Concept of Marriage in India
Every individual has to play a number of roles in their life. Of the various roles one plays, two have great significance in life. One is the economic role and the other is the marital or family role. The former is prominent in life because one devotes quite a good part of one’s career to it.
Marriage is an institution in which men and women are admitted to family life, to live in an intimate personal relationship, primarily for the purpose of begetting and rearing children. From the social point of view, marriage is an institution that serves to ensure the propagation and socialisation of children of a particular society. From the individual point of view, it provides assistance in bearing and raising children and controls for the receipt and extension of affection.
Primary relations are essentially unlimited, particularistic, emotionally involved, altruistic and spontaneous. But, secondary relations are typically limited, standardised, unemotional, utilitarian and contractual. Again, the primary relationship in marriage differs from that in other primary groups, such as friendship, neighbourhood, village, etc. It is in the sense that the primary relationship in marriage is based on a sexual relationship, and this sexual relationship brings further intimacy and permanence in the relationship between a man and a woman.
Primary relations in marriage have two important functions: one is need gratification, and the other is social control. It gratifies individuals’ biological (sex satisfaction), psychological (affection and belongingness), and economic needs (food, clothing, and shelter) and also serves as a primary source of morality and ethics. When one finds one’s partner performing certain tasks for him/her, he/she considers it his/her moral obligation to care for the other or to listen to the other. One is, thus, no longer free to be immoral and irresponsible.
Another sociological way of conceptualising family is to see marriage as involving the performance of new and varied roles, such as husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and so on. Whether the persons involved are capable of performing those new roles, and how the inadequacy in performing these roles leads to family disorganisation. What is important in marriage is how one partner’s role enactment corresponds to the other’s role expectations.
According to Koos, a Sociologist, marriage is a dividing line between the family of orientation and the family of procreation in terms of the roles one performs in each family. The roles in the family of orientation vary across infancy, childhood, and adolescence and entail no responsibilities or obligations. But the roles one performs in the family of procreation after marriage as a husband/wife, a father/mother, a wage-earner, a grandfather/grandmother, a retired person, etc., have different expectations and obligations.
Marriage has been considered a ceremonial gift of the bride from her father or another appropriate relative of the bridegroom, so that both may together fulfil the duties necessary for human existence. These duties are “Dharma, Artha and Kama”. Dharma is a religious duty based on ethical values, that is, to do good and attain Moksha or salvation. Artha is the economic aspect of life, and Kama is the physical or sexual duties to the partner and to produce children to perpetuate the race. Marriage is not for the sense of enjoyment, but to perpetuate the race. This is the Indian conception of marriage. It is a social duty towards the family and community.
Indian religious texts say that marriage is a religious sacrament which is considered a complex of obligations, religious and moral on the one hand, and social and economic primarily on the other hand. The Hindu concept of marriage is that it is a sanskara (tradition) and a religious sacrament, not a contract. It is a holy union of the two souls and not simply of two bodies. It is an indissoluble bond which could be broken only by death.
References
Ahuja, R. (2002). Indian social system. Rawat Publications. (pp. 117-124)
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