Introduction: patri-virilocality and post-marital kin contact
Palriwala and Uberoi note that in many parts of Asia, kinship rules of residence and exogamy entail territorial dislocation, at times over a considerable distance, for young women.Footnote 1 This applies to the women in Barampur village located in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) where I carried out fieldwork in 2012–2013 to investigate ‘regional’ and ‘cross-regional’ marriages.Footnote 2 Following marriage, a woman leaves her pīhar (natal home/village) and her pīharwāle (natal kin) who are ‘one's own’ to live at her sasurāl (marital/in-laws’ home) among strangers. She becomes parāyā dhan (someone else's property) as she is transferred in marriage from father to husband in accordance with the ideology of kanyādān (gift of a maiden/virgin). Songs following the wedding ceremony convey the sadness felt by the bride and her family at her separation from them.Footnote 3 The initial period of transition and adjustment in a new household and village is experienced as isolating by a new bride who finds herself veiled, silent, and confined to the household. As young brides, in their sasurāl, women cannot readily capitalize on the ‘social capital’ of childhood relationships.Footnote 4 They find themselves in a new situation, positioned at the bottom of domestic hierarchies. As unmarried women they have little power, but more freedom and reliable allies in their natal homes than in their marital homes. Women continue to feel disempowered and experience ambiguity about belonging (whether to the pīhar or sasurāl) until a much later stage in their married lives when the ‘cyclical nature of women's power in the household’ enables senior women to inherit authority and become matriarchs of their households.Footnote 5 Although women become increasingly ‘incorporated’ into their marital homes as they advance in their married lives,Footnote 6 they never completely become kin to their affines. By contrast, men neither leave their homes on marriage nor lose their ‘social capital’. As Lamb argues, women's ‘personhood’, then, is ‘unique’—their ties are ‘disjoined and then remade, while men's ties are extended and enduring’.Footnote 7
The quality of a married woman's contact with her natal kin is discussed in several early studies that contrast the North and South Indian kinship systems. They argue that in the North, unlike the South, due to local exogamy and the prohibition on close-kin marriage, women were married over larger distances which resulted in the ‘complete dissimilation of the bride from her family of birth and her complete assimilation to that of her husband’.Footnote 8 Dyson and Moore argue that the greater distances over which marriages are arranged in the North compared to the South, ‘tend to constrain or erode the personal links between a married woman and her natal kin’ and the absence of support structures diminishes women's autonomy.Footnote 9
One problematic aspect of Dyson and Moore's study is that it reflects a Hindu bias. Muslims in North India permit both intra-village marriages and marriages between close kin.Footnote 10 In her account of marriage among Muslims in a rural Punjab village in Pakistan, Eglar describes how close-kin marriage and the preference for marrying daughters within close proximity facilitated the easy movement of women between their natal and in-laws’ homes.Footnote 11 In their work in rural Bijnor, UP, on Hindus (generally married distantly) and Muslims (usually married into nearby villages), Jeffery et al. note that Muslim women usually did not favour intra-village marriage as they feared that it might result in interference by their natal kin in their daily lives. Nevertheless, they saw being married close to their natal kin as an advantage as they felt less cut off from their natal families than the Hindu women.Footnote 12 Yet Jeffery et al. see distance as only one element in married women's relations with their natal kin. The determining factors for a woman visiting her natal home included: seeking the permission of her husband and older affinal kin, finding a substitute to do the work in her absence, and having someone to chaperone her to her natal village.Footnote 13
The North–South contrast as a basis for understanding access to natal kin support may also be questioned because studies on South India show that close-kin marriages and proximity to natal kin do not necessarily mean better treatment for women or protection against violence.Footnote 14 This has also been noted in work on Muslim close-kin marriages which demonstrates that the fear of jeopardizing kin relationships may complicate natal kin intervention.Footnote 15 Ethnographies of locations in the North have shown that when a married woman departs from her natal home, she does not become kin-less nor does she completely cease to belong to her natal home. They highlight the significance of visits and gift-giving, starting at the wedding and continuing throughout the course of a woman's married life, in sustaining a woman's ties with her natal kin.Footnote 16 Some question the notion of ‘women as fixed residents of their conjugal homes’, arguing that young brides move between their natal and conjugal homes to serve as a shifting supply of labour.Footnote 17 Studies also show that in situations of marital distress a woman could seek temporary refuge at her natal home and that this enabled her to negotiate better treatment from her husband and in-laws in the future.Footnote 18
The writing on urban contexts note a tendency towards ‘matrilateral asymmetry’. In her work in urban Meerut, Vatuk discusses the ‘considerable visiting’ and ‘mutual aid’ between daughters and their parents living in close proximity to each other and great reliance on mothers, particularly in times of need.Footnote 19 More recently, in her study in a low-income neighbourhood in Delhi, Grover notes how marrying daughters over short distances and within easy reach helped sustain supportive ties, especially between mothers and daughters.Footnote 20 Similarly to studies from South Asia, in her study of marital breakdown among British Asians, Qureshi notes ‘a shift towards matrilateral asymmetry’ as separated and divorced women turned to their natal kin ‘who provided them with accommodation, childcare and financial support’.Footnote 21 Grover and Qureshi also discuss how natal kin support may vary depending on the type of marriage—love marriage or arranged marriage. In an arranged marriage, natal kin support may be viewed as an ‘entitlement’ yet nevertheless requires ‘continual and intense negotiation’.Footnote 22 Likewise, in his work in a garment city in Tamil Nadu, De Neve explores the significance of post-marital kin (material) support for men, too, in fulfilling aspirations of ‘mobility, entrepreneurship and success in a post-liberalization environment’.Footnote 23 He notes that a parentally arranged endogamous marriage, rather than a love marriage, is considered the best way to ensure parental and material support, though it may not always materialize.
Natal kin support has also been discussed in the growing literature on transnational marriage and the relatively smaller literature on cross-border marriages within nation-states (interprovincial marriages in China and cross-regional marriages in India) which all involve long distances between a woman's marital and natal homes. This work highlights the vulnerabilities experienced by migrant brides because geographic distance cuts them off from networks of support.Footnote 24 Through my work on cross-regional marriages in North India, I will contribute to this literature by highlighting the commonalities in women's experiences of long-distance international and internal marriage migration.
It is clear, then, that a married woman's relationship with her natal kin is complex. In this article, my purpose is twofold. First, I use the comparison between regional and cross-regional brides to emphasize that although the latter may find themselves without support, even for regional brides, natal kin support is not always forthcoming (contrary to what some have found).Footnote 25 Through my ethnography, I delineate the circumstances and the extent to which women can mobilize the support of their natal families. I show that both regional and cross-regional brides are similarly disadvantaged by poverty as it denies them opportunities for refuge or return when experiencing marital difficulty. Further, for cross-regional and regional brides alike, women's relationships with their natal families change over the course of their married lives.
Second, I demonstrate that natal kin relations are an important resource—perhaps the only resource—for patrilocally married women, especially in rural contexts where women's lives are shaped by social dependency and a lack of material or productive property. This context is also devoid of the infrastructure of women's organizations or mediation NGOs (which provide alternative structures of support) described in certain urban contexts.Footnote 26 Thus, as wives, women are likely to find themselves powerless in situations of marital distress.Footnote 27 The ability to sustain, draw on, and interact with (natal kin) relations or the denial of them, suddenly or over time, against their own desires, is of paramount importance for women's rights and status within marriage. In this article, I focus not on gifts and visits but rather on moments of crisis in order to examine married women's ties with their natal kin. I use cases of estrangement and suicide/attempted suicide encountered during fieldwork to demonstrate that support from natal kin is, at times, a matter of life and death. Thus, the significance of natal kin support for married women must not be understated as it is crucial if women are to have any bargaining power or agency in situations of marital crisis. The choice available to women is a mediated or dependent agency. It is, as Simon Duncan argues in his work in a different context, not ‘individual, purposive and conscious where action reflects choice’ but rather ‘constrained’ and ‘relational with other individuals and collective agents’.Footnote 28
In what follows, I first describe the field site, methods used to gather data, and the research context.
Barampur: the context and research
This article is based on 11 months (September 2012–August 2013) of ethnographic fieldwork in Barampur village in Baghpat (formerly part of Meerut) district of western UP. Data were collected through a survey of village households and 38 key informants (19 regional brides and 19 cross-regional brides) were interviewed through repeat visits. Additionally, I conducted 25 shorter structured interviews. Informal conversations with people in the village, observation, gossip, and rumour served as additional sources of information.
Barampur is a large village comprising 1,657 households. In the 2011 Census, its population was 9,884: 5,417 male and 4,467 female.Footnote 29 It is made up of 22 castes—17 Hindu and five Muslim. Of these, I selected five caste groups—three Hindu (Jat, Chamar, and Kumhar) and two Muslim (Lohar and Teli)—for intensive study. Jats are the dominant caste in the village in terms of numbers and land ownership. Significant numbers of Jats have accessed higher education and the percentage of Jats employed in government and private sector jobs is much higher compared to other castes.Footnote 30 All other castes in Barampur were landless. Chamars are a Dalit caste and are included in the category of Scheduled Castes. They are numerically the second largest caste in Barampur and the largest Dalit caste in UP. Chamars were concentrated in casual, manual labour, with about 60 per cent of this group migrating out to work in brick-kilns for a large part of the year. Kumhar (traditionally a caste of potters) is an intermediate Hindu caste. Teli and Lohar are the two numerically dominant Muslim castes in Barampur. Kumhar, Teli, and Lohar are included in the central list of Other Backward Classes (OBC). Like the Chamars, some Kumhar and Teli men worked in the brick-kilns, while others engaged in different kinds of casual work. Lohars were traditionally ironsmiths. They are relatively better-off (economically) than the other Muslim castes of Barampur. Teli, Chamar, and Kumhar women engaged in waged (mostly casual agricultural) work in the village. Chamar women (wives, daughters, and sisters) also worked with their families at the brick-kilns.
This research compares the lived experiences of marriage of women in regional marriage with women in cross-regional marriage. It stemmed from an interest in interrogating the moral panic around cross-regional marriages that received much media scrutiny since the early 2000s.Footnote 31 Unlike existing studies on cross-regional marriages, this research also focuses on regional marriage. Regional marriages are parentally arranged,Footnote 32 endogamous (within the caste and religious group), follow norms of gotrā (clan/lineage) and territorial or village exogamy (outside the clan, village, and neighbouring villages), with a limited marriage distance between a woman's place of birth and marriage (outside the village, but usually within the district or in a neighbouring district). In Barampur, Muslims too observe the norm of village exogamy. The marriage distance for the regional brides varied between three and 70 kilometres, with a handful married over relatively larger distances (within a radius of 150 kilometres). Patri-virilocality is the predominant pattern of post-marital residence. The ideal of kanyādān (the gift of a maiden) requires that a woman is to be ‘accompanied by material gifts’.Footnote 33 Thus, across castes (including Muslims), dowry is the accepted and honourable form of marriage payment, with gifts moving in one direction, with the bride's kin being ‘perpetual donors’ to the kin of the groom.Footnote 34 The 2001 Census of India data reveal that the mean age at marriage for men was 20.25 and for women 17.6 (below the legal age) in rural Baghpat. Informants said that women were generally married between the ages of 18 and 22, while men were married in their early to mid-20s. Once a man reaches the age of 35, he is considered to have passed the ‘appropriate’ age for marriage. The earlier practice of marriage at a young age with gaunā (cohabitation) following a few years later no longer existed during my fieldwork.
Cross-regional marriages, by contrast, entail crossing multiple borders—of caste (sometimes religion), language, and region/state. While marriage entails territorial dislocation for most women in rural North India, the distance travelled by cross-regional brides is abnormally large, often exceeding a thousand kilometres. In Barampur, cross-regional brides originated from 13 districts in five states: Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal in eastern India; Assam in the northeast, and Maharashtra in the West. These marriages are not self-arranged, love marriages in defiance of parental authority and caste and community norms.Footnote 35 In most cases, they are initiated by the grooms and tolerated by their families, caste, and village communities, despite being intercaste or interreligious. Unlike regional marriages, there is no dowry in cross-regional marriage and the wedding expenses are met by the groom. Generally, some payment is also made to a go-between who arranges the marriage. This has resulted in cross-regional marriages being categorized as bride-buying and trafficking.Footnote 36
Cross-regional marriages have been described as a ‘new phenomenon’Footnote 37 and ‘hitherto undocumented’,Footnote 38 even though studies suggest that such marriages have a long history in the northern region.Footnote 39 Studies on cross-regional marriage note that although such marriages existed historically, they are no longer ‘exceptional’,Footnote 40 with men of almost every caste taking cross-regional bridesFootnote 41 and the influx of brides into the North Indian states increasing over the years.Footnote 42 I found that cross-regional marriages result from two sets of factors—one operating in the bride-sending regions (mainly poverty) and the other in bride-receiving regions (masculine sex ratios and the difficulties some men have in achieving ‘eligibility’ for marriage due to unemployment or lack of salaried employment, landlessness or marginal landownership, individual characteristics such as disability, ‘flawed’ reputation, or being older, etc.). Elsewhere I have discussed the fact that both bachelorhood and masculine sex ratios existed historically in this part of North India. The contemporary inability of some men to marry thus needs to be linked to wider changes in the political economy (changes in landholding patterns, livelihood strategies, education, and white-collar employment). I argue that marriage strategies that worked in the past are not helpful in the present and cross-regional marriage is one of several strategies adopted in response to the difficulties experienced nowadays.Footnote 43 This parallels other Asian contexts—China, South Korea, and Taiwan—where demographic and social changes have rendered some men ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘unmarriageable’ within local contexts, resulting in bride import.Footnote 44
In the following pages, I discuss the stories of two women, contrasting cases of regional and cross-regional marriages, to highlight the significance of natal kin support in situations of marital violence.
Sarla: seeking refuge in marital crisis
When I first met Sarla, 47, a Jat regional bride, she had been married for 32 years. She had completed her secondary school education and had been settled in marriage by her parents at the age of 16 to Biram, a farmer, who was 10 years older than her. She returned to live at her sasurāl (marital home) two years later at gaunā (cohabitation). During one of our conversations she said, ‘In my next life, I hope I am not born a woman and if I am, I will not get married.’ She described the time she spent at her in-laws’ as years of having to tolerate her husband's infidelity, beating, and fighting. She was beaten most often at the instigation of her husband's widowed chāchī (father's younger brother's wife), with whom her husband had started a sexual relationship shortly after Sarla's wedding.Footnote 45 ‘When I was pregnant with my son, she would make my husband kick me in the stomach so that I would have a miscarriage.’ Sarla talked about her excessive workload and the constant taunts about ‘not bringing enough gifts from her natal home’. She described at length the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband's chāchī: ‘The day my son was born there was no one with me. When I started having pains, I told her to call the midwife. She said to me: “When a kuttiyā (bitch) gives birth, no one comes to help her, she gives birth on her own.”’
Subsequently, Sarla moved back to her pīhar (natal home) for 16 years, returning only for brief periods in that time to her marital home because she was aware that eventually she would have to return there. ‘My parents and brothers are there in my pīhar but once my brothers grow old, they will be dependent on their children. You think their children would ask after us?’ She returned to Barampur when her son was 17. ‘When my son was 16, someone in my natal village told him that he was a grown man capable of working and feeding himself and his mother. From then on, my son started insisting that he wanted to return to Barampur.’ She added that she had no trouble while she was living at her natal home, but she was aware that she and her son no rights there. ‘I felt sharm (shame) living there. The villagers would ask my mother, for how long will she stay here?’
Sarla had resisted her parents’ attempts to remarry her. ‘If happiness was in my destiny, I would have been happy in this marriage,’ she remarked. A remarriage, she added, would also have required her to leave her son behind at her in-laws. ‘They would beat him every day…what kind of a life would he have? He would curse me…how could I be happy?’ During my fieldwork, Sarla had been in Barampur for 11 years. When she returned, her brothers had negotiated with her in-laws and her son was given his share of the property. Sarla and her son set up a separate household and she no longer had to live with the extended joint family with whom she had lived as a young bride. For the first eight years after returning to Barampur, Sarla had no contact with her husband. She told me that it was possible for her to live at her marital home without him for so long only because she had the support of an adult son. Her husband started visiting the household that Sarla shared with her son on a daily basis three years prior to my fieldwork. She explained that she had resumed contact with her husband and ‘tolerated’ him only because her separated status would hinder her son's marriage prospects.
Kalawati: the absence of natal kin in marital crisis
In the late 1980s, Kalawati, a cross-regional bride from Silchar in Assam, travelled over 2,000 kilometres to Barampur to become the wife of Ompal, a Kumhar who worked as a potter for part of the year and in the brick-kilns for the rest. She was about 40 when I first met her. She had six children: two sons and four daughters. She talked about being very young when she married and recalled that she had not attained puberty at the time. Her marriage was arranged by Hemlata, her mother's sister's daughter, who was married in Barampur several years prior to Kalawati's wedding. About her natal home she said:
There is a lot of poverty there. I was the youngest of my siblings. My sisters got married then my mother passed away. I was nine at the time. We had no contact with my father. I had two older brothers. They worked at the tea plantations. I worked at the house of the manager of the planation. I used to cook and look after his children. At home, my brother's wives made me work the entire day. It made me very angry. Then Hemlata sent a letter to my brother asking him to send me here. She said that I will never go hungry. The wedding took place in Assam…When I was on the train, I understood how far it is…it took three days to get here. I wondered if I will ever be able to go back again.
About the move to Barampur, Kalawati explained how different life in Barampur felt:
The first one year was very difficult. I felt alone. I could not understand the language. In Silchar, we ate rice three times a day but here they eat rotī [Indian bread] for all meals. We used wood to cook. Here they cook on a chulhā [open stove fuelled by dung cakes]. There women wore sārīs. Here they wear suit-salwar or a long shirt with a dhoti/sārī. There they do not observe ghūnghat [veiling]…
Kalawati had not visited her natal home for over 20 years. In fact, she had visited only once—three months after her wedding when she returned to arrange a marriage for her husband's younger brother. Her brother visited her in Barampur once when her second child was six years old. She told me:
Earlier my heart would ache thinking about my natal kin. I would tell him [husband] to take me once to meet my family but he never did because he did not want to spend money. He would say we will go on Diwālī, on Holī [Hindu festivals]…he kept putting it off with excuses. Then I gave up hope. I no longer think about my family because my parents are not there. I received a letter a few years ago about my elder brother's death and I do not know if my younger brother is still alive. If I go, where will I go? My brother's children were young when I left…they must have grown up now…they will not recognise me.
She said that before Hemlata (the go-between for this marriage) was widowed, Hemlata's husband wrote letters to Kalawati's brothers and would read the letters her brothers sent to her. Although she was illiterate, her daughter was educated but she could not ask her daughter to write letters as Hemlata had lost Kalawati's brother's address. ‘I feel sad that I never go, there is no news from there and letters don't come.’ At our last meeting she told me:
I told you that my only problem was that my natal family was not with me but what I did not say was that I have been very unhappy…my husband is not nice. He never supported me. After I had two children, he started troubling me. He used to beat me a lot. He would beat me and leave me on the main road and tell me to go away from here. I do not have a pīhar, so I cannot go and complain to my brothers. If they were close, even I would go and stay at my pīhar for a few days…He [husband] can do whatever he wants. I have nowhere to go to. I have to work and feed myself and pass my days here…My elder son has grown up but he cannot say anything to his father because he is afraid. I hope my younger son will be different.
Discussion
Visits to the natal home were a way in which regional brides in Barampur maintained contact with their natal kin. For new brides, visits were particularly crucial in the early months of their marriage as they eased the process of transition from pīhar to sasurāl and adjustment to a new household, as noted by earlier studies.Footnote 46 Women could, as Sarla's case demonstrates, also seek the intervention of natal kin in situations of marital distress. Most women started their married lives living in a joint household which later became nuclear, usually when their husbands’ brothers married and had children. Violence instigated by affinal, especially female kin within the extended household was an experience shared by several women in Barampur.Footnote 47 As in Sarla's case, women's marital difficulties often related to the husband's infidelity, his repeated or excessive beating, verbal abuse, dowry-related harassment, or continued demands made by their husbands and/or their kin to their wives’ natal kin for goods or cash aimed at enhancing the conjugal fund. In such circumstances, women turned to their natal kin.
A woman's natal kin would first attempt to talk to her husband and in-laws to negotiate better treatment for her. If they failed, she could be taken back to her pīhar until her husband or a relative from her sasurāl came to collect her and promised better treatment in future.Footnote 48 Women pointed out that they could only seek refuge at their pīhar temporarily as they could not live there permanently. Eventually they had to return to their sasurāl. If reconciliation proved impossible, a woman would be remarried: she was highly unlikely to remain at her pīhar as an unattached woman due to concerns around her ‘untied’ sexuality. Of the 19 regional brides interviewed, nine said that they had sought refuge at their pīhar at some stage in their married lives, with the period of refuge varying from a fortnight to a year or two, Sarla's case being the exception.
For cross-regional brides who were separated from their natal kin by over 500 miles, visiting was possible but distance and expenses made seeking natal kin intervention impossible. Studies on cross-regional marriages argue that ‘bought brides’ were unlikely, or were not allowed, to visit or maintain contact with their natal kin.Footnote 49 Others show that cross-regional brides maintained contact and visited their natal homes, even if this was not frequent.Footnote 50 In Barampur, cross-regional brides could be placed in three categories as far as natal kin contact was concerned. The first comprises those who had made visits to their natal homes more than once and talked to me about an impending visit. Most cross-regional brides could be placed in this category. The second includes brides who had visited their natal home once but had not been there for several years. In the third category are cross-regional brides who never returned to their natal homes to visit and had no contact with their families. Kalawati fell into the second category. Writing on inter-provincial marriages in China, Davin argues that a migrant bride could counter her isolation in her husband's home by recruiting other women from her kinship circle and natal home.Footnote 51 Additionally, arranging a marriage served as an incentive for a cross-regional bride to visit her natal home. This was the only reason that Kalawati had been able to visit home. When I first met her, it had been over two decades since her first and only visit and her ties with her natal kin had eventually withered.
For most cross-regional brides in the first two categories, their first visit home took place only after they had had their first child, due to concerns that they might not return. For them, as Kalawati explains, marriage meant not only territorial dislocation over a very long distance but adjustment in a context that was culturally and linguistically alien. They had to learn a new language and adopt the way of life, dress, and food habits of the community into which they were married. This process of accommodation was intensified by isolation from their natal kin. Abraham similarly noted the isolation experienced by recent Indian immigrant brides in the United States: ‘in perception and in reality, a woman feels that she is emotionally and socially alone, economically constrained and culturally disconnected’.Footnote 52
In situations of marital conflict, cross-regional brides, unlike brides like Sarla, could not rely on their natal kin to step in. It was only once they arrived in Barampur that they properly understood the distance that now separated them from their natal kin. As Schein notes in her study of interprovincial marriages in China, ‘what they had not comprehended, or bargained for, was the sheer physicality of space that made home so far away’.Footnote 53 In her work on domestic violence among cross-regional brides in Haryana, Ahlawat found that cross-regional brides who were more educated and geographically closer to their natal homes could leave violent marriages and return to their families.Footnote 54 By contrast, my cross-regional bride informants had neither sought refuge nor considered returning permanently to their natal homes. They were clear that this was not an option for them. For parents who give their daughters in a cross-regional marriage due to compulsions of poverty, keeping a daughter who returns not to visit but to stay was, in any case, impossible. For brides like Kalawati, who had lost contact with her family, there was in fact nowhere to go, even temporarily. Regional brides were thus comparatively better off.
Not all regional brides, however, had the same opportunities to draw on natal kin support. Sarla stressed that the only reason she spent so many years at her pīhar was because her parents were willing to support her, but she added that not all parents keep a daughter who returns to them. She talked about Anita, her devrānī (husband's younger brother's wife), who was also mistreated by her in-laws and beaten by her husband just as Sarla was. ‘Anita's mother told her: there are so many corners in the house in your sasurāl, no matter what happens find one corner to die in, but do not come back here.’ It was not that Anita's mother did not want to support her but rather that other factors—the death of male kin and financial constraints—had made providing support difficult. This was not always the case, for Anita had sought refuge at her pīhar for as long as two years while her father and brother were alive. Following their deaths, Anita's widowed mother and sister-in-law were themselves struggling to make ends meet in the absence of a ‘provider’. Her natal home was only 12 kilometres away, yet, like Kalawati, Anita had ‘nowhere to go to when the beating was excessive’. She could visit but no longer seek refuge. Most women spoke of the natal home as the parental home and they regarded the death of parents (and fathers in particular) as a defining change in their relationship with their natal kin.
I asked women about support structures available to them in their conjugal village, especially in situations where their natal kin were unwilling or unable to offer support. Earlier studies note that women created fictive kin relationships with other women with whom they could trace ties back to their natal villages. They also established ‘adoptive’ relationships with a household in their affinal village that then took on ‘all the customary ritual obligations and costs entailed by natal kin’.Footnote 55 In Barampur, several women (regional and cross-regional brides alike) talked about receiving emotional support and, at times, even financial help from other women from their own or other castes. Kalawati talked about relying on Hemlata (her ‘sister’) in the early years. Maya, in her mid-forties and another cross-regional bride, told me, ‘Here there are many who support me.’ When her husband beat her, her neighbour, an elderly woman, would intervene and make him stop. I asked her if the beating stopped as a result and she said, ‘It did on the day.’ Neighbours do not usually intervene in this way, especially young women who were equally powerless within their own households. Yet at times they did help in other ways. When Urmila, 32, a Jat regional bride, was beaten by her husband on one occasion, her neighbours informed her natal kin. Her father and brother came to Barampur the following day and took her to her pīhar where she stayed for six months thereafter.
The weakening of the brother-sister tie and not wanting to be a ‘burden’ (referring to economic dependence on married brothers) emerged in other women's accounts, as well as Sarla's, when talking about accessing support. Women often talked about their fear that their brothers and their wives would complain about maintaining them. Sarla was clear that this was not an issue for her (during her period of refuge), but she did comment that her brothers and their wives would have to negotiate the intergenerational contract as old-age support from their own children would not necessarily materialize. Thus Sarla could not expect long-term support from her brother's children. Sarla, like other regional brides, deeply valued the material support provided by their natal families. They received gifts during visits, festivals, and life-cycle rituals which continued into the next generation at their children's weddings. They cited instances of other kinds of monetary support extended by their natal kin to their own or their children's medical treatments or during a husband's unemployment. By contrast, cross-regional brides said that their parents were too poor to offer them any financial support.
When Sarla talked about her son and herself having no rights in her natal home, she meant rights to parental property—in particular to land, a house, and other productive property. Although post-independence legislation has given daughters a right of inheritance in her parents’ property (and, from 2005, in the father's share in ancestral property), women do not usually claim their share, for numerous reasons, including: avoiding rifts with brothers on whom they may have to rely for support, keeping their natal family prosperous by not claiming their share, and the belief that they were entitled to dowry and gifts rather than a house or landed property.Footnote 56 Some regional brides said they returned to their sasurāl after seeking refuge at their pīhar because their children had rights to and could only inherit their father's property. The significance of a married woman's rights in parental property is highlighted by Abraham in her work on a formerly matrilineal caste group in Kerala. She points out that a woman's right to share in the property ensured that she could return to her natal home.Footnote 57 Sarla explained that she had not disregarded her ties with her brothers by claiming rights to what was ‘theirs’, so she could continue to draw on their support (material and emotional) even after she returned to Barampur.
Sarla talked about feeling shame while living at her pīhar because, after marriage, a woman's rightful place is in her sasurāl, and not her pīhar. On marriage, a woman is ‘given away’ and believed to become ‘someone else's property’, so natal kin intervention is problematic and parents have to exercise restraint in interfering in a daughter's marital difficulties, even if she lives nearby. Women also hesitated in approaching their natal kin, calling on them only in crisis situations or, as one informant put it, ‘zyādā pareshānī ’ (extreme difficulty) and not for daily conflicts in the sasurāl. Sakeena, a 43-year-old Teli regional bride, said, ‘My mother told me, a woman who cares for her parents’ honour does not return to her pīhar in a fight. She makes her marriage work.’ Similarly, Jeffery observed in her work in Bijnor that a woman was blamed for marital breakdown—for not adjusting to her in-laws’ home and for bringing shame to her natal family.Footnote 58 Notions of honour and shame were so deeply ingrained that some women talked about never confiding in their natal kin about their marital troubles.Footnote 59 Further, a woman's separated status was stigmatized and this not only affected the marriage prospects of her unmarried siblingsFootnote 60 but also, as Sarla pointed out, those of her children.
Like Sarla, other women explained that they made the decision to return to their sasurāl rather than leaving permanently, as that would have meant remarriage. They did not want to risk finding themselves in an even more unfavourable situation.Footnote 61 Kajri, 35, a Jat regional bride, remarked, ‘What if the second one turned out to be worse than my husband. What would I do then? Where would I go?’Footnote 62 Leaving permanently also meant having to leave behind children, especially sons, with in-laws and this inhibited women from leaving even when they experienced immense difficulties. In fact, some, like Kalawati, felt that the violence increased once children were born as husbands felt reassured that their wives would not leave. Further, women explained that even if they left with their children, a second husband might not accept another man's children or grant them inheritance rights. This is the crucial difference from other contexts (such as the UK) where women are legally protected and it is also assumed that they will take their children with them in the event of marital breakdown.Footnote 63
It is therefore necessary to stress that although regional brides talked about refuge as temporary and of the inevitability of return to the sasurāl, it becomes particularly vital in moments of marital distress. It alone offers women the possibility of recouping and returning to their marriages or of intervention to negotiate a better situation, as Sarla's case illustrates. When Sarla first left to live at her pīhar, her brothers were young and her son an infant. When she returned more than a decade later, she had the support of adult brothers and a son. Sarla's story would have followed a different trajectory if her only child had been a daughter and not a son. As women's ‘femaleness and their sexuality is to be controlled by fathers, husbands and sons’,Footnote 64 and without a son, Sarla could not have lived in an independent household in her sasurāl as a separated woman. The only single-women households in Barampur were those of elderly sonless widows with married daughters. Also, a daughter would not be given the right to land that a son could claim. The opportunity to exercise agency would not have been available to Sarla but for the support of her natal kin and an adult son. By contrast, Kalawati had neither.
I now move on to the stories of Priti and Radha to illustrate the role of natal kin in negotiating remarriage for separated/divorced and widowed women. I emphasize that natal kin support is not only crucial for married women, but at times a life-and-death matter, as the cases of suicide and attempted suicide below demonstrate.
Priti: marital breakdown and leaving permanently
Priti, a Chamar regional bride, was married in 2009 at the age of 18. She was the oldest of four siblings—three sisters and a brother. She dropped out of school after class eight and worked with her family at the brick-kiln from the age of 12. During my fieldwork, Priti was separated from her husband and had been living at her pīhar in Barampur for three years. She talked about the anger she felt towards her father Satender, who had ‘forced’ her into a marriage at the behest of his sister. Priti's mother and brother, too, had not been in favour of this match and her mother Kusum talked to me about the ‘wrong decision’ that her husband had made in haste. Priti had stayed with her husband, a drug addict, for just over a month following the wedding. Her husband had been in a relationship with his bhābī (elder brother's wife), something Priti learned about soon after she moved to live at her sasurāl.
For the first year, her in-laws made several attempts at a reconciliation and Priti did return briefly to live at her sasurāl. She talked about the violence she experienced and repeatedly told me that she did not want to remarry and would not. Her mother asserted that Priti had no choice but to remarry: ‘After we are dead, her brother will not keep her,’ she added. Kusum said Priti would be remarried once her court case was settled. In cases of separation and marital breakdown, court intervention was not usually sought. In this instance, though, a case had been filed in court so that the dowry could be retrieved. Priti's father wanted to marry Priti to an unmarried man and this, he explained, was not possible without a dowry. For Priti's parents, poor brick-kiln workers, arranging a dowry for her first marriage had been an enormous strain and something they could not do again. Her remarriage was thus ‘delayed’, with Satender making numerous visits to the district court during the course of my fieldwork to resolve the dowry issue.
Kusum was aware that Priti had become a source of gossip among other Chamar families because she was contributing economically to their household. I heard Chamar informants remark that Priti's parents were ‘living off her earnings’ and hence were ‘content with keeping her unmarried’. I also heard rumours that suggested that Priti was ‘loose’ and was ‘roaming with various men’ and that her parents were ‘tired’ of her. The pressure on her to remarry was constant because Priti's two younger sisters were of marriageable age and a dowry had to be arranged for each of them. Satender also talked about investing in house repairs and construction so that they could attract a marriage proposal for their son, then aged 25, whom they believed would soon become ‘over-age’ for marriage. Priti was remarried in October 2014, a year after I completed fieldwork, even though her court case had not been settled. A month later, I learned from a relative of Satender that Priti had committed suicide while she was visiting her pīhar. I had no further information until a year later when I learnt that Priti had been married to a much older widower with grown children. This was a dowryless marriage, I was told. She had refused to return to her sasurāl when she came to Barampur to visit but was told by her father that they were no longer willing to keep her.
Discussion
Sarla and Priti had in common the infidelity and violence in their marital relationships and the refuge they sought at their natal homes as a result. Yet, unlike Sarla, Priti had failed to resist her remarriage because reconciliation with her husband had proved impossible. As a young woman without children and in the prime of the sexual and reproductive phase of her life, she could not be left unmarried. The rumours about Priti's supposed promiscuity reveal the fear of women's sexuality when it is not controlled through marriage. At the same time, the fear of gossip serves to ensure conformity. Interestingly, for the entire duration of my fieldwork, even though Priti was residing in her pīhar and hence did not have to observe purdah restrictions, she mostly remained within the household.
As with Sarla, the caste and class status of Priti's natal family affected her life trajectory. In several women's accounts, the economic situation of their natal families emerged as an important factor in their assessments of seeking natal kin support. Four women said that they did not confide in their natal kin about their marital troubles because they realized that their family was extremely poor and would be unable to offer them refuge. Jagmati, a Chamar regional bride in her early sixties, remarked, ‘Even if I could call on them in pareshānī (difficulty), for how long can your pīharwāle intervene?’, alluding to the limits of natal kin support. Sarla's family could keep her as she belonged to a family of wealthy Jat farmers, yet as a Jat woman she had never worked for a wage due to status concerns.Footnote 65 Thus she felt like a burden on her natal kin. Priti's case was different. Following marital breakdown and her return to her pīhar, she continued to work in the brick-kiln with her natal family as she had as an unmarried woman. Even though she did not have an independent income, she was earning and contributing to the household. She was not a ‘burden’ on her natal kin in the same way that Sarla felt she was. Yet as Grover notes for her Balmiki (sweeper) informants in Delhi, even when women have secure employment (jobs in the municipality in her study), they remain dependent on men for their survival.Footnote 66 Women do not inherit property and have no rights to the marital home after marital breakdown. Their dowry is believed to be their share but this cannot provide any long-term economic security. Thus, it was not economically viable for separated women like Priti to live independently.
In Barampur, marital breakdown and separation was generally not formalized through legal divorce and informal modes of mediation were deployed. In some parts of rural North India, caste panchayats exercise considerable power, including on matters related to marriage.Footnote 67 In Barampur, however, the hold of caste panchayats had weakened and marital disputes were no longer settled by them. Such disputes were mediated by family and caste elders, and at times by an influential member of the village community. Writing on family mediation among British Pakistanis, Qureshi notes that some scholars view it in a negative light, seeing it as a pressure on women to stay in unhappy marriages. She argues that ‘Family mediation does not uniformly encourage women to patiently endure unhappy marriages…if the husband is found to be at fault, they may well be supported to leave.’Footnote 68 My findings echo Qureshi's. She illustrates how people who leave marriages do so not as ‘autonomous individuals, but supported by their kin’.Footnote 69 Natal kin support had made it possible for Priti to leave a violent marriage. Yet at the same time, her case highlights the limits of natal kin support. Even though her family wanted to keep her, they were bound by local normative structures and social pressures (such as gossip that it was her parents’ self-interest that delayed her remarriage),Footnote 70 and the future marriage of her brother and, especially, her sisters for whom dowries had to be arranged. In Priti's case, the withdrawal of parental support can be explained by this family's strategies for their other children's futures and their struggle to move forward.
In Barampur, women did not have a say in who and whether to marry in either primary or secondary marriages. This differs from Grover's observations for her low caste informants in urban Delhi where exercising choice on entering secondary unions is more permissible and the norm of caste endogamy may be breached.Footnote 71 Priti was settled in a secondary marriage with a much older man, which she did not want yet could not resist. Her parents did not have the means to offer her permanent refuge. In the absence of alternatives, the possibility of marrying her without a dowry had seemed to them like the only option. Priti's mother also talked about the obligation to remarry her while her parents were still alive. She talked about the brother-sister relationship changing once brothers marry. Moreover, she pointed out that the need to earn and provide for a family for poor men like her son meant that support from her brother may not have been forthcoming for Priti in the future. Kamlesh's case demonstrates this.
Kamlesh, a Kumhar regional bride in her late twenties, felt that she could not rely on her brothers for support. On one occasion, she had returned to her natal home after being beaten ‘excessively’ by her husband and was asked by her brothers to leave, something she said would not have happened while her father was alive. ‘They are very poor and have children of their own. My mother is always ill and they spend a lot on her treatment. They cannot say anything to my husband because where will they keep me?’ The cases of both Kamlesh and Priti show that even regionally marrying brides cannot rely on or assume natal kin support and that its absence can be devastating for a woman. When Priti became aware of the limits of parental support—that they could no longer keep her, leave her unmarried, or settle her in a third marriage—the inescapability of her situation led her to commit suicide. Kamlesh told me that her husband became more violent once he realized that she had nowhere to go to. In her work on domestic abuse among Indian immigrant brides in the United States, Abraham notes that ‘frequently the abuser's knowledge that the woman is isolated and that he has no social accountability exacerbates the situation’.Footnote 72 This was the case not only for my cross-regional bride informants but also for regional brides like Kamlesh.
Having compared natal kin support in situations of marital violence and breakdown for regionally and cross-regionally married women, I will now present the case study of a cross-regional bride to discuss the role of natal kin in the event of widowhood and the implications of its absence.
Radha: widowhood and the absence of support
Radha was a cross-regional bride in her early forties from a village in Giridih district of Jharkhand. In the mid-1980s, she travelled to Barampur, a distance of over 1,500 kilometres, following her marriage to Jaipal, a Chamar brick-kiln worker. Radha said that she was about 14–16 years old at the time of her wedding and her husband was ‘much older’. She explained that her widowed mother agreed to the marriage because of poverty and the offer of a dowryless marriage. Her marriage was arranged through the husband of a cross-regional bride (also from Giridih) married in Barampur. About her marriage Radha said: ‘It was how God decided.’
Radha had five children—two daughters and three sons. She has worked at the brick-kiln with her husband since her marriage. Talking about her first experience at the brick-kiln she commented, ‘Before I came here, I had not even seen a brick-kiln in my dreams.’ Like several other cross-regional brides in Barampur, Radha had maintained contact with her natal family post-marriage through visits, even though these were not frequent. Once mobile phones became available, she used her husband's phone to call her natal family. Her brother had visited her twice in Barampur and had stayed for long periods to help with brick-kiln work. Her husband died in 2008 of tuberculosis. During my fieldwork, Radha lived in a household with her three minor sons (below the age of 10). Her two daughters were married at the ages of 17 and 19 just two months before I started fieldwork and had moved to live at their respective sasurāls in a neighbouring district.
After her husband's death, Radha had continued to work at the brick-kiln for six to eight months of the year. She talked about the hardships of brick-kiln work. For the remaining months, she worked as a casual agricultural labourer in the village when work was available. She had stopped receiving her widow's pension in 2012 after a change in state government. She had no savings as she had spent what she had on her daughters’ weddings. Poverty had forced her to withdraw her sons from school. As brick-kiln work depends on family labour, Radha had found it difficult to work in the brick-kiln after her husband's death. She had been coping with her two older daughters, but was anxious about the following season as they were now married and she could not work at the brick-kiln on her own. She had been desperately looking for alternative employment and talked about being ill for over a year. ‘Since my husband died, I have been worried about how I will feed my children,’ she told me.
Radha had lost contact with her natal family after her husband's death. She had lost the mobile phone number and said that she could not visit them since there was no one who could accompany her. She was illiterate and felt incapable of finding her way independently over such a distance and the cost of travel made visiting difficult. ‘Where is a poor person to get the money from?’ she said. Her husband's younger brother lived with his family in the adjoining household, but she said that she could not rely on their support. Ten months after I first met her, Radha attempted to elope with an unmarried Jat man, also from Barampur, but the attempt had failed. She was brought back by her husband's relatives. Following this, Radha attempted suicide.
Discussion
Radha's and Kalawati's cases both highlight how the tyranny of (geographic) distance limits the amount and type of support cross-regional brides can access from their natal kin. Initially Radha had visited her natal home a few times after her wedding, yet over the course of her married life, and with a change in circumstances, distance and the cost of travel had made sustaining relations with her natal family difficult.
During my fieldwork, almost every household in Barampur owned a mobile phone. Although the mobile was family or common property, mostly in the control of men, rather than a woman's personal communication device,Footnote 73 it was highly valued by married women as it facilitated contact with the natal home. Regional brides pointed out that even though visits to the natal home became less frequent over time, they used the mobile phone to communicate with their natal families (including their married sisters) at least a few times a month. Radha and most of the other cross-regional brides who had been in Barampur for over 20 years explained that prior to mobile phones, visits to the natal home were the only way to maintain contact with their natal families. Varsha, 28, a cross-regional bride, explained that the occasional calls she made to her mother from the phone booth in the village when she first arrived had constituted a major expense. This changed dramatically as cheap mobile phones became available. Nine of the 19 cross-regional brides said that they kept in touch with their families by means of a mobile phone.
Kalawati had lost the address of her natal kin and no longer had contact with them. Similarly, for Radha, losing the mobile phone number of her natal family had meant that her kin drifted away. Cross-regional brides like Lakshmi, in her late forties, encountered other difficulties in maintaining communication. Lakshmi moved from Bengal to Barampur in the early 1980s. She had visited her natal home a few times in the early years of her marriage. Like most cross-regional brides she could no longer speak her native language. She said that her son owned a mobile phone but it made no difference, as her family could not speak Hindi and she could no longer speak Bengali.
As discussed earlier, being over the ‘appropriate’ age for marriage was one reason why men sought cross-regional brides. Some cross-regional brides said there was an age gap of 15 or more years between them and their husbands. Radha's devar (husband's younger brother), for instance, told me that his brother was in his late forties when he married her. Hemlata, also a cross-regional bride and a widow of a much older man, said that when her marriage was being negotiated her grandmother feared that ‘her husband would die and she would be left a young widow’. Women often remarked that widowhood was a fate they would not wish on anyone as it meant a life of increased dependence and, for older widows, often neglect and the loss of power within the household.
As Chen and Drèze note, the consequences of patrilocal norms are particularly pronounced for widows because the support that a widow receives in her husband's village following his death is extremely limited.Footnote 74 Studies show that widowhood is marked by immense suffering and difficulty, especially for poor and landless women.Footnote 75 The provision of material support by a spouse emerged as particularly crucial in conversations with widowed informants, both regional and cross-regional brides. They felt that their most difficult years were those following the deaths of their husbands. Unlike upper caste women, Radha could work for a wage, yet she talked about feeling ‘burdened’ with the sole responsibility of earning a living and marrying off her daughters, which would have been her husband's had he been alive, nor did she have natal kin to help her put together the dowries.Footnote 76
Generally a regional bride's natal kin played a crucial role if she was widowed. Across castes, a widowed woman could be given in a levirate (bithānā) marriage to her (generally) unmarried jeth (husband's elder brother) or devar (husband's younger brother) by her natal kin. This is also common in other parts of western UP, Punjab, and Haryana.Footnote 77 She could also be remarried into a different family, although this was less common. Women in Barampur said that a remarriage was usually arranged for young widows but not for older widows. As women are married at an early age, this refers more to social age than physiological age. Thus, it was not considered appropriate for a widow with grown children to remarry. Widows reported having to remove all the accessories they had worn as married women but for one glass bangle if their brother was alive, highlighting the significance of the brother-sister relationship. In her work in a UP village, Wadley found a similar custom—married Hindu women wore two sets of toe rings on each foot, one for the husband and one for the brother. Following the death of either the husband or brother, one set was removed. It was believed that ‘if the husband's protection, symbolically and economically, is lost, then a brother's protection should replace it’.Footnote 78
Unlike Radha, Kajri, a 35-year-old landless Jat widow, was a regional bride yet she found herself in a similar predicament. Her natal home was in a nearby village but contact with her married brother had been minimal after her parents’ death. Although Jat women were not usually involved in waged work, poverty and widowhood had forced Kajri to go out to work to feed her eight children. She often mentioned how her life would have been easier if her father were alive or her brother had, after her husband's death, taken the responsibility to give her in marriage to her husband's younger brother. She believed this would have offered her respite from the hardships of earning a living. Kajri's devar had lived in the same household even while her husband was alive. Her desire to be tied to him in a socially sanctioned union also had to do with the protection it would have offered her from gossip about her sexual availability.
Whether or not a woman had an adult son or sons also affected how likely she was to access support from her natal kin. A widow who did not remarry usually remained in her sasurāl and relied on her son's support. Marriage established a relationship of deference between affines, with it being unacceptable for the bride's kin to accept hospitality at their daughter's marital home. While a father and brother could visit her, it was not regarded appropriate for her mother to do so. A widowed mother was believed to have ‘no place or power’ in a married daughter's home and she had to remain with her son irrespective of how he treated her.Footnote 79 Thus, it was considered unacceptable and shameful for a widow to live with her married daughter, who was ‘someone else's property’. A married daughter was herself dependent on others (her husband and his kin) and hence was in no position to support her widowed mother, other than offer emotional support or care during illness. This highlights how some relationships (father, brothers, sons) can be a resource and others (daughters) not.
A woman without adult sons could return to live at her pīhar, but women said that it was rare for a widow to return to live with her brothers or parents permanently, as has been noted by earlier studies.Footnote 80 This also varied with caste, age, and who remained in their natal families. Thus, sonless Jat widows remained in their sasurāl because of rights to their deceased husband's land. Jagbiri, an elderly sonless Kumhar widow, pointed out that as even her brothers had died, there was no one in her pīhar she could live with, so once she became incapable of caring for herself, she would have to go to one of her married daughters. Abha, 25, also a Chamar regional bride, was a much younger widow. With three sons below the age of 10, Abha had refused a remarriage because she feared that a second husband would not accept her children. She talked about moving to live at her pīhar, located 40 kilometres away, with her children until her sons were old enough to look after her. Abha did not have the support of her husband's brothers, yet she could rely on her father and male relatives to provide material support and temporary refuge. Abha's kin had also played a significant role in securing her rights and those of her children when her husband's brothers had tried to encroach on her husband's share of the parental property. Radha had sons but, like Abha's sons, they were young and not yet in a position to support her. As a cross-regional bride, however, Radha could not return to live temporarily at her pīhar, as Abha could.
In Barampur, three of the five widowed cross-regional bride informants were living jointly with their married sons. The remaining two, Radha and Devanti, both Chamar, from Giridih district and in their early forties, each had two married daughters and three minor sons. During my fieldwork, Devanti eloped with another Chamar from the village and returned a few months later with a ‘court’ (registered) marriage certificate to live in Barampur as his wife. During our conversations, Radha condemned Devanti's behaviour, asserting her own respectability and honourable conduct in comparison to Devanti. Nevertheless, a few months later Radha attempted to elope with a Jat man from the village, but, unlike Devanti, she failed in the attempt. Radha's husband's relatives succeeded in preventing the union from materializing and asserted control over her (as she was ‘now their responsibility’ following her husband's death), even though they had otherwise failed to act as kin to her.
Studies show that migrant brides who are cut off from their natal kin attempt to create ties with those who also come from ‘home’.Footnote 81 Cross-regional brides said that they felt happy when they met other brides from their native states and shared with them the experience of belonging to the same place, even if they did not establish friendships with them. For them and regional brides alike, factors such as stage in the life-cycle and household composition influenced whether or not they could establish supportive relationships with women outside their households.Footnote 82 Unlike some other cross-regional brides, however, Radha held a negative opinion about alternative support structures in the absence of kin. ‘No one is a friend here…there is no one who supports me,’ she said. Over the course of almost a year of conversations, Radha's sense of helplessness was striking. She was struggling with extreme poverty, ill health, and trying to provide for her young children by herself. She had no rights to the labour of her married daughters, no help from her husband's kin, and no longer any natal kin to call on. Her situation sheds some light on why eloping and arranging a remarriage for herself may, in her perception, have offered some escape from the hardships of her situation in the absence of support from an adult son, a husband, or natal kin. Following her failed elopement, one informant commented: ‘She has disgraced herself in the eyes of the caste community.’ This possibly intensified her isolation.
Conclusion: reiterating the significance of natal kin support
Natal kin contact is not sought on a day-to-day basis by married women. Their lives are located and lived in their affinal villages where their in-laws, husbands, children, and work are. For women, marriage entails a reconfiguration of their social world and everyday social relationships. Once married, they are expected to exercise reserve in approaching their natal kin who are excluded from daily conflicts in the marital village. Yet natal kin contact is highly significant if we focus on the situations in which women call on their kin for support. Knowing that they could call on their natal kin gave most regional brides in Barampur assurance and a greater sense of (potential) rescue, particularly in situations of marital violence, breakdown, and widowhood.
A focus on cross-regional marriage has helped to demonstrate how the vulnerabilities experienced by married women are heightened by the distance from their natal homes because they cannot seek intervention or refuge when in crisis. Yet the comparison between regional brides and cross-regional brides has also enabled me to show that natal kin support is complicated, even for regional brides. The circumstances in which natal kin intervened varied. Family strategies for the future, community norms and pressures, the composition of the natal family, the gender of children, caste, poverty, livelihood concerns, and rights in the natal home influenced the duration and kind of support for these women. Ideologies of honour and shame, the belief that a married woman's rightful place is in her husband's home, the awareness that parents were too poor to offer support, and that the only alternative to leaving permanently was remarriage and leaving children behind prevented some even from seeking the intervention of their kin. These factors combined in complex ways to determine the extent to which support was available. Over time, the death of parents and the marriage of brothers marked a change in women's relations with their natal families. The absence of male kin, especially fathers, left some regional brides without support. For such regional brides, as for cross-regional brides, their natal kin were absent as far as support was concerned. The absence of support exacerbated women's difficulties.
In the context described in this article, women do not inherit either their husbands’ or their fathers’ property, nor do they have an independent income that provides them with economic independence or the right of abode in the marital home in the event of marital breakdown. A life outside of marriage is not an option available to them. They are dependent on the protection of a father, husband, or son for their survival. In a marital crisis, neighbours can offer support, but not exit options. Women in Barampur do not have access to NGOs, women's courts, or state institutions. It is, then, only the support from her natal kin that can provide a married woman with an option to leave, even if only temporarily. This may enable her either to negotiate a better situation for herself or simply provide her with the space to recuperate before returning to her marriage. Women's agency is thus highly dependent on their relations to others, both their personal relationships to their families and the caste, and economic relations in which they are embedded.
Recent studies on South Asian communities discuss how social and economic transformations impact on marital relations and draw attention to the possibilities for agency in negotiating and leaving marriages and making consensual secondary unions. In Barampur, India's growth story is palpable only in terms of improved means of transport and communication, a declining sex ratio, an increased social and economic stress on women as a result the migration of men for work or to the brick-kilns induced by poverty. Women still do not have opportunities to make ‘strategic life choices’.Footnote 83 Sadly, very little has changed for women since Jeffery and Jeffery's study in a neighbouring district in the 1980s and early 1990s.Footnote 84 A woman's natal kin remains her only resource when experiencing marital difficulty.
