From Documents to Data Points: Marriage Registration and the Politics of Record-Keeping in British India (1880-1950)

Abstract

AbstractIn 1880, the British Government of India passed an act for appointing individuals to the office of qazi to perform and record Muslim marriages. The act, a product of legislative collaboration, framed marriage registration as a solution to countless problems related to marriage. As a result, qazis and their assistants (nāʾibs) in places like Meerut recorded thousands of marriages using enumerative categories mirroring those found in colonial records. Yet rather than solving the problems surrounding Muslim marriages, as the act intended, these registers turned marital events into administrative facts and invited further management of Muslim marriages in the twentieth century.