Traditional Prescriptive Marriage versus Cross-Cultural Marriage System Among the Chothe of Manipur

Abstract

This paper highlights the significant of popular cross-cultural marriage among the Chothe with the neighbouring communities that poses threat to their traditional endogamous prescriptive marriage system. However, it indicates that despite the declined the system is still ideal, stable and adaptable. The declined of their traditional marriage system does not mean that the system is totally breaking down but rather a deviation. It indicates that the increased in cross-cultural marriage was develop due to their exposure, liberal worldviews and flexibility in their socio-cultural norms influenced by the thoughts of modern education, Christianity, westernisation and modernisation, etc. This liberal attitudes impacted by such factors allow a person to have more options in choosing a girl or a boy outside his/ her tribe. On the basis, a new trend of love and arranged marriage becomes popular a blend of tradition and modern marriage, common even among other Northeastern tribes of India.