Governing Hindu marriage or interreligious marriage?: secularism from below and state-society relations in the adjudication of marriage in India

Abstract

This paper examines state-society relations in the adjudication of marriage at the cusp of two policies, namely the Indian state’s policy of affirmative action for marginalized castes and the recognition of religion-based personal laws. Based on qualitative research conducted in Mumbai, the paper discusses the dilemmas, and challenges of the fusion of inter-religious and Hindu marriages. Focusing on actions of state officials and societal actors, the paper highlights everyday acts of creative and irregular governance institutionalized in religious family law, legal processes and practices, and public records, while regulating marriage. When confronted with legal ambiguities and gaps between lived realities and legal categories, state officials improvise and adjust their actions to accommodate certain logics, practices and politico-legal subjectivities. These adjudicative actions, at times, expand the socially integrative structure of the Family Court, encourage collaborations with societal organizations, enable the state courts to protect religious freedoms and personal liberties of litigants, and subvert exclusionary notions of religion in law. In addition, the paper shows how boundary drawing between state and society in multitudinous ways becomes the administrative and analytical gateway to capture the state practice of secularism from below, question the coherence of statist legal categories, and grasp the governance ironies regulating inter-religious/Hindu marriage under Hindu law.