Marriage rules are changing everywhere, and departures from the older rules are now common. The main changes are a later age at marriage, greater say for the partners in choosing each other, marriages across caste, religion and region, easier divorce and remarriage, live-in relationships, and the recognition of same-sex relationships. In India the change is real but uneven: endogamy and arranged marriage remain the norm, while law and urban practice have moved well ahead of custom.
This note examines deviations from, and changes in, the rules of marriage, drawing on sociology and with special emphasis on India, for the UPSC Anthropology Optional. It relates to Paper I, topic 2.3 (marriage) and to Paper II on change in Indian society, in the Anthropology Optional syllabus. Statements about law reflect the position as known at the time of writing and should be checked against current sources.
What "deviation" means
Every society has rules about whom one may marry, how, and at what age. A deviation is a practice that departs from those rules. The word is used here in the sociological sense, as a description and not as a judgement.
- Deviation is as old as the rules. Elopement, marriage by capture and intrusion, and secondary unions were recognised alternatives in many tribal societies.
- Deviation can become the rule. Widow remarriage and inter-caste marriage were once breaches in much of Hindu society and are now lawful and increasingly accepted.
- Rules exist at three levels: custom, religion and state law. A practice may be allowed by one and disapproved by another.
Changes in marriage at a glance
| Dimension | Older pattern | Emerging pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Age at marriage | Early; child marriage common | Later, especially for educated women |
| Choice of spouse | Arranged by elders | Arranged with consent; self-choice with approval; love marriage |
| Field of choice | Within caste, community and region | Some marriages across caste, religion, region and nation |
| Kin marriage | Cross-cousin and uncle-niece marriage preferred in the south | Declining among the educated |
| Nature of the tie | Sacrament; indissoluble | Closer to contract; divorce available |
| Purpose | Duty, lineage, alliance of families | Companionship and personal fulfilment as well |
| Remarriage | Restricted for widows in higher castes | Lawful and more accepted |
| Residence | With the husband's parents | More separate households |
| Alternatives | Few recognised | Live-in relationships; remaining single |
| Partners | Man and woman | Same-sex relationships lawful in many countries, and married in some |
Sociological explanations of change
| Thinker | Argument |
|---|---|
| W. J. Goode | In World Revolution and Family Patterns (1963): industrialisation and urbanisation move societies everywhere towards the conjugal family, with freer choice of spouse, later marriage and weaker control by kin. |
| Anthony Giddens | In The Transformation of Intimacy (1992): the rise of the "pure relationship", entered for its own sake and continued only while both partners find it satisfying. |
| Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim | Individualisation: people now compose their own biographies, and marriage becomes one choice among several. |
| Burgess and Locke | The family has moved "from institution to companionship". |
| K. M. Kapadia; A. M. Shah; Patricia Uberoi | For India: change is real, but the joint family ethic, caste endogamy and parental involvement have adapted and persisted instead of disappearing. |
Changing marriage in India
1. Age at marriage
- Child marriage was once widespread. The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 (the Sarda Act) first set a minimum age, and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 fixes it at 18 for women and 21 for men.
- National surveys show a steady rise in the age at marriage and a fall in child marriage, though it persists in some regions and among the poor.
- Education and employment of women are the main forces behind the change.
2. Choice of spouse
- Arranged marriage persists as the dominant form, but its character has changed. The young are consulted, meet before the wedding, and may refuse.
- Mixed forms. Sociologists describe "arranged love marriages" and "love-cum-arranged marriages", in which the couple choose and the families then arrange.
- New intermediaries. Newspaper columns, marriage bureaus and matrimonial websites have taken over part of the role of the go-between. Most are organised by caste and community, so they widen the search while keeping endogamy.
3. Marriages across caste, religion and region
- Law. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 provides a civil marriage for any two persons irrespective of religion or caste. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 places no bar on marriage between castes.
- Practice. Surveys suggest that inter-caste marriages remain a small share of all marriages. They are commoner in cities, among the educated, and between castes close in rank.
- State support. Governments offer incentives for inter-caste marriages, in the spirit of B. R. Ambedkar's argument that intermarriage is the real remedy for caste.
- Resistance. Couples who marry against caste or gotra rules have sometimes faced boycott and violence, including so-called honour crimes. The Supreme Court has affirmed that two consenting adults have the right to marry a person of their choice.
- Cross-region marriages. Where the sex ratio is adverse, as in parts of Haryana and Punjab, men have brought brides from distant states, setting aside rules of caste and region. Ravinder Kaur and others have studied these marriages.
- Transnational marriages. Marriage with partners settled abroad has grown with migration.
4. Decline of kin marriage and gotra rules
- The preference for cross-cousin and uncle-niece marriage in South India has weakened with education, awareness of genetic risk and wider social circles.
- In cities the rules of gotra and village exogamy are loosely observed, though in parts of North India caste councils have tried to enforce them.
5. From sacrament towards contract
- Monogamy. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 made monogamy the rule for those it covers.
- Divorce. The same Act introduced divorce on stated grounds, and an amendment of 1976 added divorce by mutual consent. Divorce remains uncommon by world standards but is rising in cities.
- Widow remarriage. Permitted by the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, and now much more accepted. It was always customary among many lower castes and tribes.
- Women's rights. Daughters have equal rights in ancestral property after the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, which alters the economic basis of marriage.
6. Dowry
- The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 forbids it, yet the practice has spread to regions and groups that formerly paid bride price. M. N. Srinivas linked this to sanskritisation and to competition for educated, salaried grooms.
- Here the change runs against the law: a custom has expanded while being prohibited.
7. Live-in relationships
- Couples living together without marriage are found mainly in large cities.
- Law. Such relationships are not unlawful. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 extends protection to a woman in "a relationship in the nature of marriage", and the courts have recognised the legitimacy of children born of such unions. Uttarakhand's Uniform Civil Code provides for their registration.
- An older parallel. Some communities had customary unions without a wedding, regularised later by a feast or a payment, as in the dhuku unions reported from Jharkhand.
8. Remaining single, single parenthood and assisted reproduction
- A small but growing number of people, especially urban women, marry late or not at all.
- Adoption by single persons is permitted under the law, and assisted reproduction and surrogacy are regulated by statutes of 2021.
- These developments separate parenthood from marriage, which anthropologists long treated as the core of the institution.
Same-sex relationships and marriage
What anthropology has recorded
Relationships and unions between persons of the same sex are not new. They have been described in many societies, and their meaning varies with the culture.
| Society | What was recorded | Scholar |
|---|---|---|
| Nuer of South Sudan | Woman-to-woman marriage: a woman pays bridewealth for a wife and is the legal father of the children. This is a legal arrangement to secure heirs, not a sexual relationship. | E. E. Evans-Pritchard |
| Azande of Central Africa | In the past, warriors took youths as temporary "boy-wives", with a payment to the youth's family. | E. E. Evans-Pritchard |
| Swahili Muslims of Mombasa, Kenya | Relationships between women, and between men, were socially accepted; many of the women were married, widowed or divorced. | Gill Shepherd |
| Nicaragua | Under the ideal of machismo, a man who takes the dominant role with another man is not thought to lose his standing as a man. The categories differ from the Western idea of the homosexual. | Roger Lancaster |
| Ancient Greece | Myth and history refer often to bonds between men, as in the story of Apollo and Hyacinthus. | Classical sources |
| Native North America | "Two-spirit" persons who took the work and dress of the other sex, and sometimes a spouse of their own sex. | Several ethnographers |
| India | The hijra community, with its own kinship of guru and disciple. | Serena Nanda |
Two lessons follow. First, sexual orientation, gender role and marriage are separate things that different cultures combine differently. Second, as the debate on the definition of marriage showed, any definition that insists on "a man and a woman" fails to cover the ethnographic record.
The modern legal change
- The Netherlands was the first country to open civil marriage to same-sex couples, in 2001. Canada followed in 2005 with the Civil Marriage Act, as the fourth country to do so. More than thirty countries now allow it, including the United States, nationwide since a Supreme Court ruling of 2015.
- Kath Weston's Families We Choose (1991) showed how lesbian and gay people build kinship from friendship and choice as well as from blood and marriage, a finding that led anthropologists to rethink what kinship is.
The position in India
| Year | Development |
|---|---|
| 2014 | In the NALSA case the Supreme Court recognised transgender persons as a third gender with full constitutional rights. |
| 2018 | In Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India the Supreme Court read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, so that consensual relations between adults of the same sex are no longer an offence. |
| 2019 | The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act was passed. |
| 2023 | In Supriyo v. Union of India the Supreme Court declined to recognise same-sex marriage, holding that this is a matter for Parliament, while affirming the right of such couples to live together free from discrimination. |
In India, then, same-sex relationships are lawful but same-sex marriage is not recognised in law.
Continuity within change
The sociological evidence for India points to adaptation more than to a break.
- Endogamy holds. Most marriages are still within caste and community.
- Families remain involved. Even self-chosen marriages usually seek parental approval and a conventional wedding.
- Marriage remains near-universal. Almost everyone marries, and marriage is still the accepted setting for having children.
- Weddings have grown. Ceremonies and spending have increased with prosperity, not declined.
- Change is uneven. It is greatest among the urban, educated middle class and least in rural areas.
Change among Indian tribes
- Polyandry among the Toda and the Khasa has largely given way to monogamy.
- Youth dormitories, which once shaped courtship, have declined under the influence of schooling and religious conversion.
- Bride price is giving way to dowry in some communities in contact with caste society.
- Marriage by capture and by service has become rare or purely ceremonial.
- Marriages with non-tribals have increased, raising questions of identity and of land and inheritance rights under customary law.
For more, see tribal India today and our note on Indian anthropologists.
Factors behind the change
| Factor | Effect on marriage |
|---|---|
| Education, especially of women | Later marriage; more say in choice |
| Urbanisation and migration | Wider contacts; weaker control by kin and caste council |
| Women's employment | Economic independence; ability to leave a failed marriage |
| Law and the courts | Monogamy, divorce, minimum age, right to choose a partner |
| Media and technology | New ideals of romance; online matchmaking |
| Demography | Adverse sex ratios produce cross-region marriages |
| Social movements | Women's, Dalit and LGBTQ movements have challenged older rules |
Using this topic in a UPSC answer
- Define deviation neutrally, and note that yesterday's deviation is often today's rule.
- Organise change under four heads: age, choice, field of choice and nature of the tie.
- Cite two sociologists, such as Goode and Giddens, and one Indian scholar, such as Kapadia or Uberoi.
- Give the legal milestones in order: 1856, 1929, 1954, 1955, 1961, 2006, 2018, 2023.
- Use ethnography for same-sex unions: Nuer, Azande, Shepherd's Mombasa study.
- End with "continuity within change": endogamy and family involvement persist.
For presentation, see our guide to anthropology answer writing with diagrams, thinkers and case studies. For how the two subjects treat such topics, see Anthropology and Sociology as UPSC optionals.
Frequently asked questions
How are marriage rules changing in India?
People are marrying later, the partners have more say in the choice, some marriages cross caste, religion and region, divorce and remarriage are more accepted, and live-in relationships have appeared in cities. Caste endogamy and arranged marriage nevertheless remain dominant.
Is inter-caste marriage legal in India?
Yes. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 allows any two persons to marry irrespective of caste or religion, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 contains no bar on marriage between castes.
Are live-in relationships legal in India?
Live-in relationships between consenting adults are not unlawful. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 protects a woman in a relationship in the nature of marriage, and courts have upheld the legitimacy of children of such unions.
Is same-sex marriage recognised in India?
No. Consensual same-sex relations were decriminalised in 2018, but in 2023 the Supreme Court declined to recognise same-sex marriage and left the question to Parliament.
Have same-sex unions existed in traditional societies?
Yes. Ethnographers have recorded woman-to-woman marriage among the Nuer, boy-wives among the Azande, and accepted same-sex relationships among the Swahili of Mombasa, among other cases. Their meaning differs from society to society.
What is an arranged love marriage?
It is a marriage in which the couple choose each other and then obtain their families' approval, after which the families arrange the wedding in the usual way.
Why has dowry spread in spite of the law?
Sociologists link the spread of dowry to hypergamy, competition for educated and salaried grooms, rising prosperity and the imitation of higher-status groups.
What did Giddens mean by the pure relationship?
Giddens used the term for a relationship entered for its own sake, for the satisfaction it gives both partners, and continued only as long as it does so.