Courting marriage: juridification of intimate relationships in North India

Abstract

This paper examines cases of elopements and choice-based marriages in North India that have consolidated into an established form of litigation in the past two decades. Through ethnographic research at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, I delineate the nature and scope of legal processes in validating relationships of choice and in mediating between couples and their kin groups. The proliferation of elopement cases, popularly known as court marriages, reflects a juridification of potentially deviant marriages, where discourses on universal rights both inform, and are, in turn, shaped by the dialogue initiated in such courtroom proceedings. I argue that court marriages signify a creative re-imagination of law, a research subject that is gaining traction within the field of legal anthropology but is, as yet, under-represented in the study of gender and sexuality in India. While feminist scholarship from South Asia has contributed immensely in highlighting the patriarchal biases in judicial intervention on gendered violence and discrimination, the creative possibilities inherent in legal procedures continue to be under-emphasized. Combining recent anthropological research on law and classical kinship studies on marriage, I propose that court marriage is an innovative, contextually-driven effort to re-imagine both legal spaces and the institution of marriage itself.