The curious case of Great Indian Culture: How far you want us to go back?

In India, the current favourite line is that we need to stick to our roots and take lessons from our past. Our women are becoming too westernised. They want to choose their life-partners and all hell break loose. What can be more "western" than women trying to take the matters of their own sexuality in their own hands! Let's try to go back then. Although I surely realise these are dangerous times to write on these issues, but like Brecht said, what do we sing about if not the dark times, in the dark times. Well! He did not exactly say that. He asked us to keep singing. Here is my song bereft of the apparent music but who knows you may hear Bismillah playing Shehnai for I will talk of weddings (well! sort of) and the rules that guide it in these times.  

But let me start from Mahabharata and that too at the very beginning. The Adiparwa when Pandu is talking to Kunti to convince her to get other men to beget children:

He says, “In the olden days, we hear,” he begins, “women moved freely. Those lovely-eyed ones were independent, and took their pleasure wherever it pleased them. From puberty on, they were promiscuous to their husbands, but this was not unrighteous, for in the old days, such was dharma ” (1.113.4-5). In Pandu’s evaluation, significantly, “This is the eternal dharma that favours women” 7 (1.113.7). In the present world, however, he goes on to say, the rules have changed." 

Now move forward a few thousand years. Close to a decade ago, I had received a letter from a senior colleague. It was a one to one mail wherein he took a lot of time to help me understand how same-gotra (gotra is clan-system in Hindus) marriages are as sacrilegious as marriages between siblings among the Hindus, that is, the Hindus he knew about. I found the mail interesting. One of the things that I find amusing is how men try to explain things (that I work on) to me from the basics. Over the years, I have come to understand that men often think they need to explain the basics to women even when the woman in question has years of experience on the issue being discussed. I often give the impression that I try to preach benefits of an egalitarian society because I do not know how "beautifully beneficial" "benevolent patriarchy" can be. And of course even if I have majored in Sociology, I know nothing about how Hindu-dominated society worked in this sub-continent :) Anyway, Let's get back to gotras and sacrileges. The letter was in response to a news-item that I had sent to everyone in the organisation. I had shared the news in which a foreign-educated Member of Parliament (MP) Mr Naveen Jindal, was actually trying to shame a journalist on same-gotra marriage by saying her parents will be horrified if she gets into one and made her call her mother to prove otherwise. It's another matter that the MP got shamed by the journalist's elderly mother for his regressive values.  https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Will-you-marry-within-gotra/articleshow/5970255.cms  

My senior colleague felt he needed to strengthen my knowledge on why same gotra marriage was not good according to eugenics and Hindus find it as abominable as marrying in one's own family (he actually said, your uncle's son). He said, they consider same gotra being the same family, it is not a question of society's refutal to let youngsters decide how they want to live. It is not societal sanction on a woman's right to choice. It is to keep society in good health. No! I am not kidding at all! He actually tried to defend the MP. He said it's scientific. Now! now! You have to give me credit for being around people who peddled these amazing post-truths even before the WhatsApp University started and Jio got the eminence whatever! 

Anyway, I wrote back to him that in that case, marrying within one's own caste, and religion, and region is not good either by eugenics. How about looking matches for our girls in the coasts of Africa? And I also had to inform him that Khandayats (Kayastha equivalent) of Southern Odisha (Ganjam) living around the Lake Chilika prefer to marry their daughters off to their sister's son. Only when the Paternal Aunt does not have any son, the family looks for a groom elsewhere. This is not the only such example.

Wikipedia

And (because these are dangerous times), I must quickly add that I do not think it is a good idea to marry your cousin, if you are marrying for procreation. And that's what you mostly marry for, in this sub-continent. It is not for companionship! Not for love! You are not even allowed to marry for love, in most cases (even after the recent 377 judgement). Therefore, it is of course not a good idea to marry your cousin. However, even mainstream Hindus do. Gotras get mention in Vedas too. Therefore we can safely assume that these clans are about 4000 years old. Therefore, around 3000 or 4000 years ago, people of the same gotra were under a same Sage/Saint. Either they were his direct family or his disciples. There are hundred- thousands people from the same gotra and they belong to various different castes.  People of different castes in India at times do not eat at each other's places and that's how closely one is related to the people of their own gotra (sarcasm!). 

If however, we are indeed promoting the values of yesteryears then we have to remember Rishi Uddalaka too. His son Svetataketu asked him that his mother went around with many men, how did Uddalaka know then if Shvetaketu was his son. Rishi Uddalaka said, "It is not my seed that makes you my son. It is my love". He, as well as Pandu, talked about how women were free to have relation with many men out of their choice. Rishi Svetataketu was not happy with this explanation either. "Svetaketu, however, could not abide such a thing. In a fit of fury, he laid down the present rule for human beings. “From this day on,” he ruled, “a woman’s infidelity to her husband shall be a sin equivalent to that of abortion, an evil auguring misery” 10 (1.113.17). He further pronounced, “Seducing a chaste and constant wife who is avowed to her husband shall also be a sin on earth.” 11 

Pandu reinforces his point to Kunti: “Uddalaka’s son, Svetaketu forcibly laid down this principle of dharma in the olden days” (1.113.20)."

I was just trying to  imagine the faces of those who ask us to not to follow the so called "western culture" and ask us to go back to roots had we actually started following this. Are they even aware of asking Indian women to go back to the culture of Vedas? I was imagining them making that uneasy shift between "Do not marry within your gotra but marry within your caste" to "There is no need to marry. You can be with anyone you like" and laughing my heart out! For 'Pandu’s story purports to relate a historical fact: Women once enjoyed sexual autonomy, he says, but do not anymore. They were deprived of this privilege by a disgruntled child, “a little future patriarch,” who legislated sexual freedom for women as a high social crime. Henceforth, they would consort with only one man, on pain of incurring sin. Second, we find that sexual autonomy for women is treated as uncivilized behavior, equated with lower forms of life.' (Woman As Fire, Woman As Sage : Sexual Ideology in the Mahabharata by Arti Dhand). So what exactly happened here? Women's sexuality was brought under control of a man or woman who represented patriarchy (Satyavati). They decided if the woman had to have sex with other men to have children. It was not for her to decide. From Shvetaketu, to Satyavati, to Pandu, to the likes of Navin Jindal and my colleague, all one is trying to do is to control women's sexuality and keeping it closely leashed to reproduction. And those who advice me to appeal to benevolent patriarchy and get enamoured by a certain Indian actor's "what makes one a man" (Mard) campaign, read Mahabharata and find out what Shvetaketu did in the name of protecting women from many men. He actually handed over the decision to the "husband" who then decided who she would have sex with. It then did not remain her body. She was not to decide. It became his. Men got two bodies (if not more) on which he could decide on. Women were left with none.