultures not only on the question of sexuality, but also on the nature of a private citizen’s engagement with state and law. Through ethnographic research in courtrooms, community,and kinship spaces, the author outlines the transformations in material culture and political economy that have led to renewed negotiations on the institution of marriage in North India, especially in legal spaces. Tracing organically evolving notions of sexual consent and legal subjectivity, Courting Desire underlines how non-normative decisions regarding marriage become possible in a region otherwise known for high instances of honor killings and rigid kinship structures. Aspirations for consensual relationships have led to a tentative attempt to forge relationships that are non-normative but grudgingly approved after state intervention. The book traces this nascent and under-explored trend in the North Indian landscape.
Preface
INTRODUCTION Terms of Endearment: Living and Loving in North India
Part 1. Localizing Marriage
1. Civil Marriage in Post-Independence India: Birth of a Utopic Idea
2. Of Rebellious Lovers and Conformist Citizens
3. Love, Marriage, and the Brave New World
Part 2. State and Subjectivity: Capacity to Aspire in Post-Agrarian North India
4. Gender Trouble and a State of Illusions
5. Instituting Court Marriage: The Legal Fiction of Protection Petitions
6. Consenting Adults and the State: Social Change Through Conformity
Part 3. The Politics of Love, Marriage, and a Liveable Future
7. Towards an Alternative Future: Eloping Couples, Citizenry, and Social Mobility
Conclusion. Closures, New Beginnings, and Happily Ever After?
Acknowledgments
Appendix
RAMA SRINIVASAN holds a PhD in Anthropology from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and currently pens articles on gender and sexuality, politics, cinema and popular culture, law and society, and immigration and diaspora issues. She lives in Frankfurt, Germany. From May 2020, she will be a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
