Acknowledgement

I would first and foremost acknowledge Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), an

institution that provided me the space and the academic environment in which I was
able to conduct a research and ask questions, whose answers perhaps still unfound, I felt
passionately about both as a person and a researcher.

I express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Bidhan Dash, who never let me feel
settled with the questions I asked and hence pushed me to think about my research from
as many aspects as possible and who was both, a guiding supervisor and a fierce friend. I
am very thankful to you Sir, for letting me steer my own course and yet not letting me
waver.

I will continue to wish I could go back and sit in the classes of Dr. Rajan Krishnan,
Santhosh Sadanand and Amit Chaturvedi; the professors who advised me, helping me to
grow in so many ways. Learning from them has set the bar of a good teacher and a
conscious individual so high that I now not only fret about being a better student, but
also wonder will I ever make as good a teacher. I will continue to think of them in
admiration and respect keeping them as the voice in my head inspiring my thoughts and
actions. I cannot express in language the deep sense of gratitude I owe to them. I give
my deepest thanks, best wishes and love to all of them.

I am forever obliged to the persons I interviewed, without whom this dissertation would
have been impossible, who lent their time, their stories and lives with immense trust and
love. I am so grateful for the time they gave me, making relationships between us that I
shall maintain and cherish forever.

I give my thanks to all my classmates, especially Neha, Aparna and Rohan who made
this entire experience enjoyable and reassured me with their humour, camaraderie and
love. Sromon, I thank you for advising me and helping me frame the title of my
dissertation.

I thank all those students I met at AUD, who changed the way I look at my own self, my
identity and those of others in ways which give me hope for changing this world. My
journey as a student at AUD is most meaningful because of these friendships and
relationships in which I grew as a person more than anything else. Kaustubh, Sohail,
Tanya, Rahul, Ankush, Purav and Shubham, I will be eternally grateful to your ingenious
sense of humour and your simultaneous ease and disenchantment with politics. All my
love and best wishes to you all for your own journeys and battles.

Lastly, I thank my parents, Azra and Arshad, my sister, Sukaina and my dog, Troy for
everything.
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3
The Inter Religious Subject ..................................................................................................................... 1
What does inter-religiosity entail? ..................................................................................................... 1
Inter Religiosity and Marriage in Indian Academia ............................................................................. 2
Exploring the ‘field’ of Inter Religiosity ............................................................................................... 3
Ordinary Rituals .................................................................................................................................. 6
Family, Piety and Bodily Practices..................................................................................................... 10
Faith .................................................................................................................................................. 13
Making Inter Religiosity Transcendent: The Inter Religious Subject ................................................ 16
The Transgression of Fixed Identities ............................................................................................... 19
Conclusion: The Interness ................................................................................................................. 22
Potential: Self-Respect, ‘Love-Jihad’ and Subversion ........................................................................... 26
The State, law and ‘love’ ................................................................................................................... 26
Self Respect, Nation and the Female Body ....................................................................................... 29
Love-Jihad and Myth Breaking .......................................................................................................... 32
Communal Hatred and Inter-Marriages ........................................................................................... 33
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 39
Ordinariness .......................................................................................................................................... 41
Researching the research itself ......................................................................................................... 41
A General Narrative .......................................................................................................................... 42
Locating the Everyday ....................................................................................................................... 44
Challenges- ‘Tell me, what happened?’ ............................................................................................ 45
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 47
Conclusion: The Degrees of Conversion ............................................................................................... 49
Measuring the ‘Liberal’ and the ‘kattar’ ........................................................................................... 54
The Satanic Verses, Religion and the Nation-State........................................................................... 56
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 58
 Introduction

‘He said Love Jihad, or the practice of Muslims seducing Hindu girls with the aim of converting
them to Islam, was an existential threat to India.’ (Sethi, 2015). Since the invention and the quick
dissemination of the term, ‘love-jihad’ happened through posters, text messages and other media,
the confrontation between love and politics is manifested in newer forms. It has very visibly
entered the domain of politics simultaneously residing in literature and common discussions in
civil society. Belonging to the subcontinent where the tales of Heer-Ranjha, Laila-Majnu, Shirin-
Farhad, reappearing in popular films such as Veer-Zaara (2005), Fandry (2013) or Ishaaqzaade
(2012), are immortal and omnipresent in the references to love-stories; it is impossible to think
of love as separate from struggles and coercive forces of religious and caste communities. There
is always something that keeps the lovers from actualising their desire or marrying one another as
they constantly negotiate and assert to make their extraordinary relationship seem as ordinary as
others. ‘Love’ being used only heuristically in this research, I shall examine the concept of inter
religiosity which is produced through marriage.

An inter-religious marriage is an alliance between two individuals who belong to different

religious identities or practice different religions. In majority of cases, such an alliance is
essentially a love marriage as opposed to arranged marriages that are usually religiously
homogenous. This study is aimed at studying the everyday life of an inter-religious marriage.
Through this research, I have attempted to explore the expected or unexpected pre-eminence of
religious identities and communities in inter religious alliances by gathering primary accounts. By
examining the daily life of such marriages, I intend to study those areas where religion appears as
indispensable in shaping our social relations.

Initially, I developed questions about inter religious marriages on a personal and individual level.
Having observed many such marriages within my family and friends, I often questioned; what
happens after this marriage takes place and why is the confrontation of religious identities seen
to be over at the wedding ceremony? And I also questioned, how do these two individuals
cohabit a domestic space with two different religious identities given that religion is such a
prominent presence in modern society? This was questioning at merely the individual level. As I
read texts around this topic, I understood that inter-religious marriages are not simply seen as
unacceptable by religious communities but also enter spaces of conflict and tension through state
interference.

The aspects of a daily married life examined in this study are; the customs and ceremonies at the
marriage ceremony, the nature of the marriage ceremony, the naming of children, the daily
presence of religion in the household, the daily practice of religion, the engagement with
different festivals, the interaction of children with their grandparents, family functions, family
discussions on religio-political issues and the role religion(s) play in the daily household setup of
these families. The interaction of such married couples with the law became an essential part of
the narratives I gathered as the Special Marriage Act (1954) plays a very important role in such
marriages getting solemnised under the law.
I have conducted this study based on close; in-depth interviews with five inter- religion families
along with secondary literature on this area of study. I hope to place this research in the
background of studies of love, marriage, kinship, choice and family. Due to the paucity of time,
this study does not engage with works on inter religious marriages at a universal level and
remains confined to India where works in this field deal predominantly with the areas of conflict
around these marriages. By studying the daily life of a family born out of an inter-religious
alliance, I hope to contribute to studies of the everyday life as well as the study of inter-religious
alliances. Through a detailed compilation of an inter religious ethic linked subsequently to the
inherent politics it produces, this dissertation is written as an elementary work hoping to ground
it’s conceptions in the anthropology of religion. Also, such a project demands a critical inquiry
into researching the research itself as it raises the pertinent question of the practices through
which one conducts a study of the everyday of marital life. What are the methodological
hindrances a sociologist faces in such a study is another aspect I have tried to reflect upon.

This research was conducted in Delhi between the months of January and May in 2016. The
names of all the participants in this study have been changed for ethical purposes.
 Chapter 1
The Inter Religious Subject

What does inter-religiosity entail?

My intention in engaging with the concept of ‘inter religiosity’ is to arrive at a descriptive understanding
of its manifestations and whether they may cogently form inter religiosity as a subject of study. My
objective in this chapter is to identify or describe various aspects of religious engagement of the marriages
and the families with whom I interacted for the purpose of this study. When I question ‘’what entails
inter religiosity’’ I enter the field without any prior assumptions regarding what it may contain. Of course
I am approaching this given sample because, for the larger world, these couples are ‘inter religious’
couples; but as a project aspiring to follow the methodology and concepts of social anthropology, I wish
to construct a detailed description of which practices, what forms of piety and what lifestyle choices
construct ‘inter religiosity’ as a broader and more transcendent concept.1 The inter religiosity I am
examining here is the one constructed, created, produced solely through marriages and more logically,
inter marriages. I have also tried to put all the four cases of my study together and generate an
understanding that can help us socially and culturally approach the inter religiosity that is produced
through inter religious marriages.

My participants and I use the terms ‘inter caste’ and ‘inter religious’ inter changeably in our interactions
making the terms ambiguous with respect to inter marriages. For this study, I am focusing on the daily
practise of religion and the performativity of religious identities, dealing with caste only in terms of
identity. I shall present large excerpts from the interviews that I conducted in order to explain the
continuity of my thought process which happened as I listened to the statements of my participants. The
conclusions I arrived at are based largely on the findings of my field. I also present lengthy quoted
statements as I prefer to not make selections on which statements reveal aspects of their daily life more
and which reveal it less. Hence, I produce voluminous narratives instead of small excerpts. Aside from
not making selections, I also did not wish to paraphrase their words. I have kept the original expressions
of my participants to present to my readers.

In order to create a picture of marital inter religiosity, the questions I asked them were regarding the
customs and ceremonies at the marriage ceremony, the nature of the marriage ceremony, the naming of
children, the daily presence of religion in the household, the daily practice of religion, the engagement
with different festivals, the interaction of children with their grandparents, family functions, family
discussions on religio-political issues and the role religion(s) play in the daily household setup of these
families.

1
The „subject‟ mentioned in the title shall develop as a heuristic concept. I am not, as yet, engaging with the theoretical and analytical
description of the subject.

1
I also attempted to gauge an understanding of religious conversion in these families. I discussed their
perceptions on conversion and if there were actual cases of conversion in my sample, I have tried to
understand the reasons for converting (or reverting as is in some cases) as well as know the degrees of
conversion within individual persons of all these families. In other words, I have attempted to understand
where and in what forms was ‘conversion’ at play. The narratives of my participants and their answers to
my questions has not only provided me with answers to these questions but also led to them sharing
stories about varied aspects and events in their lives. As many of these events and instances were from
their married life, they were equally important and relevant to this study because this is as much a study of
marriage as it is of religion at large. It is not solely a study of either. When both converge to produce an
instance of inter religious marriage, what makes me, as a researcher, curious is the ways and forms in
which these marriages function, operate and design their daily lives.

By studying the ordinary aspects of these marriages (which are deemed extraordinary in our societies), my
larger attempt has been to measure the extent till which extraordinariness operates and manifests itself. If
there is something unique about the daily life of inter religious marriages, (they’re in themselves a sub set
within the larger set of marriage) then what cultural flavour do these alliances produce and in what ways
do they reproduce it?

Inter Religiosity and Marriage in Indian Academia

A truly transcendental analysis with the studies on inter-religiosity, inter-marriages in other countries and
cultures is well beyond the time and scope of my work. However, that enlarging would be welcome and
desirable if it does become possible.

In the domain of academia, inter religious marriages have been sufficiently worked upon. However, the
concept of the ‘after‟ or rather the lived experience of it is still a gap in the scholarly literature on inter
religious marriages. In her book, Inter-Religious Marriages, Usha Bambamwale (1982) has studied the
phenomenon of inter-religious marriages adopting a statistical and analytical approach. The larger part of
her work deals with the processes of negotiation and struggles to convince the families to agree to an
inter-religious alliance.

Bambamwale’s work, methodologically, stands in stark opposition to Perveez Mody’s The Intimate State
(2008) where Mody’s entry point into the study of love marriages is the law. It is through the
anthropological perspective on law that Mody very convincingly establishes that love marriages are seen
as unwanted and problematic in eyes of the nation-state and the religious communities of India.
Bambamwale , on the other hand, does not place the love marriage in society analytically. Her work is, to a
large extent, a compilation of trends, patterns, graphs and tables which at best give the reader information
about inter religious marriages. Such a work is emblematic of the way researchers in social sciences often
take the approach of being somewhat detached from society, looking at it as it exists somewhere below
them (in terms of the vision of thought).

Bambamwale, at the end of her book, discusses the concept of ‘Religiosity and Secularisation’.
Bambamwale’s work is significant for it’s statistical and numerical data. She discusses, through patterns
and tables, the number of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Parsi inter-religious marriages. She provides us
with the data on conversion (the pattern, the trend, the reasons of conversion) She also provides the
‘attitudes the friends’ keep towards such marriages. Since data on inter religious marriages is difficult to
obtain, her work is crucial, also because it may be utilised to develop a comparative study on such
marriages; temporally. However, I shall assert that Mody’s anthropological perspective is contemporarily
very relevant in dealing with love marriages as an object of study and also to put it in a larger frame and
context; the nation-state, the law, the community and the individual.

2
Exploring the ‘field’ of Inter Religiosity
I shall present excerpts from the interviews that I conducted in Delhi in 2016. Coupled with the works of
Talal Asad and Veena Das I shall take the answers of my participants for analysis later. As mentioned
earlier, I have taken the excerpts from the interviews that I conducted for the purpose of this study.

The first interview I conducted for the purpose of this study was with Nina Ahmad. My first visit to her
house was unplanned. As I went inside and conversed with her and her two children Sara, 14 and Sohail,
23; I kept waiting for an appropriate moment to tell her the purpose of my visit. When I did tell her that I
wanted to take her interview regarding my dissertation on inter-religious marriages, Nina smiled briefly
and without allowing me to completely explain my research question she said, ‘’I was just forced into it
Amna.’’

Nina and Imran had met in the office where they worked together and got married in a hurried manner
after Imran proposed to Nina. They did not face a prolonged opposition to their marriage from their
families. Today they reside in South Delhi in a lower-income group locality. The first interaction with
Nina and her children lasted for almost six hours with them telling me numerous stories about their
father, Imran. Nina told me that Imran has been physically violent with her since the first year of their
marriage and continues to be so. Her experience of a marriage to Imran has been a painful, and I would
assert, a hellacious one. In her second interview with me, she began talking by saying;

„‟ It was a terrible thing to happen. Tumhe khana hai nahi to tumhe maarna hai. Tumhe paani mein doobna
hain nahi to tumhe kar denge. It was like aatankwadi bana diya mujhe. Har cheez ko zabardasti karna hai.‟‟
(You have to either get beaten or die. You have to either drown in the water otherwise they‟ll do something to you.
It was like they made me into a terrorist. Everything had to be done, forcefully)

After my initial interviews with Nina, she asked me not to interview Imran about the same as she feared it
would disturb their relationship even more. On Nina’s empathetic request, I have not interviewed Imran.

Nina was converted to Islam before her marriage to Imran although there is no legal proof of her
conversion and she still uses her birth name as her official name. She tells me they married in a hurried
manner as Imran requested that they marry as soon as possible. It is much later that Nina discovered that
Imran was engaged to another girl before her and their marriage did not take place due to issues over
dowry. Life for Nina changed drastically after their marriage. She explains that before their marriage
Imran was very caring and loving towards her. After their marriage however, the change in Imran’s
attitude came as a shock to her. She describes her first visit to Imran’s village after their marriage. Imran
hails from a village Camri which belongs to Rampura district in U.P. She tells me that they are called
banjaras. The visit to Camri she remembers, where the women wore burqa and the atmosphere was dark
and unfriendly, was terrifying for her.

I did not find the need to ask Nina many questions. She herself told me various things about the rituals
and religious practices they observed in their house. For Nina, these questions and the discussions
between us that followed; were not interviews. She talked about piety, God, Islamic and Christian
practices herself, without me even mentioning the words ‘ritual’ or ‘practise’. As Nina is a Keralite born
and brought up in Calcutta, she speaks both Malayalam and Bengali fluently. Her children only speak
Hindi and English while Sohail knows Arabic which he learnt as a child. She talks about her knowledge of
the Quran and her experience of learning Arabic and the Islamic verses extensively after her marriage. She
has raised her children as Muslims and says this simplistically; ‘’Amna, meine to apne baccho ko mussalman
banaya hai.‟‟ (Amna, I have made my children Muslims) Her elder child, Sohail, had completed the Quran
in his adolescence and also became familiar with the Arabic language. Now, Nina is eagerly waiting for an
opportunity to make Sara learn the Quran and Arabic as well. She has also expressed a deep fascination

3
for Urdu and wishes to learn the language as well. Nina describes the ritual performance of the namaz, she
tells me when and how to read the sunnat, far, nafil and bitar and wajib (the various prayers of the namaz).
She shares her experience of learning the Islamic rituals, prayers and the Quran;

I learnt it from the book which has Arabic quran as well as the tarjuma (translation) in English. The maulana
(a Muslim clergyman) himself got that book for me. He told me to rote learn the quran and then he taught me the
uthak baitha (a loose term to define the bodily rituals of the namaz as it is performed.) I really
wanted to do it to see how much peace I can get from doing it. His family members used to make fun of me and I
used to get so annoyed. I wanted to do it correctly, so I learnt from the maulana. I didn‟t do the namaz all five
days, I did it only on Fridays and during Ramzana I used to recite the tarabi and the namaz.

I used to do it very quickly but these people used to take so much time. Today when Sohail keeps all the rozas, he
also reads like this. I had decided that I won‟t make my children Christian, I will make them Muslims but I
won‟t pressurise them. Sohail was made to learn Arabic and rote learn the quran. My husband initially
pressurised me, but when Sara was born I put my foot down. I didn‟t let him pressurise us. She learnt half of the
Arabic alphabets but she didn‟t like the maulvi so I told him to leave.

But I have told her that you should rote learn it. You don‟t need to practise it but you should know that prayers
are there. These days children don‟t have time. If you go to some dargah or some other place and someone asks you
what are you reading, at least you can tell them that you know you are reading kul or alham-do. It‟s our religion,
you should know it.

When we were Christians, we used to read the whole Bible. If you read the Bible, you‟ll see that our Bible and our
Quran are the same book. Even our prayers are the same. This „kul‟ is also the same. If I don‟t read the quran
and read the Bible, nothing will happen to me. The Quran and the Bible have both come from the same place. It‟s
the same book. Quran came in Latin, Greek, Arabic and Persian. Five books had come from heaven and the
Bible was one of them. What‟s the difference between yours and our book? We Christians have the Old Testament
and Muslims have the New Testament. It‟s very important to know all this. My husband doesn‟t have this
knowledge. I know all this because I am a Christian. She recites fluently;

Our Father, Who art in heaven

Hallowed be Thy Name;
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

She shows me the Bible and says: „‟We read the Psalms. That‟s just like the surahs. Whenever you are in
trouble you open the Psalmic verses and read them. This is the Bible. I sleep with it. If I read this book everyday
there can be no evil in front of me. No one can say that we are bad people.‟‟

Nina, Sara and Sohail are very critical of their father’s behaviour. Sohail tells me that Imran goes to a
mandir (temple), a gurudwara (the sacred Sikh place for worship) with his friends. Sara and Sohail find it
ironic that their father is not tolerant of their mother’s religion at home because he claims to uphold
Islam but goes to all the non-Islamic religious places. Nina also laughs with her children as they tell me
this and then says, ‘’Agar wo log, hamare dargah mein jaa sakte hai to hum bhi to unke mandir mein jaa sakte hai
na.‟‟ All three of them disapprove of Imran for not knowing the Islamic rituals properly. Nina tells
me;

4
 „‟ Imran doesn‟t even read the namaz properly. He reads it before the azaan because he doesn‟t like to miss his
morning walk with his friends. The maulvi tells him, „‟ aap azaan se pehle namaz nahi padh sakte, woh ada nahi
hoti‟. (you can’t offer the namaz before the azaan, it is not accepted) Again, only we have this knowledge! He
doesn‟t! We are non-Muslims, even then we know all this. He doesn‟t listen to the maulvi. In Calcutta, we grew
up in an area where so many Muslims used to live. In Park Street, only Muslims used to live. Hum milaad
shareef mein jaate the, shareef hote hai, khaa ke aate the. Dekho mere rongte khade ho rahe hai. (look! I am
getting goose bumps).

Hum bachpan se mussalmano ke beech pale hain.(We’ve grown up with Muslims) Itne deeply involved the
hum ke humein batana hi nahi padta ki kya karna hai. (We were so deeply involved that we don’t need
to be told what rituals to do) But this man! He doesn‟t know anything. All he and his family know is to eat
and produce kids after marriage. They don‟t have any knowledge. Now in their village, the maulvi is doing the
tarjuma now. Before this they didn‟t even know the tarjuma, the translation. They would just memorise the Arabic
and the say that they know the Quran. When I read the Quran in which the Arabic verses are written in English,
I read with English translation. With that also Imran has a problem. Now look at Salman Khan‟s mother, she
does both Hindu and Muslim rituals. She has that freedom to accept both the religions. If you give me that
freedom, I will do everything freely.

Imran does not let Nina go to Church and so she has to visit the church secretly without telling Imran.
She also takes Sara and Sohail along but mostly she is unable to go. Imran as always forbidden her to go
to Church and has even threatened to divorce her if she does so. Nina tells me her experience at the
Church;

During our Christians now, my Father at the Church tells me that I can‟t take communion because I have
married a Muslim. I can go to Church but I can‟t take communion. If we take it, we have to be baptised again.
That is a holy thing. Sanctity has to be maintained. Our Protestant church gives communion to anyone but the
Catholics don‟t. If you‟re still a Christian you can go and take communion. But for me I will have to be baptised
again. They see me as a Muslim now. They told my mother that I can pray and sit in church but I can‟t take
communion. See? Even they don‟t stop me from coming, but he stops me from going. Even though I am following
his religion. You should have faith. No matter what form you see God in.

Whether she talks of the Quran while referring to Muslims, or of the Bible while referring to Christians;
Nina talks about both with an equal sense and measure of belongingness. For both she uses the pronoun
‘we’ representing a sense of inseparability with both simultaneously. She easily makes a transition from
talking about herself as a ‘we’ Christian to a ‘we’ Muslim. A very peculiar inter-religiosity has shaped
within Nina as she displays immense knowledge and expresses her reverence towards both the religions
while critiquing neither in particular. Her knowledge of the way in which to do the Islamic namaz flows
easily with examples and descriptions. She explains to me;

‘’uthak baithak you have to do 17 times, you should memorise and rote learn the namaz, then you can always do
it. I don‟t keep rozas (the Muslim fast during Ramzan) but I just do the namaz. When uncle does the namaz
with Sohail, he asks Sara to cover her head and just do uthak-baithak with them. If you do that all, then also
namaz gets ada (prayed/performed). Our namaz is yoga, its very scientific. Being a Christian I am saying this
because it‟s a good practise. You will never get neck problems if you do this. Being a non-muslim also you can learn
how to pray. Even if I am not a Muslim, I learnt it. My father was a Brahmin, he baptised himself. He didn‟t
tell us to become Hindu. He told me to follow my mother‟s religion. He went to Church for three years, to learn the
Bible and the prayers. He waited for three years to marry my mother.

You will feel very relaxed that you can tell people that at least I know all this. Imran can‟t even read the Quran.
He can‟t read the English translation. He is so weak in English. What‟s the use? I read the Bible. I have told

5
 you so many stories. Even in us Muslims, the „kul‟ is the almighty. Our prayers have no harm. They make me
very free. I am not sad. He should be happy about it. He never tells me all this. He should tell people that my
wife is such. If you have faith in your God, you don‟t have to run around. What if I read both the Bible and
Quran? It‟s a good thing. Doesn‟t Sara go to the Church in her school? Both my children study in convent
schools.‟‟

For all the violence and torment she has faced from her husband or her in-laws, Nina has brought up her
children in the way that she wished. She does not want them to follow Islam in the way Imran’s family
does. She does not approve of the way Imran’s family practices Islam and is critical of their ‘kattarness‟.
She also is heavily critical of the women who wear burqas.

‘‟His family members come to our house for parties and get up in the middle and start doing the namaz. They just
sit anywhere to do the namaz. They will even sit on the road. I have been taught that if you‟re unable to read the
namaz you can always read the qaza. His nephew always asks for the janamaz, you have to give him a separate
towel, a separate corner for praying. There are so many guests at home, where will you do the namaz. We shouldn‟t
say all this about God. But God hasn‟t said that when you go to someone‟s house, you have to show them that you
pray. He is just showing off that he does namaz all five times.

Tumhe pata hai hum kaise namaz ada karte hai? [Do you know how we (Christians) do our namaz?] Before we
eat, we sit on the dinner table and say „Thank you Lord for the food you‟ve given‟‟ and we say the prayer. This is
how we eat when we go to my mothers house. We can do it in this house also but we don‟t do it. In my mother‟s
house, we all eat sitting on the floor. But my husband sits on a cot. If you come to my house, you‟ll see that I have
raised my children just like I was raised. I have raised them very freely. He has always tried to prevent us from
visiting my mother‟s house. Someone tried to tell him that if he does that then his children will become Christians
and not Muslims. He just listens to other people. Imran‟s niece used to stay with us, even the maulvi couldn‟t teach
her the namaz, and I did.’’

In their family, the onus of following and practising the rituals of both the religions comes only on Nina.
She even keeps her children exempt from being very ritualistic even if she desires to them have
knowledge about Islam as it is the religion they belong to. Further in my study, as I conducted more
interviews I realised that in families born out of inter religious marriages, the adoption of a new religion
due to marriage need not happen for everyone in the family. Nina’s own father was a Brahmin Hindu
who baptised himself to become a Christian and raised his children as Christians too. Nina became a
Muslim and practices both Christianity and Islam while raising her children as Muslims. Sara and Sohail
also see themselves only as Muslims. Hence, the acceptance and internalisation of a particular or two
religions is not a universal happening; it varies depending on many factors largely getting reduced to
singular reasons unattached to any specific pattern.

Ordinary Rituals
Wedding ceremonies, names and culture in the domestic space

This section shall provide detailed accounts from my participants on the manner in which their weddings
ceremonies were performed, the naming of their respective children and the religious and cultural
education imparted in their homes.

Wedding Ceremonies

The manner in which inter religious marriages are performed is a crucial and significant segment of this
study. The element of sacredness in wedding rituals and their intrinsic association with religion and
religious identity makes a marriage ceremony the symbolic representative of a kin group’s religious
consciousness. Whether marriages are endogamous or inter religious/inter caste; the mores and etiquette

6
of wedding rituals depict a picture of the ideological stance and credo of an individual and their family. I
engage with the wedding ceremonies of inter religious marriages in order to derive an understanding of
two things; One, what do the choices/selection of wedding rituals communicate about the relationship of
power2 between the two families/individuals getting married. Second, what degree of pre-eminence does
ceremonial performativity contribute to the constitution of the inter-religious subject?

Gathering descriptions of the wedding ceremonies was a fairly simpler task as all the participants gave
long and detailed accounts of their marriage celebrations. This they did while also sharing their deeper
feelings of anxiety which had persisted at the time as in most of the cases, these marriages were fraught
with discomfort, conflict and even fear of violence in some cases. Nina and Imran had a nikah which was
conducted after Nina was converted to Islam. As described earlier in this chapter, Nina’s marriage to
Imran was not a celebrated affair as his family members did not approve of Imran marrying a non-
Muslim.

Prabtoj, a Sikh, describes her marriage to Iftiqar, a Muslim, in a state of tears. Even though she says that
she loves Iftiqar and is extremely happy in her marital home, the experience of her wedding and the
decision to marry Iftiqar caused her and her family deep emotional troubles.

Prabtoj and Iftiqar had a court marriage in September 2011 and a band-baaje ki shaadi (a colloquial Indian
term to describe the loud celebration of weddings) in September 2012. Iftiqar is my cousin and as a family
member I should have had knowledge of why there was a gap of one year between their court marriage
and an actual celebration involving their family and friends. What Prabtoj told me, she says, very few
people in the family know. She has placed immense faith in me and shared the experience which she says
she does not want to remember in her life. She says she does not want to think of it. While telling me the
events which preceded her wedding day to Iftiqar, Prabtoj wept for her parents who did not withdraw
their support to her at any cost. I feel it is best if I present her story in her own words;

When I told my parents that I am dating a Muslim guy, it was a shock for my parents. They weren‟t even that
bothered. They thought it might pass and we might forget. It‟s not that they were completely taken aback, they
assumed we might grow out of it.

My parents were very liberal. They had told me since I was a child that you can marry anyone you want. He
should just be well-settled. But when I brought Iftiqar, my father laughed and said I never thought that my
daughter will bring a Muslim. Had it been anyone, an American man or English I wouldn‟t mind. He says even
today, „‟How did I know that when I gave her full freedom to marry anyone she wants, she will bring a Muslim? ‟‟

There was a gap of one year between the court marriage that we did in 2011 and our wedding celebrations in
2012.Before our court marriage in 2011, everyone was upset. Iftiqar said that lets get a court marriage done. We
registered for it a month before. Everyone was tense for the whole month. Because of my job in Qatar, I was always
abroad and came home rarely. Slowly, the whole month passed. I thought some solution would come out. But then
the date of the wedding was the next day! I was not sure whether I will even leave my house and go to Iftiqar . He
called me that you come out of your house at 7 a.m, a car will be waiting for you downstairs. Iftiqar said that the
car will wait for you till 8:30 a.m, if you don‟t come I won‟t call you ever again. I kept crying the whole night. My
parents told me don‟t go. In the morning, I got dressed and left with my sisters. We went to the court to get the
marriage registered. My parents called me and they were both crying. I was also crying on the phone. I had no idea

2
Relationships of Power as described in Michel Foucault‟s Ethical Care of the Self; when one speaks of „‟power‟‟, people think
immediately of a political structure, a government, a dominant social class, the master facing the slave and so on. That is not at all what I
think when I speak of „‟relationships of power‟‟. I mean that in human relations, wherever they are- whether they be a question of
communicating verbally, as we are doing right now, or a question of a love relationship, an institutional or economic relationship- power is
always present: I mean the relationship in which one wishes to direct the behaviour of another. (Foucault, 1984)

7
 what I was doing. I never want to remember that day. It was so horrible. I cannot explain the state of my mind. I
changed my clothes again and went back to my parent‟s house. They knew that I had done this.

My parents did not speak to me. My father did not eat anything. I was at home for only four days before
returning back to Doha. On the day of my departure, my father came to me to ask me the consequences of what I
had done. He said, „‟tumne ye kar liya hai, ab iska kya karna hai? Iska koi future nahi nazar aa raha.‟‟ (you‟ve
done this, but I can‟t see any future of this) I saw my father and mother so disturbed, I cried a lot. I became weak
and skinny and dark. I became sick and depressed. Iftiqar kept calling, but I wouldn‟t take his calls. The whole
year passed in just thinking what to do about this situation. Then my father gathered everyone in my family. He
didn‟t tell them that the court marriage has happened. No one knew that. Everyone in my house knows that this
marriage happened in 2012. No one knows of the marriage of 2011. Even from my diary I removed these pages.
It was so painful. I went through a year of depression. I did not answer any one‟s phone calls. I used to wonder,
shall I divorce him? If a relative found out, I was scared of what they might do to my parents. I was not scared
what they would do to me. Parents tried to find the solution my immediate family and my grandparents and few
cousins sat down and decided that we‟ll get her married there itself. We‟ll see the society.‟‟

I told everyone in my family, even my grandmother thinks, that we got married in 2012. They just know that we
did a court marriage a month before our wedding celebration in 2012. There were daily discussions, everyone tried
to convince me and Iftiqar both. But when both of us denied and everyone saw that we had been together for eight
years so they also gave in. Then I resigned from Qatar and came back to India. My younger sister‟s marriage was
held up because of me. If she would have gotten married before me, then the society would have asked double or
triple questions about why the younger daughter is getting married before the elder one. This is again Indian
mentality. My sister‟s fiancé knew that I am engaged to a Muslim but we did not tell his mother. Because we were
scared, that there is always that 1% chance of finding a family who will not understand and this would have even
spoilt my sister‟s marriage. I was also scared that I might repent life-long if my sister‟s marriage would be ruined
because of me. But it didn‟t happen. It‟s a 1% chance, it may happen. It won‟t but its life changing if it happens.‟

‘‟We are naamdharis. We have our own gurudwaras all over the world, we are a small community. 2 din pehle (2
days prior) they sent the letter to the entire community the world over, to boycott us and the wedding. This is a big
thing, if you get boycotted from the community. Sabko pata chal gaya tha ki in logon ki beti ki shaadi ek muslim
se ho rahi hai. (Everyone found out that I am marrying a Muslim) Jo jaega who boycott ho jayega. 100-
150 logon ko aana tha, par darr se bohut log nahi aaye. Sirf 50-60 log aaye. (150 people were invited but only
50-60 showed up) On the day of the mehendi, my parents were in a lot of tension. I want to cry, but I wasn‟t
crying because of my parents. They weren‟t crying because of me. Jis din shaadi thi, mein upar room mein baithi
thi, my parents came and asked me, „‟you‟re happy?‟‟

Prabtoj values her parent’s support immensely and constantly compares her situation to her Sikh friend
who also married a Muslim but was abandoned by her family or doing so. I had attended all the wedding
rituals that Prabtoj is mentioning here. She and Iftiqar had a nikah along with the court marriage in
September 2011. For the nikah, Prabtoj underwent a nominal conversion and her name was changed to
Sarah. Iftiqar and Probtoj also had an anatkaraj ceremony with Sikh rituals and ceremonies in 2012 along
with a wedding reception hosted for a large number of their friends and family.

In the case of Khirad and Suneel, no religious conversion took place. Khirad describes her own
experience of the way in which she and Suneel performed two different marriage ceremonies; a nikah as
well a Brahmin Maharashtrian wedding. Khirad describes her experience of their wedding;

„‟When our marriage was being fixed up, Suneel and his dad came to our house in Baroda. Suneel invited my
mother to his house in Pune. She said that I have seen the man my daughter is going to marry and that is enough.

8
 My daughter is marrying this man and not a house. Even today, it‟s been 25 years, she has never seen Suneel‟s
house. My mother has always been very bold. This is why both Suneel and my mother respect each other very much.
In inter religious marriages, respect for each other also comes through these things. Suneel said to his family that he
would only marry me and put the decision on his family whether they wish to give their blessings or they don‟t. But
I told them that I wanted their blessings for this marriage. Integrating with the family happens slowly. But it also
happened because they had their own world to take care of. Suneel‟s father was very dependent on mummy
(Suneel‟s mother)

We had three kinds of ceremonies. First we had a nikah in Baroda. 15 days later we had a Marathi style Hindu
wedding. We also had the court marriage on the same day. I tell everyone that on our 25th wedding anniversary, I
want to do a church wedding because that is one ceremony we did not do. And we also got married on Christmas.
Our court marriage happened on Christmas. In the Islamic wedding, the mehr has to be filled. The mehr is the
amount that the husband will give to the wife if they ever get divorced in the future. Suneel did not know what this
was. He asked my mother what to fill and she just told him to fill One hundred and fifty one rupees. (Laughs)

For the nikah, I only had my brothers, my grandmother and my mother. Usually, with respect to Muslims the
families fear that the girl will convert the boy or vice versa. But his parents were very liberal. Their issues with me
being a Muslim crop up on very little and silly things like with respect to food. They will say that there is more
non-vegetarian food in my house. So Suneel will tell her that when he was a young child, she used to make so much
chicken for him. He totally does away with this prejudice. He tells his mother that he doesn‟t understand that
Maharashtrians keep eating meat and keep denying it. The boy may never be a problem. But if the family doesn‟t
change their views and become open then it might be a problem. My mother saw Suneel and understood the person.

Khirad and Suneel imagine their marriage as an alliance of two individuals who love and respect one
another, with religion simply being another aspect of the individual’s identity and personality. While
Khirad is more drawn to faith, Suneel prefers to keep an atheistic approach both inside and outside his
family. Suneel and Khirad also faced an initial opposition to their marriage, but their families agreed very
quickly. Both of them tell me that their parents are extremely liberal and accepting and accommodate the
other’s culture very easily. Even though they describe their families as such, only three persons from
Suneel’s family attended the nikah and as their daughter, Neha, tells me Suneel’s family did not come for
the nikah and that her paternal grandparents are not even aware of the nikah had taken place.

Khirad explains the various approaches her family an Suneel’s family keep to religious practice and tells
me that they had less difficulty in marrying due to the fact that people in both their families are not
staunch believers;

My immediate family did not oppose. But my mother‟s younger brother opposed it. He said that such a good girl
should not married outside caste. My mother said that she was for my happiness and supported me. She did not
care for the people who opposed my decision. She kept a ghazal (a semi-classical music genre) programme one
night and kept a garba (a West Indian dance form) programme on another night for our wedding celebrations.
She made Suneel‟s family participate in everything. The people from my family who objected to the marriage all
came. From Suneel‟s family, only three people came. My mother-in-law is very liberal. She doesn‟t do puja. Her
sisters are not like that. They keep their head covered even if no one is there. They eat only after doing puja after
many hours. But mummy (mother-in-law) is not like that. I got along very well with her even before I married
Suneel. I would stitch clothes for her. I helped her design clothes and stitched them for her Suneel‟s sister‟s wedding.
Suneel‟s extended family said that our first son is marrying outside the „kul‟.

In my case, there were many inter religious marriages in my families but this was the first time that a girl married
outside the community. Otherwise, one brother of mine has married a Parsi and another has married a Christian.
They get girls into their fold, their community. But their girl is not allowed to go to another community. My

9
 brothers did not raise an objection however. My father was also liberal. He used to tell us to pray with our hearts
and do good things.‟‟

In the two other cases that I have examined , those of Aleena and Nina, the wedding ceremonies were
not inter religious. As Nina states in her narrative, she had converted and had a nikah while in Aleena’s
case they had a Hindu wedding with Brahman rituals. Another case, which shall be taken up for
discussion in the following chapters, of Anjali and Shehreyar which was narrated to me by Anjali’s
mother; is also a case of conversion. Anjali converted to Islam and had a nikkah with Shehreyar.

Family, Piety and Bodily Practices

Children born in inter religious marriages pose both implicit and explicit questions for the entire family.
The child is born to parents who each belong to a different religion and together give birth to a child who
is now an entity constitutive of two separate religious identities. This is, of course, not a universal
phenomenon. In cases where either spouse converts leading to an overt acceptance of a particular
religion, the naming of the child may be an event that gathers or attracts no negotiation between two
separate identities or traditions trying to draw on sacred fundamentals, often seen as contradictory. But in
families where both the different religions brought together through marriage are maintained and
preserved, the decision of what the name of a child should be is not simply a question of giving a ‘secular’
name. It is also a question of preserving the secularity and bivalence that constitutes the child. The child is
seen as belonging to both the mother and the father and, for that reason, must represent both in as many
manners as possible.

The first instance of this representation is the name, which in itself is a signifier loaded with the burden
of having to explicitly presenting identities. Prabtoj tells me that a tailor once asked her that if she had
married a Muslim, why she hadn’t changed her name. Prabtoj replied to him, ‘’a name is a very small
thing. I have married this person. What’s in a name?’’ The name, often made inconsequential, does
emerge suddenly as a debate demanding accommodation from both sides. The relationships of power,
referred to above, make themselves reappear tangibly in the event that a child has to be named and the
name must represent things which are complex. Prabtoj narrates to me the thoughts she had when her
daughter was born;

Keeping the name is a major thing. I did not want the name to be a typical Muslim name like Ayesha, Sara or
Saira. As a mother I did not want it to be like that. Iftiqar didn‟t want it to be a typical Sikh name. We decided
on „Aira‟ then which is a Turkish name. It means „respectful‟. We wanted it to have some meaning. It‟s not
exactly an Islamic name. We found it on the internet. It did not create tension, but this was a major discussion
between us. It is 50-50, it‟s also my child. There is also my identity. In India, usually the culture is that the wife
should follow the husband‟s culture. Outside, in other countries It‟s not like that. My friend, who converted and her
parents abandoned her, I wonder that in 365 days doesn‟t she remember her parents even once? Isn‟t it tough to
leave your parents?

In my interviews, often my participants would travel miles in a matter of minutes. Prabtoj begins by
talking of her daughter’s name to her own identity and eventually about her friend ending her statement
emphasising nostalgia of the family and an identity that is lost or deliberately shed. The name then, is an
immersed reservoir of many things. The emphasis placed on ‘secular names’ was also found in Khirad
and Suneel’s case. Khirad tells me;

10
 When Neha was born, the azaan (The Muslim call to prayer) was read into her ear. And Suneel‟s parents
did their own rituals. They read Ganesh vandana (a Hindu prayer) and gave her a mala for her to wear. When
her name was to be decided Suneel‟s father sent four names that the pundit had given saying that because this child
is born in this particular month and year, she should be named with an „s‟. I told Suneel, why don‟t we take a
secular name which is neither very Islamic or very Hindu. Names that people typically associate with a religion. If
our identity is in this way, why don‟t we name her the same way? Suneel in the hospital told everyone that he will
decide the name for his daughter. His parents were not happy with that. One of the names which was on top of our
list was Kiran which is used in both religions. „Neha‟ is a very secular name. Suneel and I had gone to see the film
„Chashme Baddoor‟ in which Deepti Nawal says very nicely that her name is Neha. We really liked that name.
Neha is also an Urdu term which means „love‟ We wanted the possibility of a name that is used in both cultures.
In a situation like that, religion came up. Otherwise, religion only comes when you‟re thinking about others. Your
religion and your practices you don‟t speculate on. But then there are places where this comes up. I wanted a name
which would not be associated with anything so overtly and so prominently. „‟

It is important to note that the women I interacted with for this study have all changed their name,
whether nominally or perpetually. Nina’s name was changed to ‘Nargis’ and she is referred to as ‘Nargis’
by Imran’s family. Prabtoj’s name was changed to ‘Sarah’ but everyone in Iftiqar’s famly, except a few
extended family members, refer to her Prabtoj. Khirad, like Prabtoj, was asked about her name but in her
case the proposition put forth was that she should not change her name.

I told my teacher, Anis Farooqi about my marriage to Suneel. He told me you should not drop your name. Your
last name is your identity. You should hyphenate your last name with your husband‟s last name. I decided that I
am marrying him, so I will use his name. Suneel tells me today that if we type our family name on Google, my
name and my work is the first thing that comes up before anyone else‟s name from our family. He is very proud of
that fact.

The name continuously contests with the identity and simultaneously identities try to suppress the name.
The woman’s name is seen as something that can be changed, even though she is entering a marriage
where there is no act of conversion. The child’s name though, because there has been no conversion and
the preservation of separate religious identities is seen as important, has to deliberately be fashioned in a
syncretic form.

As children grow up, the daily practices of religion and rituals become contested spaces as well. It is here
that the performativity of the inter religiosity that is created becomes distinct and visibly perspicuous.
This design of the inter religiosity is different from the name in many ways, a very significant difference
being that the name is more permanent and is directly linked to a certain meaning that the name shall
represent (as showcased in the two cases cited above). The rituals and daily practices of religion in an inter
religious set-up have the potential to be more fluid as they will be designed uniquely and differently in
each household thus producing an interplay of practises sui generis. Prabtoj, who along with Iftiqar,
instills both Sikh and Islamic practices in her child says;

People say that after kids are born, they will get confused. It depends what and how you are teaching them. Aira
will always say salaam (the traditional Islamic greeting) to her dadihaal (the paternal family) and sastriyakal (a
traditional Sikh greeting) at my house. If I take her for a walk in the colony, she says Namaste to all the aunties.
That day, a sardarji was walking past our house and she was standing in the balcony. We don‟t know him, yet
she just saw the turban and shouted „Uncle sastriyakal‟! at him. He came back and gave her a toffee even though
we don‟t know each other. This generation is very smart. They never get confused. Both the parents should teach
thier own. Why would the child then get confused?

11
 Aira knows that she has to behave a certain way in the gurudwara and how to do namaz. She won‟t get confused.
I know she will handle herself. We don‟t feed anything into her. She only observes people doing these things in the
house. She knows my mother does this, or what my grandmother does. Her identity, because of her last name will
be a Muslim only. It will be her fathers. She will know my mother is a sardarni and prays in this manner. Rest,
when she grows up then we will see what she does.‟‟

The idea of accommodating to one another’s cultural differences in order for the family to be unaffected
by extreme religious opinions is also emphasised upon by Khirad. She says this accommodation entails a
non-conservative and not an active, overt following of a single religion. Instead, she insists on practising
her religion by not speaking it out loud. She says her Islamic prayers in her mind; keeping her faith, as she
says, to herself;

One of the things which is very important to consider is inter caste marriages which are very conservative, where
both partners are active followers of a religion. It‟s different from where two liberal followers are getting married. I
am not tied to rituals of the religion, I read the Quran when I feel like it. Or I don‟t do namaz everyday. Suneel
does not follow his religion. If I would have married into a conventional Hindu family or if I wore the hijab myself
then our everyday life would have been impacted very differently. When Neha was growing up, lot of people asked
her which religion will she follow. Suneel and I used to say that she doesn‟t see us mandatorily following anything.
We didn‟t start our mornings with any ritual. Inter religious marriages go through the same conflicts that any other
marriage goes through. Because it is a man and a woman staying together.

I could not have lived in this marriage had they imposed anything on me. Even though I extend my faith to include
so many more, but still when I am in trouble, I remember my Allah. I have been brought up like that. Because I
am so grounded in my faith. I read my aayatein and kalmein. It is something which is in my blood and my genes.
It cannot wear off. But that doesn‟t make me less accepting of anything else. I go to temples, church and
gurudwaras. My own spiritual centre forms in these ways. But when I have to connect with God, my God is the
invisible. The one that I grew up with. But I will not impose this on my child.

Keeping the faith and piety she was brought up with is also the case with Nina, although the fact that a
wife leaves her husband because of an imposition of Islamic religious practices was not the case with
Nina. At the risk of creating a generalised observation, I would insist that whatever my participants said
about a general condition of inter religiosity proved to be nullified by my other participants.

Neha, Suneel and Khirad’s daughter prefers to see herself as a Hindu and is often branded as a Hindu
because of her name. She says that neither her last nor first name suggests anything of her Islamic roots
thus, she is often assumed to be a Hindu. She says;

Most people don‟t know that I am half Muslim. I don‟t very often say that I am. It mostly comes out when people
try to teach me a thing or two about religion, especially Muslims. Hindus just assume I am a Hindu. But because
I am at Jamia, people try to disown me. They assume that I wouldn‟t know anything about Islam. So then I have
to tell them that I am half Muslim. Then they say that I look 100 % Hindu.

Nina’s answers vary starkly with Khirad and Prabtoj’s. Just as she is the bearer of the dual inter
religiosities within herself, she also imparts a similar approach to her children. Although she says that she
has made her children Muslims, she admits to not being oblivious to modern changes and
transformations that can’t be overlooked. Her sole concern is her children. She says;

I haven‟t given my children any ultimatum about marriage. They can marry whoever. But Sohail asks me have I
spoken to my husband about what he will do if his son marries from his choice? He says „I will hang myself‟. He
says if Sara doesn‟t do namaz, I will kill you and kill myself too. I had to complain against my husband in the

12
 police. I had to do it for my children. I love him, he is my husband. It was a very tough decision to complain
against my husband. I did it for the freedom of my children.

Imran wants her Sarah to wear naqaab. What naqaab will she wear? She always wears jeans and then he gets
upset. To other people he says that his children are modern. I tell my husband that why don‟t you live in Jamia if
you want to be so kattar (a term used to refer to a staunch religious follower)? I told him you can‟t stay
in DDA with this mentality. He is not a fool, he knows everything. He thinks of me as a slave and a dog. He
just wants to keep me under his pressure.

The observance of daily rituals and practices is then designed separately be each family. While Khirad and
Suneel don’t practise religious rituals on a daily basis at all, doing only perfunctory ceremonies at Diwali
and Eid; Prabtoj and Iftiqar practise their religion (with Iftiqar’s parents being more practising than him)
and also teach their daughter their own religion. While Neha has not been taught either, she sees herself
as a Hindu due to an external imposition. The practise of rituals on a daily basis is directly connected to
the ideas of faith which my participants discussed with keen interest. Questions around faith often
generated answers which linked the ideas my participants had about their faith to their childhood.

Faith
In the course of my fieldwork, I was faced with a question I posed to myself and only later posed to my
respondents; is atheism something that stems from your not being religious as individuals or is it a consequent position you
take as a response to two different religions coming together in marriage? In other words, is atheism an alternative to
explicit inter-religiosity? Khirad‟s answer to this question was;

I don‟t have an atheistic approach. I am a believer. I don‟t wear my religion on my head. It‟s all in my head. I
have a dialogue with God in a very, very Muslim sense because I was taught that way. I do the fateha (the
opening chapter of the Quran). At the same time, I am so respectful to other religions that I can pray in any
religious setting. I can pray in front of an idol in my house. I can pray in a Church or a temple or in a Buddhist
religious space. I am very drawn to faith. My orientation and my internalisation has been in a particular religion
and therefore my address to God takes that form. I am not an atheist. I believe that there is one God and I believe
there is something called destiny and the world is run by one supreme power and that there is a place where you will
be questioned for what you did in this life. I don‟t live fearlessly. I must say, that I am not sure if anything has
transferred indirectly to my daughter.

A point I would like to emphasise upon is that for Khirad, Suneel and Neha, liberality always has to do
with a complete non-observance of religion and an acceptance of the person for their individual qualities
that have nothing to do with religion. Suneel tells me,

„‟I have never been religious. My school taught me all religious prayers. Right from „lab pe aati hai dua ban ke
tamanna‟ to Sanskritic prayers. I am much more drawn to something called contemplation. When we were kids in
school we had a choice between Temple, church, mosque and contemplation. In class 7th you could choose one out of
these and I chose „Contemplation‟ We had to go to an auditorium where there were statues of Gandhi,
Vivekananda and Ambedkar3 and others and a teacher would come and he would speak about something. I was
drawn to that.

His daughter, Neha, keeps a shelf in her room which has a small Bhagwat Gita, a statue of Ganesh and a
copy of the Bible. She says that she does not particularly relate herself to any religion but if she would
have to, she would identify herself as a Hindu. She says;

3
Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda and B.R Ambedkar.

13
 If I want to marry a Muslim, my dad may not appreciate it. Initially he may be like „oh!‟. Even though he‟s
married a Muslim. But they may not oppose it. It‟s not just about Islam, it‟s also about how conservative the
household is. My parents still see it as a marriage which is also with a family, it‟s not just between two people.‟‟

I don‟t relate too much to anything. My parents haven‟t told me anything about religion. They barely told me
anything mythological stories when I was growing up. But when I pray, I just have a tendency to say „bhagwan‟. I
can‟t say that I relate myself too much to anything but I think I relate myself to Hinduism a little more even
though I don‟t know much about it. I‟ve just been brought up among Hindu people and in Hindu schools where
Hindu prayers are spoken. Also, my mom or my dad is not very practising. Whatever comes, it comes from
outside. On my birth certificate, I am a Hindu because my mom is also a Hindu. They might have told you that
they used the Special Marriage Act but I don‟t think so.

The lack of practise also leads Neha to keep her faith very undefined but she chooses Hinduism as she is
identified as a Hindu by the outside world. To Prabtoj, I did not ask any particular questions about faith.
She had many things to say about the fact that faith, and not any religion, guides her belief and that of her
marital relationship. In Prabtoj’s case, faith is often that which submerges the identity. Prabtoj tells me;

Aapke dil mein shraddha hai agar, bhagwan ek hai, chahe mein apna guru granth sahib padhun ya quran
padhu. (If you have faith in your heart, God is one, whether you read the Granth or the Quran)
Uska conclusion to yehi hai, ki God is one. Sabke dil mein shraddha honi chahiye. Wo show karega mein kitni
aastik hun ya nastic hun.(Everyone should have faith in their hearts, that will show whether I am a
faithful person or not)

Aira knows, whenever I do my prayers, she knows she stands with me and says the ardas [a Sikh prayer].
Phuphi namaz padhti hai paancho time. She‟ll take a dupatta, she‟ll sit with her aur usko dono ye pata hai, ki
ardas kaise karni hai aur namaz kaise karni hai. [When her aunt does the namaz, she sits with her
also. She knows how to do both the rituals]

Faith and its importance are also imposed by the extended family. I interviewed Suneel’s mother, Aji. She
narrated an instance telling me the way Khirad’s Muslim identity is perceived in their family;

My mother in law gave a very important durga devi murti to me. Meri nanad, crooked hai bari. Wo 85 ki hogi
abhi. She says ki that moorti wont go to Suneel‟s place. Wo hamari ghar ki purani moorti hai .[ My sister-in-
law, she is very crooked, She is 85 years old. She said the murti won‟t go to Suneel‟s house]

It should not come to Suneel‟s house, because Khirad is Muslim. I thought, why not? I will give to Suneel only.
Why should I give to my brother in law like she says? He is younger to me. Mera son, beta to hai na. Why should
I not give him [If my son is there, why should I give it to anyone else?]

The question of faith immediately mixes with the question of material and professional achievements.
Material objects, wealth and personal credentials of an individual begin to also play roles of contestation
in the fields of religious conflict in families comprising of multiple religions. Suneel describes to me that
his wife’s professional success, their financial conditions being very good contribute to Khirad being
accepted so easily into their family. Inter religiosity, when enters marriage inevitably becomes a question
of performativity as well as power play. Not to suggest that this isn’t the case with endogamous and
religiously homogenous marriages. However, the assessment of performativity in these marriages is done
from the lens and the plane of the categories of caste and religion. As Suneel told me,

14
 After the parents, comes the extended families. They‟re more complicated because they come with their bias, their
community bias, personal bias their personal educations. And they wonder how is this happened? And how is it
lasted? Most people gave us six months. How do we relate to them? You meet them almost never. And I keep a
distance because I don‟t know their views. Because I am not confident of everybody‟s liberality and love.

I don‟t know whether they like me love me just because I am Khirad‟s husband. There are others who make it
known that because I am Khirad‟s husband, I am welcome. I am welcome. I am one of them. No bias. They make
it known. There are others who don‟t let it be known, who are as cautious towards me as I am towards them. So
there I have to tread me more carefully.

There are other things, I am tall, I am reasonably good looking, I am wealthy. These things make a difference. If I
had been shorter than Khirad, not very good looking and poor, then I would have had a very different reception.
„‟arre guddi ne itna khoobsurat ladka kahan se dhoondha‟‟ (she found such a good looking boy) these are added
advantages. Every girl has her fantasies. All the relatives who were there said that Khirad found a good one, she
landed a good one, wo bhi hota hai na. hamari family mein bhi hota hai. (this happens in our family too)
They say that „‟hey! she got an award?‟ Suneel married a Muslim and she got an award? These things matter
because we‟re brain people. She‟s a national figure. What a big deal. If you can achieve inspite of your so called
inter religiosity, which has not hampered but has assisted….that means you were able to prosper within an inter
religious set up.

Earlier prosperity was only on account of family and lineage. Always family took credit for your brilliance and
independence. You stand alone and they thought accha Suneel ne to muslim se shaadi kiya tha. Par ab paisa hai?
(he married a Muslim, but now they have money?) They have so much property? They think this way.
Achievements matter. People will say Oh it failed? But that‟s not the reason. People drift apart for different
reasons. If you‟ve mess it up, you‟ve had it. If you do well, you‟ll be accepted.

Approval is very ongoing it changes. I get married to a Muslim, they say „oh we give him six months, he wont be
able to handle it.‟‟ But then 6 years later, 12 years later, 18 years later and 24 years later no one is talking of
giving it six months. They say now „„who sandeep ki biwi (she‟s a hindu) wo thodi ajeeb nahi hai? Isse accha to
Khirad hi hai.‟‟ (Sandeep‟s wife, isn‟t she a bit odd? Even Khirad is better than her) What does that mean?
Means all the other cousins have also brought other bahus (daughter-in-laws) to the family and those bahus have
also proven themselves in certain ways to be thick skinned, to be pig headed, to be disobedient. There are
comparisons with other bahus. In that, Khirad stand best.

There are bahus who also bring attributes to the families. I had a cousin who came to visit with her daughter and
she went back and gave good reviews about Suneel‟s house and wife and family. Khirad is generally a warm and
friendly soul. What she has, she gives. She always has something to give to everybody. She‟s gives to others quite
liberally. And that‟s her nature. Wo karti hai, to wo recognise hota hai. Over the years reviews better ho gaye
hain. And then they get compared with the Hindu bahus. What are elders looking for? Theyre looking for
respect gifts and give aways and how you hold the fabric of the family together. They see the the muslim bahu doing
all of that and not the hindu bahu. The hindu bahus are being destructive. „‟woh Khirad to acchi hai‟‟ She turned
out to be the best of the lot‟ that‟s an award and an attribute that is being given. If she gets into an argument, with
an elder, she‟ll get painted the other way, „‟Ki arre wo to muslim hai‟‟ (Oh because she is a Muslim). The other
hindu bahus are not compared on religious grounds but on their qualities and they all contribute to the critique of
other bahus. They spend a lot of time doing that, to paint themselves in glory.

What Suneel describes is an instability of Khirad’s image in the family and an excess to her identity; that
of being a Muslim. In a case I shall discuss later in this dissertation, Aleena, a Christian ceases to be
accepted by her husband Rajesh’s family. Rajesh belongs to a Brahman Hindu family who says that he

15
married Aleena as she was educated and would assist him in running his household better. Although the
very reason for marrying her was her educational and professional capabilities (which also did help
Rajesh’s household to a large extent) Aleena is still not accepted by her in-laws after almost thirty years.

The constant weighing of a person’s behaviour and achievement to their religious identity is a recurrent
narrative I gather in all my interviews. While this is fairly a predictable concept of evaluating the woman
who comes into the family from ‘outside’, its consequences in the case of inter religious marriages are
hardly prophetic. In some cases, a good professional or behavioural performance might lead a person
being accepted in their spouse’s family who initially were opposed to them. However it can be said that
this relies on no particular expected pattern; the ‘acceptance’ of the person holding the other religious
identity remains a space of perpetual contestation.

Making Inter Religiosity Transcendent: The Inter Religious Subject

The scholarly inspiration for developing this concept as a subject for study stems from Talal Asad’s The
Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Asad questions at the very beginning of the essay, what is the object of
investigation of the anthropology of Islam? Asad writes that the anthropology of Islam will surely investigate
Islam but he is dissatisfied with the ‘conceptual basis’ of the literature on Islam. (Asad, 1986) I do not
face such a large scholarly conundrum, however, my curiosity is similar to his in terms of the ends it
hopes to achieve; I intend to conceptually shape what inter religiosity, necessarily shaped through
marriage, entails. In the final analysis, Asad dismisses both ‘’Islam as a distinctive social structure’’ or as ‘’a
heterogenous collection of beliefs, artefacts, customs and morals’’ and he asserts that ‘’Islam is a
tradition’’. (Asad, 1986)In this study, I have relied upon my interviews and the answers of my participants
to arrive at any conclusion. Asad defines a tradition as ‘’ a tradition consists essentially of discourses that
seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practise that, precisely,
because it is established has a history.’’ (Asad, 1986) He then arrives at a definition of an Islamic
discursive tradition4 and says that ‘not everything Muslims say and do belongs to an Islamic discursive
tradition.’

Based on my interviews, this study led me to consider the two kinds of inter religiosities. One is a rigid
and fixed kind; the recognition of inter religiosity. Nina, Aleena are still seen as outsiders, their marriages
are painted in a negative fashion because of their inter religiosities. These couples have always been
recognised after many years as possessing this inter religiosity and this inter religiosity is seen as
undesirable. Their families do not wish to integrate them into their family matters of consensus, they
never visit their houses and do not wish to share their property with them. They are clearly ‘outsiders’ and
the family they create is an ‘inter religious’ family which is undesirable and hence kept ‘out’ with varying
degrees of ostracizing. Khirad is accepted, she is seen as the ‘good bahu’ and is appreciated and this
appreciation comes by simultaneously saying that ‘even though she is a muslim she is so good’ (As her
husband Suneel describes what the family thinks about her)

This is the inter religiosity necessarily manifested because it is the recognition of two identities merging
together and this recognition never collapses. It is maintained for the full circle of recognitions; for the
husband and wife, the child, the grandparents, the extended family, the neighbours, the census official,
the law and for me the researcher as well.

The other form of inter religiosity which we imagine taking ‘syncretic’ and blended forms of religious
performativity need not necessarily be found in all the cases. In the cases where Imran, Prabtoj, Iftiqar or

4
It is defined as „an Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the
Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practise in the present‟

16
Shehreyar are not adopting any aspect of the religion of their spouse, it is not manifesting in a blended
form. It merely remains in the ‘outer’ domain (bahaar) It does not come within like it does for Nina or for
Khirad. The inter religiosity which is formed or not formed within is the one that poses the problem that
Asad faces; if there are so many cases where the adoption of the rituals and practices of the ‘other’ is done
and is done in varying degrees, can there be an underlying logic that will assist us in grasping these cultural
formations?

Are these simply singularities? They cannot be because the inter religiosity formed within, in these cases,
necessarily succeeds the one formed outside. So these singularities will always engage with the rigid one
that is formed a priori to the one formed subsequently. These are the interactions we need to investigate
again and again in order to arrive at ‘inter religiosity’ as a cogent subject of study for social anthropology.
The identity compulsorily shapes the ‘inter religiosity’ to either be produced or not be produced. Asad
writes, ‘’for an anthropologist of Islam, the proper theoretical beginning is therefore an instituted practise
(set in a particular context, and having a particular history) into which Muslims are inducted as Muslims.’’
(Asad, 1986) [emphasis in the original] Are inter religious families then inducted into certain practices
because they are inter religious? If yes, then what determines the constitution of these practices into a
form that may become an object for sociological or anthropological examination?

Of course I am at a lack here as I cannot draw simplistic and derivative analogies with Asad. The
commonality is only the attempt to establish something as an object or subject for investigation.
However, examining Islam and inter religiosity as two objects for study are very different projects. I do
not need to mention the established existence and nature of Islam as a ‘world religion’ which
distinguishes it from the idea of inter religiosity. Inter religiosity as a concept is not backed by theology or
political history in the same terminology. Asad is exploring the veracity of the claims made by different
scholars in placing Islam as a certain analytical category. The Middle East, its relationship with Europe,
the roles played by the clergy, the tribes, the written word are then intrinsic and inseparable to that
analysis.

Nonetheless, the continuity of thought that Asad produces in order to understand what the anthropology
of Islam and Islam itself may be is crucial. For instance, in critiquing Ernest Gellner’s Muslim Society, Asad
says that the focus should not be which religion used political power for religious purposes but rather to
search for the ‘structures of power’ which led to the production of certain kinds of knowledge. A clear
separation is also the fact that my work is not entirely anthropological while Asad is an anthropologist
trying to produce a convention on the understanding of Islam as an analytical category in his discipline.
My work can either be sociological or anthropological depending on the concepts and methodologies I
use when I pursue it further. As of now, the disciplinary grounding is not absolutely distinct, whether it is
sociological or anthropological.

In rendering Gellner’s analysis unhelpful because it reproduces Islam as the ‘’mirror image’’ (Gellner) of
Christianity showing a reversed connection of religion and power. He says, ‘’the argument here is not
against the attempt to generalise, but against the manner in which the generalisation was undertaken.
Anyone working on the anthropology of Islam will be aware that there is considerable diversity in the
beliefs and practices of Muslims. The first problem is therefore one of organising this diversity in terms
of an adequate concept’’. (Asad, 1986) My interest in his work is to gather the method and the scholarly
lens with which to shape complex actualities of inter religious marriages into an abstract and appropriated
conceptualisation. He rejects both an easy conflation of Islam with power as well as the idea of saying
that every instance of Islam is unique.

Asad also dismisses Michael Gilsenan’s proposition that Islam is ‘simply what Muslims everywhere say it
is’ because Muslims themselves are divided on the definition and practice of Islam. Asad arrives at a

17
definition of Islam by rejecting other definitions. Islam then is defined more easily by knowing what it is
not. In the case of inter religiosity, what will it be? Another critique to Gellner is that in writing about
Muslim societies, more emphasis is laid on the actors rather than the discourse which shaped the actions
of the actors in question. 5 Within the concept of inter religiosity however, is it the discourse or the actors
which should be focused upon given that inter-religiosity runs the risk of being shaped by singular
instances?

Asad critiques the conclusion that the anthropologist Abdul Hamid El-Zein arrives at in his survey titled
‘’Beyond Ideology and Theology: The Search for the Anthropology of Islam‟’. Zein concludes that since there are
numerous diverse forms of Islam and each can be studied with equal commitment so then Asad finds his
conclusion that ‘Islam as an analytical category dissolves as well’, puzzling and incomplete. Throughout
the text, the argument that Asad poses is that even though Islam as a religion or a practise may witness
innumerable beliefs, rituals and take so many traditional forms, it does not mean that ‘no coherent object
for an anthropology of Islam is possible’’ (Asad, 1986)

Asad lays emphasis on the practices which are authorised by the discursive traditions of Islam and are
taught so to Muslims, whether literate or otherwise. Another significant aspect of what shapes the
pedagogy of these practices is the fact that ‘’ orthodoxy is not a mere body of opinion but a distinctive
relationship of power. Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require or adjust correct
practices, and to condemn, exclude, undermine, or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain of
orthodoxy.’’ (Asad, 1986) However, the next thing he emphasises upon becomes even more crucial; the
resistance to this power which this orthodoxy encounters. In any discourse on tradition then, the
actors/collectives exercising power and the resistance they face forms a relationship which defines the
tradition par excellence as it reveals the acceptance or dismissal of the tenets of the tradition in question.

‘’Power, and resistance, are thus intrinsic to the development and exercise of any traditional practise.’’
(Asad, 1986) What one discerns from Asad’s argument is also an underlying and concluding emphasis on
conditions. In his final analysis, it is not just that Islam is a tradition, but also that traditions themselves
are not homogenous (homogeneity being rendered a feature of industrial modernity). The fact that there
are numerous and diverse Islamic traditions which have survived and elapsed, points toward the fact that
the social and historical conditions in which they were produced determine their stability and sustenance.
The Islamic traditions have aimed for ‘coherence’ but the fact that they haven’t attained bears testimony
to the fact that the conditions in which a tradition is placed shape the tradition and its firmness, (Asad,
1986) Social, historical forces and conditions then play a major role in the continuity and preservation of
any tradition. He concludes, ‘an anthropology of Islam will therefore seek to understand the historical
conditions that enable the production and maintenance of specific discursive traditions, or their
transformation – and the efforts of practitioners to achieve coherence. (Asad, 1986) He also points out
in Gellner’s work that when an anthropologist studies a particular religion, two things need to be
determined prior to that; an examination of the social context in which that religion is placed and two, the
definition of religion itself. He sums up the three poignant/determining/foundational sociological
writings on religion by Marx, weber and Durkheim6 in order to elaborate on this.

5
Asad writes, „‟ This purely instrumental view of language is very inadequate- inadequate precisely for this kind of narrative that tries to
describe Muslim society in terms of what motivates culturally recognisable actors. It is only when the anthropologist takes historically
defined discourses seriously, and especially the way they constitute events, that questions can be asked about the conditions in which
Muslim rulers and subjects might have responded variously to authority, to physical fore, to persuasion, or simply to habit.‟‟ (Asad,
1986)
6 Asad sums them up as, In Durkheim it is „‟collective rituals, enactments of the sacred and the symbolic representation of social and

cosmological structures.‟‟ In Marx it is „‟private distress and unfulfilled desire so it is a way to escape from the hardships – producing
false consciousness‟‟ of life and third in weber its about public authority and its „rational‟ (Asad, 1986)

18
Roughly thirty years after Asad’s arduous engagement with Islam as an analytical category for the
anthropology of religion, Veena Das writes, Cohabitating an Inter Religious milieu and arrives at the
conclusion7 that religious pluralism is in fact the entry point from which to study the creation of the
religious subject. Her insistence is that since the anthropology of religion has come to realise that ‘world
religions’ and ‘isolated religious traditions’ are not the configuration within which to observe cultures of
piety and religiosity; then the very field of analysis has transformed itself. It is no longer immersed in
identifying the distinguishability of religious traditions but is as much involved in examining its
indistinguishability. The ‘different scales of social life’ and the ‘movements’ that connect these become
urgent and substantial indicators with which to examine both religiosity as well as inter religiosity.7

Keeping both these anthropological approaches in my mind, I approach the study of inter religiosity in
order to examine its various forms and examine whether there may be an underlying logic to the inter
religiosity produced through marriage. For this, I approach texts which detail on texts and traditions
which have been historically multicultural.

The Transgression of Fixed Identities

In my reading, the text by David Gilmartin and Bruce Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu is actively
engaging with two projects which are both inter related; the first is implicit in the title itself, which
suggests that it is trying to go ‘beyond’ ‘Turk’ and ‘Hindu’. The second is to rewrite the frames of the
history of religious identity and cultures of piety in South Asia, a point I shall address after engaging with
the first.

Beginning their text by presenting the widely accepted notion (through the work of an Egyptian jurist,
Muhammad al-Asmawy) that Hindus and Muslims (or for a broader framework, Islam and Hinduism) are
considered historically antithetical to each other owing to the differences in their ‘world views’ and the
fact that Islam draws more theological parallels with Christianity and Judaism, rendering it more
incompatible with Hinduism. Lawrence and Gilmartin do not attempt to defy the differences which of
course exist between the two religions but instead keep the differences intact and engage with ‘everyday
life and social exchange’. These are, as their compilation and analysis shows, as much a holistic
component of religion as prescribed texts, beliefs and rituals making religion elide with ‘culture’. To put it
in their own words, the ‘external markers are necessary but the real business of identity is moving beyond
them’, as described in the section on Christopher Shackle’s study of the qissa tradition. The Punjabi qissa
or romance is a literary genre which represents both Islamic and Indic portrayals of love. (Lawrence &
Gilmartin, 2000) An excerpt from the text analyses a verse from the Sufi poets, Bulle Shah’s (1680-1758)
Bulla ki janah mein kaun,

‘’Without the tension between these two poles, the qissa loses its bivalent appeal, but through the constant
reiteration of this tension it suggests the limited scope of either a purely universal or a narrowly local identity. To be
real, to experience love, an individual‟s identity must always be open to transgression.’’

[Lawrence & Gilmartin, 2000, p.7]

7 In recent years the anthropology of religion has become much more attuned to the fact that religious traditions do not exist in isolation
from each other – rather, religious pluralism is the normal condition in which religious subjectivities are formed. Yet the impetus to render
the relations between religions as that of fully formed traditions which are juxtaposed with each other has led to the idea that religious
pluralism is another name for religious tolerance, or at the very least a striving for religious tolerance. I have argued instead that our task
is to track how religious diversity occurs at different scales of social life and to understand the movements that occur connecting these
different scales. (Das, 2015)

19
The larger argument of the text seeks to establish that while fixed identities are extremely (or as they call
it, ‘pervasive’) unambiguous and clear cut today, but the conflation of the ‘Islamic and Indic’ frames and
the subsequent culture produced is what shapes culture in daily life. The usage of ‘Islamic’ (which does
not necessarily translate into ‘Muslim’) and ‘Indic’ (not to be easily seen as ‘Hindu’) is itself an exemplary
display of their contribution to the scholarship on South Asian culture. 8

The subjects, texts, persons they have selected for compilation in their texts are images of, if I may
suggest, an unalloyed existence that is created by the necessary transgression of fixed and rigid identities.
The act of love is depicted and lived as a pure transcendence. The qissa tradition’s thematic focus is on
romantic love being such an influential cross-over that the previous identities are not only declared
unimportant but are even relinquished. The idea is for the two ‘world views’ and the two individuals in
love to either exist together, composed and now existing eventually as one; or to exist as neither. A return
to fixity is informally denied.9

However, the fixed identities were crucial, if only to begin with in the first place. Bulle Shah needs to
first be either from Lahore or from Nagaur, he has to first be a Hindu or a Turk in order to achieve the
real purpose of finding God; belonging to neither of the categories he began with. Transcending the
immanent becomes the necessary and the immensely desirable end. In this way, the cultural and religious
history of the individual and collective identities of South Asia is also rewritten. Rather, the history ceases
to be seen, from this analysis, through individuals and collectives but is instead looked at from the lens of
frames of language and culture; a space in which fixities survive with difficulty.

The second work I examine in the text by Lawrence and Gilmartin is the work on the Cirrapuranam by
Vasudha Narayan. The Cirrapuranam is a Tamil poem composed by Tamil Muslims in the seventeenth
century which praises Muhammad, the Prophet. As Narayan explains, the term itself is an amalgamation
of two literary and devotional genres; the sira (life of the prophet) and the purana (the Indic devotional
genre)10 The Cirrapuranam is a genre that brings the Muslim closer to the land of India which he/she sees
as the motherland and also to Tamil which is their mother tongue. It retains the identity and
belongingness of the Muslim to both Arabia and Southern India through the equal and literary blend of
two theologically significant things, the sirah and the puranas. The Cirrapuranam reveres the Prophet
Muhammad, he is the figure of devotion but the ‘’conventions and vocabulary of the text thus rooted
devotion to the Prophet in a Tamil conceptual world – a world shared by both Hindus and Muslims
alike.’’ (Narayan, 2000) They talk about the Prophet’s birth as an avatar which is the Sanskrit word used
to define the various life forms of the Hindu God Vishnu. The usage of this word in fact, as Narayan
rightly points out, exalts Prophet as more than human and therefore challenges the larger accepted
theological understanding of the Prophet as simply human and not divine or otherworldly by only
replacing a word with another.

8
Both Islamicate and Indic suggest a repertoire of language and behaviour, knowledge and power, that define broad
cosmologies of human existence. Neither denotes simply bounded groups self-defined as Muslim and Hindu. (Lawrence &
Gilmartin, 2000)
9 The transgression is done through power drawn from love and its symbolic meaning – from its symbolic meaning –from its

links to the universal values of larger civilisations traditions‟‟

10 See Narayan, Vasudha, 2000. Religious Vocabulary and Regional Identity: A Study of the Tamil Cirrapuranam. In

Lawrence, Bruce & Gilmartin, David, ed(s). 2000. Beyond Turk and Hindu. Florida: University Press of Florida, p.
7498

20
 The Cirrapuranam also names the four vedas as the Torah, the Capur, the Quran and the Bible.11 Umaru,
the poet, describes the Islamic holy city of Mecca with Tamil/Hindu cosmological details, the shahada in
Islam (La illah illallah..) is known as the mula mantra in this context and has to be repeated constantly.
Narayan establishes that the vocabulary, the tempo of the poem, the language takes the clear form of
Hindu traditions; ‘but the exegesis is clearly Islamic in character’. (Narayan, 2000).

Throughout the text, Narayan emphasises on the dual nature of this poem using instances from the latter
to bring to our attention the usage of typical Hindu devotional literature to describe the Prophet
Muhammad. As I realised while studying this concept of inter religiosity, within families it is not so easily
replicable. The first dissimilarity is of course that the Cirrapuranam is a literary text while the subjects of
my study are persons in a domestic set up as well as their daily interaction with religious rituals and
practices. In my research, this relationship becomes reverse. Tamil Muslims, conscious of their antique
presence in the Indian subcontinent demonstrate their prolific knowledge of both Islamic history and
tradition as well as that of the Tamil language and literary conventions culminating in the production of a
text such as the Cirrapuranam. ‘’Apart from a few allusions, there is no attempt made to incorporate Hindu
deities within the world view of Islam in either a positive or a negative fashion. The appropriation of the
Prophet into a Tamil world shared by Hindus and Muslims alike is accomplished through the generic use
of convention and language.’’ (Narayan, 2000)

Through inter religious marriages, individuals belonging to different religious identities and categories
rather shape an ‘inter religiosity’ through which they approach the texts of the ‘world religions’ in novel
and ingenious ways. Two things emerge from this which make these ‘inter religious’ approaches different;
one the interpretation of these texts takes individual forms and secondly, these texts begin to lose the
acknowledgement of being the central and sole authority of the divine word in a particular family.

These acknowledgements then counter the claims of religions such as Islam and Christianity who contest
the theological authority of their respective texts the world over, whether in medieval religious histories or
in contemporary times. Nina tells me that the Quran and the Bible are books that came from heaven and
are both equally sacred. The fact that the Quran and the Bible are both sacred texts is not the source of
astonishment but rather the fact that both these texts can be the reservoir of faith that an individual
preserves within themselves becomes a crucial aspect which shapes yet another form for the observance
of piety.

The Cirrapuranam is a tradition. A ‘tradition’ in the way Asad attempted to define Islam. Kinship groups
hardly produce traditions as large and monumental as this text or the tradition of Islam itself, one would
hardly expect a practical, lived version of a text like the Cirrapuranam emerging (even if it did, it would be a
completely different plane of the operation of inter religiosity), neither should the expectation be to see
whether inter religious families are similar or dissimilar to the inherent inter religiosity manifested within
the Cirrapuranam. What one can question however is whether or not these alliances hold the potential to
imagine certain syncretic formations, through their daily practices, with the intentional basis of this
imagination being similar to that which the writers of the Cirrapuranam possessed i.e. to merge two
seemingly disparate theological and linguistic traditions in order to establish an entity which represents
their own identity i.e simultaneously Tamil, South Indian and Muslim. 12

Given to Moses, David, Muhammad and Jesus respectively.

11
12
Narayan writes that, ‘’It was generic conventions that helped to construct a framework for identity that
was simultaneously Muslim and Tamil’’ (Narayan, 2000) [emphasis in the original]

21
Conclusion: The Interness

An unvarying observation is that there is no one particular narrative that one can construct around the
inter religiosity being examined. There are multiple reasons for why persons in this study did inter
religious marriages, various manners in which they perform religious rituals and which religious identity
they wish to maintain. Of course, what I also intended to examine implicitly were the relationships of
power between the religious and gender identities involved which determines the kind of religious
engagement produced. In that aspect as well, there is no single logic. While Nina converted to Islam
and practices both Christianity and Islam, Prabtoj did not. Iftiqar and Prabtoj maintain their own religions
and impart knowledge about both to their daughter. In the case of Khirad and Suneel, no conversion
took place and religion is in fact seen as an undesirable topic of discussion in their house. Further in this
dissertation, two more case studies will be taken up for discussion,. The first is the case of Aleena and
Rajesh which reveals that the reasons for entering an inter religious marriage need not necessarily be love.
Rajesh said to me that he married Aleena for practical reasons as she was educated and had a job, unlike
the women he would have married in an arranged marriage. The second case is of Mrs. Sharma whose
daughter married a Muslim and reverted to Islam and later on Mrs Sharma reverted too.

Although, there is no one narrative, what holds them together is a category of necessarily two categories.
These marriages are branded as ‘Special’ by the state (through the Special Marriage Act) and this is why
Mody brands them as a ‘’non-community’’ For themselves, their families and the state they are
extraordinary occurrences. In the initial analysis and approach to inter religious couples and their children,
the ‘interness’ is played out most evidently only through categories. The interplay of the categories seen as
compulsorily disparate creates this inter religiosity. The religiosity of endogamous marriages is invisibilised
while in exogamous marriages, the religious categories become overplayed. For the individuals who get
married, their families, their neighbours, the law and the state, and me as a researcher; these categories are
overplayed and constantly made visible. In a spectrum of visibilities, these marriages are on an extreme
end, far from an immersed, middle space of invisible entities.

A Hindu marrying another Hindu from the same caste and a different gotra is never brought to matters of
justification (the same way in which heterosexual marriages and relationships produce an unquestioned
heteronormativity in society at large). These marriages need to be constantly justified and need to produce
valid reasons for coming into being. In other words, exogamous marriages are incessantly asked, ‘why did
you do this?’

This is also exemplified through their own responses when they’re subjected to questioning regarding
their marriage, as was the case with my interviews. I would initiate the interviews by explaining that
although I am as interested in the spaces of religious conflict that are or are not present in their marriages,
the objective of my study is to gather details of practices that may seem ‘ordinary’ in the daily life (rituals
and practices being my entry point, not conflict). As a general trend, my participants begin their answers
with the problems that they face in their marriages or explaining that they didn’t face as many problems
due to such and such reasons. Either way, it’s a denial or affirmation of problems.

Therefore, the excessive visibility of exogamous marriages may become manifested in numerous spheres
of operation, one of them being that of justification. My dissertation is not distant from this demand for
justification. It is actually placed right in the contours of a constant probing into what may otherwise
seem, and even should be, ordinary.

Surely these problems are not only of exogamous marriages and there is not even a general pattern to the
daily life of endogamous marriages as well. Patterns serve the purpose of assisting us in predicting

22
possible outcomes and consequences. Certain aspects of daily life revealed in my study are common to
both endogamous as well as exogamous marriages. One instance could be of Nina and Imran and the fact
that domestic violence plays such a crucial role in their marital relationship. These reasons one can find
in any marriage, inter religious or not.

But where all these marriages are unique is in the same domain that also unites them. They’re all united in
their inter religiosity, but they’re also extremely diverse in their designing of an inter-religious set up.13
This diversity is different from the diversity that constitutes endogamous marriages. The questions which
I posed to my respondents (provided at the beginning of this chapter) would not need to be posed to
endogamous married couples. These are fairly ordinary aspects of one’s family life as religious and
community guidelines usually dictate and provide a model for these. What negotiations do these
extraordinary couples do with what is seen as ordinary?

As I propose that there is no pattern to the inter religiosity shaped by marriage then do we lose the
possibility of constructing inter religiosity as a subject for study? In the interim, (as this is dissertation has
its limits, I shall engage with this particular project later in greater depth) we may arrive at an
understanding that there are two different kinds of inter religiosities that come into existence.

The first form of inter religiosity is created as it comes into existence because of two individuals holding
two different religious identities and entering the social and legal institution of marriage. This creation is
static and it produces these couples as an entity; an inter-religious married couple. The second form of
inter religiosity is in fact produced. One is necessarily produced from the outside which is a mark, an
imposition that neither can evade. The latter is for the family to create, preserve and reproduce. Do all
couples produce it in similar degrees? What are the various forms of this production? In Nina’s case, the
onus of the inter religiosity lies completely with her in the family, no one else. Between Prabtoj and
Iftiqar, a crucial inter religious ethic is formed within their daughter, Aira. In Suneel and Khirad’s family,
their inter religiosity mainly lies in their interaction with their extended family. Can we say that inter
religiosity then is simpler to create but difficult to produce? It is not as simple as saying ‘everyone
fashions their marriage differently’. These cases are unique and wholly different in themselves. They
have constantly born the burden of having to justify their choices and explain the sustainability of their
marriages. Even historically, as I shall later discuss, these couples have been seen as holding a subversive
potential and a having direct link to active politics.

This created inter religiosity entails both denial and affirmation of the former. As Suneel tells me,
Khirad’s relatives prefer to live with them when they visit Delhi as they desire to observe a multi-cultural
set up showing a clear sense of affirmation. On the other hand, as Aji tells me, the elders in Suneel’s
family do not wish to give their sacred and valued murti to his house as his wife is a Muslim. The extended
family (and the State as shown through Mody’s argument) constantly responds to this created inter
religiosity in forms that also signify their denial or acceptance of the inter religiosity that is subsequently
produced.

There is no particular way of describing this inter-religiosity that is produced. One is external, the other
internal with constant shuffling between the two surfaces. It is their daughter, Neha, who told me during
our interview that her mother had to convert to Hinduism to marry Suneel. She tells me that they
probably did not wish to share this information with me. Khirad had to convert to Hinduism despite
Suneel saying that he himself is an atheist and he does not exaggerate the religious identity of his wife.
Rather, her behaviour, her qualities and her professional success is what everyone in their family values

13Tolstoy begins his acclaimed novel Anna Karenina with the line, ‘Happy families are all alike but every unhappy
family is unhappy in its own way’’ In this context, it may be said that, that unhappiness is a varied existence but
unhappiness is a condition combining them all.

23
about Khirad. What are the things that ‘make up’ for her being a Muslim? Both Suneel and his mother
prefer that Khirad does not say ‘Hey Allah!’ or come home and do namaz. Suneel prefers being an atheist
and discussing art and architecture with his wife, he does not wish to discuss religion. He says;

Why keep on doing the same thing that you know has nothing to do with..if two of us are together in a marriage,
then there are 100 other things to talk about, there is art history, there is writing, there is her work, there is my
work, there is careers, there is children, we‟re bringing up a child together, there is a dog, there are in-laws..there is
whole world of other things..why do you have to put it in the framework of religion.

In that sense, it becomes important to minimise, as far as possible, the very visible and unequivocal
presence of religion. Just as, in Mody’s analysis, love-marriage couple often try to portray their love as
spiritual and otherworldly in order to evade the accusations of lust and a shallow attraction as forming the
basis of their relationship; inter-religious couples also try to evade the religious aspect of their own
identities, their families and their homes. Some prefer to not discuss it (Khirad and Suneel) while others
view their union as that of a ‘love’ which confounds religious differences (Iftaqar and Prabtoj) These two
forms of inter religiosity also meet each other. Khirad should not be a practising Muslim in the house
because to the outer world, they do not want to project an ‘Islamic’ image. Nevertheless, they are
continuously weighed and measured as an inter-religious family. Both these inter religiosities then,
function to question each other.

There is no form or detail of what a produced inter-religiosity would necessarily provide. There are
different normatives one can gather from this research and from other studies on inter religious
marriages; for example, only the woman converts to the religion of her husband or both the spouses
maintain their religion. However, what makes inter religiosity undesirable as well as difficult to produce is
the fact that inter religiosity does not produce a norm for itself in the first place. Therefore, normativity
itself is lost; submitting to chance, personal and individual choice and a monadic opposition to well
established institutions.

The way in which to produce inter religiosity is not pre-determined (there is no religious book, no
modern guideline for this purpose) and hence has to be fashioned afresh each time it is created. The
families I interacted with each design a novel framework for religion within their house. They pose a
challenge to the possibilities and probabilities that we create and affirm to. The work of Jyoti Punwani14
on the myth of ‘Love Jihad’ shows that there can hardly be a class, caste, religion or any other aspect
which can take the responsibility of ascribing a pattern of cultural transformations and practices of these
marriages. Therefore, a definitive and formulaic answer to the question of inter religiosity cannot be
posed.

The Tamil Cirrapuranam forces us to confront the impact of modern dichotomies which made us
Cartesians par excellence whenever we conceived of religion. This Tamil text needs both the traditions it
draws on to exist, or it needs none at all. In the concepts I borrow from Gilmartin and Lawrence, the
inter religiosity produces a category that is necessary dual. The larger idea is to transcend categories and
create a new category whose essence will be bivalence.15 It leads us to not inaugurate with the a priori
categories that create the bivalence, but to begin with bivalence itself. 16

Because it loses normativity and then goes on to become random, inter-religiosity can become a subject
for study to see the scales and the spaces of conflict between hardened religious normativities and inter

14
See Chapter 2
15
In a crude example, is the mule more a donkey or more a horse? Similarly, is the Cirrapuranam more Indic or more Islamicate? The
validity of this question is defeated because of what constitutes the mule.
16
For instance, not to say 2+2 makes 4, but rather to start by examining what constitutes the 4.

24
religiosities as they evolve. The idea of the Cirrapuranam and the qissa become haunting spectres against
the normativities and inter religious marriages constantly flow between the two. This makes exogamous
marriages a source of potential against the institutions of religious and sexual governance. The next
chapter examines the veracity of this potential.

25
 Chapter 2
Potential: Self-Respect, ‘Love-Jihad’ and Subversion

‘’Politicians are waiting just to get another door to open. Neighbours and family are just basic level of politics. All
these questions you‟re asking, who cares about this? Who will listen to this? Will we go to Modi with this?
Politics is different. They just see their interest. How many people have heard about Periyar? These marriages
don‟t really change anything. Willy-nilly changes happen due to this. You should instead study „inter caste
marriage and sustainability‟. These marriages don‟t last. Everyone is always curious whether these marriages last
or they don‟t. Aapne Veer-Zaara bola (you mentioned Veer-Zaara), how many marriages have happened that
way? This is a love story that they‟re putting as entertainment for public. If a Pakistani and a Hindustani wanted
to get married, they would have been killed in one go. Now it can be common too. But there is nothing in this.
That concept which they show in the film, that is not there. Every pilot won‟t go and fall in love with a girl in
Pakistan. Bajirao Mastani is there, they show history. Look at Devdas! It‟s a true story. That family clan is
there even today. But those things that happened in those periods have not been replicated or repeated anywhere.
Why hasn‟t another Devdas been born? ‘’

(Excerpt transcribed from an interview with Rajesh

Bhattacharjee, 8th April 2016, Delhi.)

Rajesh is a Brahmin Hindu who has been married to Aleena, a Christian since twenty five years.
On being asked whether he thinks that inter caste or inter religious marriages hold the potential
of challenging larger political agendas and the cultural divisions of caste and religion; Rajesh
denied and said he does not see any such potential in these marriages.

After engaging with the challenges that inter religiosity poses to society and to its own
conception at large, I have attempted to ask my participants questions regarding their perception
of a potential that inter religiosity may or may not produce. I have engaged with questions
around the ‘Love-Jihad’ campaign of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideas of the
Self Respect movement in Tamil Nadu in the twentieth century and also my participant’s
perceptions of their community’s opposition to their marriages. I have dealt with the works of
Charu Gupta and Jyoti Punwani on ‘Love-Jihad’, Perveez Mody on love marriages and the law as
well as Sara Hodges and V. Geetha’s works on the Self Respect marriages. I have examined the
Self-Respect movement as it imagined and executed transformative familial practices in order to
erase and challenge the caste system and its Brahminical notions.

The State, law and ‘love’

Mody has dealt with the notion of ‘intimacy’ making the concept academically expressive;
detailing the manner in which the state is governing its citizens in matters of love, marriage and
family. The title of her text The Intimate State leaves the reader with a question; what is the
intimacy she is referring to? What is the reference to ‘State’? As I understand it, Mody has tried
to establish the extent to which the state and the law are intimate to the relation between two
individuals. The law and by extension, the state are intimate to social formations and this

26
intimacy increases with a heightened sense of governance that pervades so many aspects of our
lives. Through the five chapters of the book, one reads the numerous narratives Mody has
collected and understands the inherent incompleteness of love marriages in society as they face
immense difficulty shuffling between acceptance and rejection.

This narrative of acceptance and rejection works at multiple levels in Mody’s analysis. It could be
a rejection to legally recognise or register the marriage by the courts or lawyers, or a rejection by
the family to ‘allow’ the marriage to take place or a rejection of the will to try and convince the
family by one of the two individuals involved. Mody writes, ‘’Law as statute is very different
from law as process.’’ (Mody, 2008) In the legal procedures, Mody describes that couples have
to share their photos, messages, alibis containing minute details of their everyday, letters, post-
cards, phone call lists and numerous other personal details in a public gathering. This happens
because the process of the law demands it to be in this fashion. Mody uses various concepts
provided by other scholars to understand the process of a love-marriage and also introduces new
concepts. An important concept she introduces is that of the non-community. She asserts that love-
marriage couples neither did nor do constitute a community in the conventional sense of the
word. ‘’ They are deemed not to belong because of their transgressions, and yet, their identity is
that with which they are firmly born.’’ (Mody, 2006) Altering the well-established structures of
kinship becomes an intrinsic function of love marriages.

The process and legal requirements (described in detail in the chapter Legitimating Love: Tis Hazari
and the Judicial Process that are needed for a Special Marriage to be registered are emblematic of the
fact that the state does not believe marriages between persons of different communities should
be a smooth and no-nonsense affair. In the courtroom, there is the temporal interplay of changes
in sentiment in legal status and social recognition. By detailing on the difficult and ambiguous
procedures of the Special Marriage Act, Mody establishes that marriage is not simply an alliance of
two individuals but is an institution dominated by very influential agents of society.

From Veena Das’s Critical Events, she borrows the concept that the ‘life world of the individual is
colonised by the community and that of the community is in turn colonised by the state.’17 This
is perhaps the best expression of the link of love-marriages, the law and the intimate state. This is
further linked to the concept of ‘Sexual Governance’ provided by Uma Chakravarti and
theorised further here by Mody. The politics around the love-marriage is always linked to the
female body or the izzat and her honour, whether directly or otherwise. The narratives that
Mody has compiled in this book all adhere to this norm and this is where she asserts that the
‘’rhetoric about the inappropriate strengthens the appropriate notions of kinship and around the
female body. The abduction narrative strengthens the state.’’ (Mody, 2008)

It is in her conclusion that Mody refers to the idea I would like to work on prudently establishing
a point where her work ends and mine may begin. She writes, ‘’Through love marriages we see
that despite coercive communities and state interference it is the transformative capacity of the domestic
social world and its ability to redraw its boundaries and absorb change that becomes the bedrock
from which Indians can project their aspirations for the self onto the nation.’’ (Mody, 2008)
[emphasis mine] In what form does the domestic space become that where the national is

17
See „The Intimate State: Love Marriages and the Law in Delhi‟
27
created or challenged or subverted or has its imaginations altered? Through what processes are
the two linked? Further, what processes make it a space through which that challenge can be
posed?

When a religious cohabitation of a domestic space exists, what challenges does it pose to the very
homogenously ‘imagined’ nation? (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities) Conversely, in what
ways does the idea of the nation becomes a challenging force to this inter-religious domestic
space? My intent is to examine, if the national (be it the State, the law or governmental regimes
of divisive politics) gradually becomes emblematic of cultural division and religious
fundamentalism then what forms of subversion, if any, does an inter-religious family produce?
Can it challenge it?

Examining these marriages in order to locate spaces where contradictions to the state and
religious communities are posed need not be a project that begins by talking of marriage and
then builds up to the state. One can also begin by talking of the state’s desires and come down to
its smaller representative; the family and eventually the individual. This is why, Chatterjee
explains, the ‘communities’ are problematic for the nation. The nation can recognise and
facilitate religions, castes, classes, languages, but finds it hard to place the community in the
rubric of its imagination and the law.

Chatterjee begins the chapter ‘‟Communites and the Nation‟‟, by providing an interesting account of
an interaction between a lawyer and a man called Kamalakanta in court. Kamalakanta produces
an uncomfortable situation when he says he belongs to ‘’the Hindu jati’’ or to a ‘’very very dark
varana’’. His prompt and confident refusal to fit himself into the neatly and rigidly defined legal
categories of ‘Brahman’ ‘Kshatriya’ ‘Vaishya’ and ‘Shudhra’ is a possibility that the law (and the
State) cannot fathom. The law wishes for its citizens to be Hindu or Muslim or Jewish or Sikh
and so on. If one says I am all four, the law (and the ones who practise it) cannot accept that
because that identity is not an a priori category. Only a priori categories are recognised and dealt
with. And it is important to note that a priori categories are an essential part of the ‘imagination’
of the nation. If such a milieu were to proliferate, then what sort of (at least immediate, tangible)
changes would we observe? If the national is ‘imagined’ in ‘fragments’ and these fragments are
supposed to remain distinct in themselves, then an interreligious milieu is unwelcome and
difficult to place. I have used only one aspect, that of Love-Jihad, as an instance of the
interaction of the ‘national’ and the conception of inter-religious marriages.

These categories are created as the nation is imagined and are continuously reproduced. Mody has
provided a brilliantly detailed analysis of the State’s interaction with the individual using the law
as an exemplary middle ground (sometimes through the community or sometimes without it).
These structures of control and domination exist and have been challenged throughout history,
through individual cases and even through large radical movements, one such movement being
the Self Respect Movement in South India in the twentieth century. It becomes crucial to
examine it in the light of the potential that inter marriages hold against the state, religious and
legal apparatuses.

28
Self Respect, Nation and the Female Body
Roughly placed between the years 1926 and 1949, the Self Respect Movement (cuyamariyatai
iyakkam) in Tamil Nadu was a phase in the Dravidian movement aimed at a disavowal of
Brahminical domination exemplified through everyday life practices, marriage rituals and family
politics. I look into the Self Respect movement as it effectively presented marriage and family as
the basis of the revolutionary change which they aspired to establish. Assaying to ‘transform
society at the site of its production –the family and also articulating a sense of ‘Tamilness’ by
describing a good, modern family’; this movement had its primary objective as ‘non-Brahmin
uplift’. (Hodges, 2005) Led by E.V. Ramasamy or ‘Periyar’, the Self Respect utilised weekly
newspapers, magazines and the written word18 extensively as a tool for spreading what they
termed as a rational (pakutarivu) critique of the Brahmanical superstition and especially the
practice of untouchability. ‘’Self Respect was not only a set of arguments, but also a set of
practical strategies for transforming daily life and rituals into revolutionary propaganda through
choice of dress, names, home décor an domestic ritual, as well as the attendance of public
meetings and the readings of newspapers.’’ (Hodges, 2005)

As V. Geetha writes, Periyar saw women as providing both sexual and domestic labour in
conventional marriages19. The abolition of the Hindu religion, God, the shastras20 and Brahmins
were seen by Periyar as the four basic way to abolish caste. 21 The Self Respect movement
explicitly put forth the similarities between caste and gender in the imagination of Indian social
structures, if the shudras body pollutes, so does the woman’s. The laws and customs around
property and inheritance which maintained the consolidated material wealth of the Brahmins was
kept in place by putting an increasing pressure on the wife or the mother to produce a male
child.

Periyar’s attempts were to attack this system of ‘sexual slavery legitimised by religion’ from as
many aspects as possible as he was a vehement critique of the devadasi system which he saw as an
alternative to marriage. 22 Expressing his disappointment in the fact that women ‘actively desired’
the thali or mangalsutra even though in his opinion, ‘it bore witness to men’s bestiality, for did it
not brand a woman as an object on one hand and rendered her the sole possession of her
‘’owner’’ on the other?(Kudi Arasu, 13.7.30; quoted in Viramani, 1977; quoted in Geetha, 1999)

18
Hodges writes that households and individuals were often considered „belonging‟ to the Self Respect movement
solely because they prescribed to the newspaper „Kudi Arasu‟ thus establishing the „pedagogic role newspaper
reading played‟ in the houses of Self Respecters. (Hodges, 2005)
19
Periyar not only envisaged an end to the domination of the Brahmins but an end to the Brahmanism which led
the lower castes to believe that they are lowly, untouchable and belong to their designated place in the caste
hierarchy. While Sara Hodges draws a sociological history of this movement, V Geetha intends to „narrate the
story of a different sort of female body, produced, circulated, and proudly owned up by the ideas and practise of
Tamil Non Brahminism and its passage from wifehood to citizenhood, „‟ (Geetha, 1999)
20
Hindu religious scriptures
21
As quoted by Geetha from Ninety-third Birthday Souvenir, quoted in Anaimuthu (ed), Periyar
E.Ve.Ra.Sinthanaikal, 1974
22
See V. Geetha
29
 Periyar was deeply critical of the notions of chastity, beauty and especially motherhood which he
felt kept women way from developing ‘female selfhood’. 3 He insisted for parenthood and a
simultaneous dissolution of motherhood.

‘’Marriage, for Periyar, regulated and disciplined familial and reproductive labour, even as it actively denied their
desires and rights to a self-respecting life of their choice. Of whatever caste or class, the bond of marriage, he argued,
invariably rendered woman a property and slave of her husband.’’

[V.Geetha, 1999, p.6]

The movement aimed at the eradication of the social practices such as child marriage that
enslaved women and their sexualities. EVR worked against a wide range of such practices;
widow remarriages, birth control and the eradication of dowry alongside working to develop
girl’s education and companionate marriage. Hodges says, ‘’what links these reformist agendas
is their faith in the possibilities of a post-Enlightenment modernity in which modern subjects,
and the institutions that governed them, necessarily strive towards ever-expanding degrees of
emancipation, and thereby happiness.’’ (Hodges, 2005)

The Self Respect Movement and other similar movements by reformers such as B.R Ambedkar
and Jotirao Phule23 were initiated a hundred years ago and today I am engaging with isolated
cases of inter religious marriages within which I intend to search for a political challenge to the
larger narrative and even agendas of divisive strategies (for example, the ‘Love-Jihad’ campaign
of the RSS) Contemporarily, a reformist agenda which holds marriage and family as its target
point is absent from the political stage of India yet I still intend to examine the idea of potential
with respect to these marriages. Solely because these marriages now take the limelight for reasons
opposite to what Periyar or Phule made them known for; through campaigns like the ‘Love-
Jihad’ and violent attempts by the fundamentalist forces of the nation to even physically stop
these marriages from taking place24, inter marriages are painted in a sinister and undesired light.
In the absence of an intended radical 25politics, is there space for reform in the discourse and the
lived realities produced by inter marriages?

EVR encouraged intermarriage as a way to destroy caste. Hodges explains that these marriages
became ‘spectacles’ due to their unusual rituals and ‘unconventional’ stance on Brahminical
practises such as lighting the lamp which were seen as Aryan and stemming from superstition
and irrational belief. Periyar became a proponent for birth control, divorce rights, and love
marriages. Self Respect marriages were also done by Tamil communities in Ceylon, Burma and
Sri Lanka. They were done not just by the rich upper castes but by Adi Dravida communities,
Dalits, Bahujan communities and Muslims as well. Hodges writes that although there was a lack
of exact documentation of these marriages, roughly 8000 marriages can be accounted from
wedding announcements in Kudi Arasu. Done in the absence of a Brahmin priest and what EVR
called ‘meaningless rituals’ It aimed at reimagining both the wedding ceremony and the

23
Ambedkar‟s efforts to pass the Hindu Code Bill among other reform efforts and the Satyashodhak Samaj of
Jotirao Phule
24
See Mody
25
Periyar‟s movement termed as „radical‟ by Sara Hodges and other commentators on the Self Respect
30
consequent married domestic life of the conjugal couple. ‘’Self Respecters did not simply reject
the figure of the Brahmin priest. They attacked rituals that were traditionally mediated by priests
as imbricated in and sustaining larger systems of caste based power.’’ (Hodges, 2005)

These wedding ceremonies were also ‘propaganda events’26 as Periyar gave speeches at these
weddings expounding the significance of love, of sexual desire, companionship and
simultaneously breaking the myth of a spiritual or sacred union of marriage. ‘’The Self Respecters
transformed the space of the marriage hall or house into a public platform and would often
declaim on matters close to their hearts on such occasions: from the desirability of atheism to
the problematic piety of Gandhian nationalism!’ (Geetha, 1999)

Coupling love with the law has been a task the state has carried out keeping the structures of
gender and religious domination intact. Mody traces this very subject as she explains the
difficulties that couples face in getting their marriages legalised under the special marriage act.
Did Periyar see that the Special Marriage Act would not achieve the larger ideological objective
which the Self Respecters were seeking to foreground? He wanted the Self Respect marriages to
be legalised under a separate law and not be incorporated with the Special Marriage Act.

It is interesting to note that the Congress ministry’s objections to the demands of the DMK
members of the Legislature was that Self Respect marriages ‘’ had no clear cut definitions’’
regarding ‘’what they were all about and how they ought to be performed, it was difficult to
frame a law.’’ Periyar said that ‘each claimed to be different from a conventional marriage and
guided by the play of reason alone.’’ (Geetha, 1999) A similar problem is faced when one tries to
examine the dynamics of inter religiosity.

The Self Respect was essentially a political movement; lead by an ideology held by a few
individuals. Even Sara Hodges interviewed people called the "Self respecters", a proper reference
given to practitioners. The time that has lapsed between the movement which was prevalent
during the middle of the twentieth century and today is a substantial amount. Today, we have the
BJP in power who presents a communal angle to love and inter religious marriages as it
vociferously invokes ‘Love-Jihad’. While the Self Respect movement was overtly and explicitly a
movement that entailed certain practices, rituals and notions of selfhood which Self Respecters
were expected to follow; inter religious marriages today have the freedom to design their own
forms of inter religiosity. The Self Respect movement not only disputed and questioned caste
and gender based inequalities but also spoke of a sense of ‘Tamilness’ it sought to reproduce.

Eventually the Self Respecters became deeply involved with the anti-Hindi and Tamil nationalist
movements. Today however, inter religiosity is not a part of but is antithetical to nationalism.
The Self Respect marriages were not all inter caste, but inter caste marriages were seen as the way
to break caste by social reformers. The desire to challenge and subvert in inter religious or inter
caste alliances today need not be a conscious effort. In the absence of a movement driven by
radical ideology do forms of subversion persist? And if so, in what forms are they manifested?
Instead of social reform movements being the domain of intermarriages, today it is the domain
of the State and the Right sponsored propaganda as inter religiosity being antithetical to
nationalism has produced organised movements in order to prevent inter marriages from taking
26
See Sarah Hodges
31
place. One such movement is the Love-Jihad propaganda of the Hindu Right which needs to be
examined for this study.

Love-Jihad and Myth Breaking

The ‘Love-Jihad’ campaign started by the BJP/RSS in 2009 may be etymologically novel but it’s
theoretical and implicit logic was evoked in the 1920’s, as the historian Charu Gupta has shown.
The basic narrative of this campaign is that Muslim men lure non-Muslim girls (usually Hindu)
into marriage in order to convert them to Islam. The ‘Love-Jihad’ propaganda plays at two
extremely vulnerable insecurities of the Hindu fundamentalists (as well the Indian State to a large
extent); it evokes the ‘honour’ of the female body which especially in the history of communal
politics of the subcontinent has been represented as the ‘honour’ of the community.

Secondly, it arouses and instigates a very deep anxiety and trepidation that has developed
historically among the right-minded Hindus for strengthening communal mind-sets; that the
Muslim population will take over the Hindu numbers and make India an Islamic state.27 Also
known as ‘Romeo-Jihad’, this brainchild of the Hindu right wing has made its return to
prominence at an appropriate time in world politics; when terrorism and its Islamic variant
‘Jihad’ are seen as one of the most dangerous and potentially threatening things for the entire
world. If one visits the ‘Hindu Janajagruti Samiti’ website28, numerous articles and statistics on
the numbers of women ‘abducted’ by ‘Jihadi-Romeos’ can be seen. One article writes:

‘’Jihadi Romeos promise to marry unsuspecting young girls within 6 months if they convert to Islam and take and
dump these girls in the conversion centers. These Romeos then go for their next prey. These girls are subject to
various tortures for weeks in these conversion centers. There is information that these girls are shipped to foreign
countries after drugging them. They are shipped from the unmanned coasts of Kochi, Kozhikode, etc., to
Mangalore, Goa, Chennai, Lakshadweep, from where they are taken abroad. They are taken to the Gulf
countries under the false pretence of a job and forced into prostitution once they reach there.‟‟

[Taken from Hindu Janajagruti Samiti website on 23rd April 2016]

As Jyoti Punwani and Charu Gupta’s works have endeavoured to reveal, the popular
understanding stemming from an uninformed and media influenced rhetoric largely propagates
myths around inter religious love marriages. A very large onus of responsibly removing myths
then lies on any researcher working on these marriages. The responsibility of the researcher
becomes to reverse and erase the myths propagated by movements that are communally driven.

The myth that Jyoti Punwani effectively breaks is that Hindu women are ‘abducted’ and
converted. She writes that the love jihad propaganda ‘demeans’ Hindu women as it implicitly
suggests that the latter have no sense of agency and choice with respect to whom they wish to
marry or fall in love with. It eventually portrays that women need to be protected within the
family and the community by keeping their romantic, sexual and individual desires contained.
Punwani reveals that none of the women she interviewed had been ‘easily seduced’ as the
hearsay suggests but rather spent many years in trying to convince their parents for their

27
The latter anxiety also then indirectly attacks the children born from such marriages as potential future
perpetrators of Love-Jihad
28
https://www.hindujagruti.org/news/6389.html
32
marriage. She effectively demolishes the myth by the narratives that she has collected. One such
narrative is of Indu and Tariq.29 „‟These women do not fit the image of the love-struck, helpless
with desire, giddyheaded girl who elopes with her irresistible Muslim lover, as portrayed by the
love jihad campaigners.’’ (Punwani, 2014)

Charu Gupta traces this controversy and the organised attempts of the Hindu Right to the
1920’s as she describes the rallies the Arya Samaj organised, the pamphlets it distributed and
other propaganda activities it conducted which led to communal clashes in Uttar Pradesh. Even
many well-known Hindu writers, Gupta writes, such as Bharatendu Harishchandra and Radha
Charan Goswami through their literary depiction strengthened this narrative. (Gupta, 2009)

The advertisements of Love-Jihad can be easily located on the web today. They are the modern
equivalent of the tracts that the Arya Samaj distributed in the 1920’s in order to provoke riots and
to provide potency to the tales and rumours of abduction of Hindu girls. The tracts of the pre-
partition times were given evidently provocative titles such as Hindu Auraton ki Loot or Hindu
Auraton ke Loot Ke Karan30. In contemporary times, even the superstars of the Hindi film industry
are not exempt from these polemical accusations. Love-Jihad propaganda posters on the internet
name Shahrukh Khan (married to a Hindu) and Aamir Khan (who divorced his ex-wife, a
Hindu) among others as men who married Hindu women and then ‘left’ or ‘abandoned’ them.
Children born from these marriages are also portrayed in a pitiful tone as their mothers are
presented as ‘forcefully converted’ thereby indirectly labelling any product of inter religious
unions as undesirable and even violent. 31

Communal Hatred and Inter-Marriages

While the Love Jihad controversy attacks the elite today by aiming its accusations at film stars,
my participants in the field look at conversion very differently. Through the narratives that she
collects, Punwani tells us that another myth; that poor and uneducated Muslim men forcefully
convert their non-Muslim wives as they are more prone to orthodox and conventional religion.
She reveals that this was not the case as many couples in her study were belonging to lower
income groups and they did not ask their wives to convert.

29
His wife Indu (name changed), a working woman, narrated the episode without much emotion: “I knew I
would have to convert to be accepted by Tariq‟s family, as they are traditional Muslims and Malegaon is a
Muslim stronghold. It would have been very difficult for them to explain why their daughter-in-law had not
converted; „‟it was much easier for me to convert. Tariq‟s sister took me to a mosque in Mumbai and I got
converted.” Tariq‟s narration however, is quite different. After the conversion, when she was signing the gazette for
recording her change of name, I saw her thumb trembling. I could see she was feeling this would change her life, her
identity. As soon as the signing was over I assured her, „The gazette is a formality. You keep your own name,
your own identity.‟ I have explained to my father that in her profession she is known by her own name. What is in
a name after all.‟‟
30
See Charu Gupta
31
The converted woman was a potential site of outrage of family order and religious sentiment, strengthening the
drive for Hindu mobilisation. Allegations of abductions caused a number of localised affrays and even occasional
riot for example in Kanpur in June 1924 and in Mathura in March 1928, where it was reported that a Muslim
man had eloped with a Hindu woman. (Gupta, 2009 )
33
‘Love-Jihad’ as a term is fairly new but the ideology and fears behind it can be found persisting
even before the Arya Samaj’s organised attempts against inter religious marriages. What they
have made widespread is however the permanent impossibility of ‘love’ between a Hindu woman
and a Muslim woman. By providing these relationships a cognitive lens of solely terroristic
activities, any such alliance between Hindus and Muslims comes under immense strain. Of
course marriages between Hindu men and Muslim women or Christian women are also of a
significant number.32 I have attempted to be familiar with the myths of Love Jihad, the prejudices
it breeds and the extent of the acceptance of its rhetoric in my interactions with my participants.
The fear of this propaganda looms large enough for almost everyone doing these marriages to
feel insecure and even threatened by it’s dangers. Mrs Sharma, whose daughter Anjali married a
Muslim man Shehreyar in 1994, tells me;

When they got married, this BJP thing was going on. They were trying to stop all these marriages and we
were very worried. They used to reach the venue and stop the marriages. Anjali‟s aunt was a journalist
and used to cover BJP rallies. She knew some of these people and said that she will handle that aspect.
Because these BJP people would come see the notice that is put up thirty days prior in court and then they
create ruckus.

In the discourse on inter religious marriages, academic or popular, Love-Jihad is a significant

topic to deal with as it represents the ordered and systematic efforts of the Hindu
fundamentalists in trying to prevent inter religious marriages. For this very reason, I have kept
this as a part of my theoretical as well as practical study. Many of my participants had not even
heard of the term ‘Love Jihad’ and the ones who had, did not relate themselves with it. Rajesh or
Aleena had never heard of the term ‘Love-Jihad’. Mrs. Sharma and Prabtoj had heard of it but
they didn’t relate themselves to it. When asked about the propaganda and increasing attempts to
advertise it, Mrs Sharma expressed her dismay about the activities of the BJP government with
respect to ‘Love Jihad’. I am not using any particular understanding of ‘love’. For heuristic
purposes, the definition of it is incomplete and I use it in the way it has been used by my
participants. 33

My questions around the aspect of ‘potential’ took a long time to be conveyed properly to my
participants. They did not relate to the idea in the terms that I put forth. Rajesh’s views on this
aspect have been shared at the beginning of this chapter. The various responses to this question
express an estrangement with the very idea itself. When I explained the Self Respect movement
and its principles, Prabtoj said to me;

Nobody looks at it in this large way. We don‟t think in these terms. I have never felt this way. We live
in our normal routine. More than an inter caste marriage, inter religion marriage, I see this as a love
marriage. If someone asks, I say it‟s a love marriage. I never thought that deeply. I am living very
normally, maybe because these people are so nice. Everyone comes and they are so loving that I have never

32
See Jyoti Punwani
33
I shall engage with the concept of love only materially and not begin with a completion of it in sociology or
anthropology. I shall deal with it conceptually only later.

34
 felt that I am different. I never saw myself as an odd one out. That comes naturally. If love-jihad comes
on TV, I don‟t connect to it.‟‟

Both Khirad and Aleena gave immediate and affirmative responses to this question in their
respective interviews. For Khirad, these marriages mean an ‘acceptance of human beings’ Aleena
said that she believes these marriages hold a great potential. Suneel’s view on the potential of
these marriages depended on whether or not ‘influential’ persons do these marriages. Suneel
describes that his school shaped him in a way that made him an accepting and open minded
individual. When I asked him what, in his opinion, is the difference in marrying a Muslim and
having Muslim neighbours and friends he said;

You should ask my daughter if she sees any potential in this marriage. Marriage is about sameness, not
differences. You don‟t focus on the difference but on the joys and the similarities. When you look at
neighbours and friends, you may measure difference somewhere. But in a marriage it is about sameness.
Also, with respect to the child it depends. The child may have a good experience of the marriage but can
also have an experience that says that inter religious marriages are dangerous. Suppose I would have
married a Muslim who is burqa wearing and does namaz regularly, would my marriage have the same
calm? We don‟t carry the same identity. Then our answers would have been different.

From my previous interviews with Suneel and Khirad, I had gathered that they both do not
practise their religions through daily practices and preferred to not even discuss religion in their
house. I asked them about the balance they create between their atheism and the dual presence
of religious identities in their home. Suneel answered;

Its simply an acceptance of human beings, in whatever size, colour they come from. When I see my
brother‟s marriages, I see that instead of bridging two cultures, they choose an atheistic approach and
don‟t bring religion into the day-to-day life. It just becomes easier. You just deter it. Keep everyone away
from it. My daughter may pick a third religion who knows?

Both Suneel and Khirad consistently told me to interview those couples who are more
‘practising’ and advised me to revise my sample as they felt my questions were more relevant for
people who are more religious in their approach to life. Khirad’s views on the aspect of potential
were;

Marriage is about lineage. Because of this marriage, there is a third person coming in who will carry the
family name forward. You‟ll bring an accepting individual into the world. In marriages where people are
very practising then they bring cultural differences together. In our case, this is not there so much. These
questions are more relevant for families in which people are more practising.

I interviewed Suneel’s mother, Aji separately. After I had finished interviewing Aji, she asked me,
‘’how do you find my views Amna? Am I broad-minded?’’ When I asked her about her opinion
on the challenges these marriages pose to the world she said that she never saw Khirad as a
Muslim woman;

Kabhi kabhi aisa lagta hai (Sometimes I feel this way) But I am not dominated with this caste
system. As my bahu (daughter-in-law) I liked her. I like how she behaves with me and my husband
and other relations. When we go out with other people, how she behaves and all. I don‟t see that she is a

35
 Muslim girl and that she can‟t speak Marathi. All that never comes in my mind. She doesn‟t wear
mangalsutra or bindi. Like we do. She doesn‟t do that. But I don‟t mind. Modern age mein kitni
ladkiyan aise karti hai. „farak nahi lagta‟ On the contrary, I feel these Marathi girls, they don‟t know
how to behave. Khirad knows much more than that. They don‟t know how to talk with elderly people. I
always feel that way. She‟s mature and very intelligent. Very compromising type. She doesn‟t show off
about her high position.

At a family wedding in Nagpur, she behaved well with everyone. She doesn‟t show off. Jiske ghar mein
shaadi thi (the woman who was hosting the marriage), that lady should have come to us, talked
to us. She never came. She was only with her guests and friends. Never asked me to sit. She was keeping
away. If Khirad would have been in her place, she would have asked everyone, „‟aaaiye baithiye.‟‟ (
Please come, sit) Ye Maharashtra mein culture hi nahi hai. (This culture is not there in
Maharashtra) My bahu is not like that. Religion is no matter , whatever religion is. Person you should
see. Qualities matter. Who ab wahan jaa kar „‟allah!‟‟ nahi bolti hai. (She never goes and says
‘Hey Allah’) Hum log „hey bhagwan bolte hai na? Who kabhi nahi bolti, dikhati. (We say ‘Hey
Bhagwan She never says or shows these things) Such a mature, good thinking girl. Hamari
maharashtrian girls hi kharaab behave karti hai. ( Our Maharasthtrian girls behave badly) I have
a very good opinion about my daughter in law. Who mujhe apne paas bitha ke khana khilati hai, ye lo
who lo. Hamari Maharashtrian aurton ko itni akal nahi hai. (She makes me sit next to her
while we eat. Our Maharashtrian girls don’t have this sense) My daughter, Rashmi is good in
her sasuraal, so they keep good relations with me. If she behaves badly, they obviously wont come.‟‟

Aji emphasises on the qualities of her daughter-in-law which have very little to do with her
religious identity and instead highlight those which ‘make up’ for her being a Muslim. Suneel
holds the same opinion as he says that his marriage has a sense of ‘calm’ because both he and his
wife are not staunch practitioners. A coexistence, as brought up for discussion earlier as well, is imagined
only through the erasure of religious identities. With respect to potential, the question then arises; is the
defiance to religion creating or producing any challenge to broader ideologies around the religion
of the ‘other’ or by erasing tangible signifiers of a religious identity, do we fall into the same trap
again?

It is Nina’s story that changes the widely held assumptions one may have regarding the ‘love’
that constitutes these marriages. Nina describes to me the ways in which her life changed
drastically after her marriage to Imran;

When I got married I was independent. After we got married, he forced me to leave my job. He
step by step made me dependent. Two or three times when I left him, he was worried about his
honour and prestige. He was worried that people might ask him why his wife left him even
though she was made a Muslim. He didn‟t want to be questioned about what he might have
done to me. He would fool me and get me back and keep me well for a couple of days. Suddenly
then he‟ll start hitting me.

Nina bore her husband’s violent beatings for almost twenty five years until she finally called the
police and complained against him. She says that she also blames herself for not speaking up
against him sooner but she also laments that no one from her family supported her;

36
 „‟That day I was standing in my room. He took a chair and threw it at me. It didn‟t hit me. I decided
that day that I will complain to the police. Imran didn‟t let me record my statements properly. He was
crying. He is so cunning. Ahmad and I told the policeman that there is violence every day in our house. I
am in a fix now, I don‟t know till when will this fight go on. Sometimes, I feel I should go to the lawyer
or an advocate to find a solution or advice. Sometimes I feel I should just run away. My husband doesn‟t
want to give my son any of his money. I have no money. He doesn‟t give me any money. I don‟t want my
husband‟s money. I can live without property, I am not greedy. I just want peace. I want my husband to
love me. But my children can‟t stay. My attempts are only to keep my children happy. I am scared what
will these people do to my children? My brothers are not supporting. From the time they came to know
that I have complained in the police against my husband, they don‟t even speak to me‟

Nina’s answers always narrate a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in her as she repeats
often that she wants to leave this house and simply go ‘anywhere’. She says that she does not
care where she goes; she simply wants to be out of her marriage. She tells me the
transformations that came about in her food and clothing habits after her marriage to Imran and
the way in which her in-laws treated her. The incidents that Nina shared with me disclose quite
definitively what the position of a woman becomes, both in her parent’s home as well in her
husband’s, if she decides to act against their wishes.

Even though her husband beat her violently, her in-laws troubled her and she was crestfallen at
the sudden change in her life; her parents insisted that she try and adjust in her marital home as it
was her decision to marry Imran. Nina talks about her desperateness as she had no support from
her family. But she does not simply relate her position in her marriage and her family to being an
exploited woman; she also considers herself a Christian who married a Muslim and thereby saw
herself representing her religious identity in both her homes. She describes her husband’s home
and their lineage a well as her own cultural background comparing their ethicalities. She narrates;

What I did, nobody will do. I fed these illiterate people all my life. Ye to chule pe khaana banate hai
(they cook on traditional stoves). These people from his village have this Afghani blood. The stories
say that a king from Afghanistan had settled here. They are the same blood, violent. They will never
change. I have just tolerated them. My mother was alone, my father was dead. If I would have left Imran,
it would have been bad for my image. People would say that a Christian married him and then left him.
It would have been so troublesome for my mother. I blame myself equally for tolerating him and that is
my punishment. Thank God my first child was a son. Otherwise they would bother me even more. They
celebrated his birth so much. They didn‟t even celebrate my wedding nicely They gave me jamadarni (a
derogatory term used for a woman who cleans and collects garbage) clothes to wear on Eid. I was crying
because I did not want to wear it. They made me wear all of that and made me a cartoon.

The first day after my wedding, they forcefully made me wear a burqa because I had to meet the relatives.
My mother told me, „‟ ab tumne ye kiya hai to isse bhugto!‟‟ (if you have taken this step you have to
bear the consequences also) My father also told me that I have to live with this now. But my father also
told Imran to not beat me. My father said, „‟agar aaj ke baad tumne meri beti pe haath uthaya, mujhse
bura koi nahi hoga.‟‟ (I will not tolerate it if after today you beat my daughter). Imran apologised to my
father but then he again beat me. Once on Diwali he beat me so much that my nose broke and it started
bleeding heavily. Imran told me to not go anywhere because he was so scared that people might see how
much I am bleeding. I ran away early morning at six a.m. I didn‟t want the landlady to ask questions if

37
 she saw my wounds. I didn‟t have money for an auto. I waited for a bus at six a.m, I was wearing those
same clothes.‟‟

Ahmad tells me the shortcomings he sees in his father;

‘’He was born in a male dominant society. He came here and lived in surroundings jahan par male
dominance hi tha. Hamein lagta hai ki aurat bol sakti hai, uska volume bhi badh sakta hai. Lekin
unko lagta hai ye isne kaise bol diya? Isne gaali kaise de di? Gaali sirf mein de sakta hun. He is very
bad with parenting.‟’ (We know that a woman can speak and can even shout, but my father
can’t imagine that. He thinks only he can abuse)

Ahmad’s sister, Sara says ‘’ My father, he is an Oscar winning actor‟’ because of the immediate change
in his behaviour towards their mother whenever they go out in society as opposed to when they
are at home. In what form does one approach this marriage? In the terms of developing an inter
religious milieu and values, Nina may have succeeded but would this marriage become a
challenge to anything but the ideas of challenge that we have constructed in the first place?

My interactions with Rajesh and Aleena provided a similar conundrum. Rajesh and Aleena both
use the analogy of the chewing gum to explain the functioning of love marriages. Aleena says
that a chewing gum is sweet initially and then it loses its flavour and you just go on chewing it.
Rajesh gave me the same analogy of the chewing gum. He says, ‘’what happens when you chew a
chewing gum? Its sweet at first and then when it becomes hard and tasteless, you just (does a
spitting action) spit it out. Indians have a very poor memory, they forget that people do inter-
caste marriages.’’ He says he did this marriage for two reasons; firstly because it was a practical
decision. Secondly, because he was a Brahman man and hence could do this marriage.

I asked Rajesh what was the appeal that Devdas holds for the masses. He said;

The appeal was of love and affection. Devdas is a question of poor and rich not being able to marry each
other. It‟s not about religion or caste. See, a rich boy can bring a poor woman into his family. But any
rich father would not let his daughter marry a poor boy. It‟s the same way for caste. No upper caste father
would want his daughter to marry a lower caste boy. The boy can marry someone from a lower caste. I
have done so. Ladka upar lekar aata hai. (the boy uplifts the girl). This is our society. This is a
patriarchal world. So I could do this marriage. If I had been a girl, my parents would not have let this
marriage happen. I will not let Rekha do an inter caste marriage because then I won‟t be able to meet
her. She will go into another fold. If I had a son, I would let him marry whomever he wants.

When Rajesh says this, Aleena whispers to me, „‟See? He himself has done an intercaste marriage but he
won‟t let his daughter do it. Isn‟t this wrong?‟‟ When I interviewed Aleena, she initially explained that in
such marriages, if the husband is supportive then they work smoothly and that her husband was
supportive to her. However, ten minutes into the interview Aleena said, ‘’It is so difficult. We
fight on this a lot but I can’t even take a divorce because if you live with a man for so long, it is
difficult to leave him. It will pain, won’t it?’’ Rajesh says;

„‟I knew that a house cannot run on a single person‟s salary. I needed a woman who can earn and
contribute to the family income. All the women that my brothers have married, they are not even
educated. They can‟t work. They went to Hindi medium schools. They only know Hindi. They only do

38
 house work. But they are Brahmans.‟‟ In an arranged marriage, I would not have had such an educated
wife because I was from a poor family. We were poor but pure Brahmans. My mother would wear a
completely wet sari to do her puja and no one could touch her before she did her puja. Even if a curtain
touched her, she would have to return to bathe. This is a practical marriage. My wife today has learnt
German. She has come so far. Those people are still behind. My daughter is best educated out of them
all. She has the best job. She stands out in her cousins.

Rajesh, in his interaction with me, completely rejected the concept of love. He asked me the
meaning of love. He married Aleena as she was educated and she also had a job. Aleena says
immediately that there is of course a potential in inter caste marriages. Aleena says that their
daughter, Rekha feels left out as her cousins ignore her and do not interact much with her. This
is because Rekha has opted Christianity as her religion. Rajesh portrays this in a different light as
he feels that Rekha stands out in her family as she is the most educated of them all owing to her
educated parents.

Conclusion
Two questions then arise. The first is, what is the verity of the idea of subversion with respect to
inter religious marriages? Within my study, potential comes up as an unacknowledged space. For
Prabtoj, the idea of potential does not even arise even though a strong inter religious ethic
persists in their family. For Nina, the idea of potential is again absent (though she believes that
these marriages have potential in general) as she struggles against a violent husband on a daily
basis, and the challenge she posed was actually against her husband. Nina then challenges the
marriage itself forming a different kind of potential. (one that functions against her husband and
marriage, not through her marriage with him) 34

Second, if forms of marriages such as the Self Respect were imagined in order to challenge and
overthrow structures of both caste and gender oppression, what conceptual lens shall provide us
a more accurate conception of the idea of potential and subversion of these marriages? In other
words, do we need to reimagine our theoretical framework of potential itself?

The narrative that I gathered from Nina led me to question the conceptual and actual extent of
my research. To study a marriage and an everyday life dominated by excessive instances of
domestic violence transforms the very idea of ‘potential’ that these marriages hold. If religious
and caste boundaries were being subverted here, the violence done by a man on a woman enters
the frame and demolishes the very base of my question which dealt with ‘love’ and ‘personal
choice’. If a marriage is a political potential in one aspect and a reinforcement of a violent
dominant norm (domestic violence) in another, isn’t it a clash of two potentials, gender and
religion in this case? Does one subversion then, nullify the other?

How do we understand ‘love’ in these marriages and unions? Geetha writes that Periyar invoked
love as a right and something that ought to be expressed, ‘struggled with and fought for’. For
him, the fact that humanity itself was absent in society demanded that love had to be a human
quality that should become omnipresent. Love was not necessarily to be thought of in
compassionate and emotional terms but had to be equated with the principles of rationality the

34
This does not mean to impose any requirement on her; in my opinion she (or any other participant) does not
need to necessarily possess the sense of potential I conceptually impose on her.
39
Self Respect propagated. (Geetha, 1999) Geetha also tells us that Periyar observed the misuse of
the Self Respect principles and realised the need for ethicality to necessarily coexist with the Self
Respect unions.35 Due to the paucity of time, I am unable to relate my findings with Foucault’s
Ethical Care of the Self. But his ideas that the practices of freedom are more important than the
processes of liberation become very relevant here. The relations between Aleena and Rajesh and
those between Imran and Nina are conundrums and fluid spaces which cater to numerous
structures of oppression at once; subverting neither the oppressive structures of gender and
sexual exploitation, nor the larger communal divisions.

If an exemplary sense of inter religiosity exists within Nina, Imran’s violent behaviour towards
her makes their relationship incompatible with any transformative and configurative capabilities.
Geetha’s concluding paragraphs are critical of the lack of women’s participation in the anti-Hindi
agitation leading to a transition she presents as ‘the woman question being valued for its
symbolic rather than substantive worth.’ As the Self Respect movement became increasingly
involved with the struggles for nationalism and the Tamil language, the question of female
dignity and Self Respect became almost a caricature as the notions of the female body took the
responsibility of representing the nation and its purity.3 It becomes clear then, that subversive
and transformative politics must be simultaneously holistic and fragmented, in order to address
as many aspects of a marital life as possible. Looking for the potential in ‘love’ to upturn the
structures of gender and caste becomes exceptionally complex.

35
Periyar was moved to think about a new law on Self-Respect marriages and marriage in general, because he felt
that the Self-Respect marriage as it existed could no more serve as an alternative that only needed its appropriate
socially sanctioned forms. For now it had become commonplace for many, especially those in the cinema world to
enter into irresponsible relationships and proclaim, when questioned, that they had entered into SelfRespect unions.
This meant that the Self-Respect marriage form was being casually detached from its original, liberative context,
where love and desire had signified great and irrepressible human emotions and being called to serve the
promiscuous games that those in the tinsel world liked to play. (Geetha, 1999)

40
 Chapter 3
Ordinariness

Researching the research itself

The concept of the everyday life, the ordinary is a pivotal component of this dissertation. The
primary purpose of engaging with the notion of everyday life is to establish and work upon a
literature gap in the study of inter religious marriages. It is, however, a weakness of my study that
I have not been able to deal with the concept of everyday life very deeply either in theory or in
practise.

In theory, I have engaged with the works of Alfred Schutz and Berger and Luckmann very
briefly. I have not succeeded in grasping a full and concentrated understanding or
comprehension of everyday life as a concept. This reflection is very important not only
ethnographically and to highlight the course and operation of my methodology; but also to
engage with the relevance of my research question itself. What academic and thought provoking
possibilities does the ‘everyday life of an inter-religious marriage’ hold? I consider myself
unprepared to answer this question at this point.36

I also consider my work undeserving of being weighed against its own research question for the
simple and overwhelming reason; I have not conducted an actual study of the everyday life of the
couples I have interacted with. Due to the limitations of this study, I have been unable to
observe the everyday in its literal sense. Therefore, I only rely upon the lengthy interviews that I
conducted within a period of three months. I developed friendlier relationships with them
however a holistic illustration and its subsequent analysis is completely absent from this study.
Therefore, I reflect upon my findings and the various conceptualisations of the ‘everyday life’ in
order to identify whether or not ‘inter religiosity’ and the ‘everyday life’ give us a coherent and
intellectual sociological field of study when conflated.

I will draw two analogies between my own experience and the phenomenological understanding
of the Stock of Knowledge and of Multiple Realities. 37

All the accounts that I have collected are simply not accounts in themselves. They are also what
constitutes the relationship between me and another person through my interaction with them.
My own position and location in the larger society determine this largely. What is narrated and
the tone of narration depends largely on to whom the narrative is being given. My own identity as

36
I haven‟t interviewed many religious communities and inter religious marriages within India; such as those
involving Parsis, or Shi‟a Sunni Muslim marriages or inter caste marriage within the same religion. I also haven‟t
engaged with the works on inter religious marriages in other countries and societies such as in Lebanon or in
Turkey.(works I am briefly familiar with) I also haven‟t engaged with same-sex inter religious couples.
37
Drawing from The Phenomenology of the Social World (Schutz) and the Social Construction of Reality (Berger
and Luckmann)
41
a Muslim woman belonging to a class similar to those of my participants has definitely had a
bearing upon the responses they have given me.

In the case of Aleena and Nina, my identity as a woman played a significant role in gathering
certain narratives from them. Aleena has shared with me the fact that she has considered giving
Rajesh a divorce and shared the problems she has with Rajesh in her daily married life. Her
daughter, Rekha, tells me that for Aleena, talking to me was a vent. Aleena shared her woes
about her married life, her in-laws and their treatment towards her in the first interview with me.
Nina shared innumerable accounts from her life; about her husband beating her, her family not
supporting her, her fears for her children and her strong desire to just run away from her
marriage. The sense of hopelessness and helplessness in Nina and Aleena stem from reasons that
have both similarities and dissimilarities but their narratives are of the same tone and are intimate
to their respective marital lives. They share this account highlighting these instances with a
female researcher. As Nina told me, ‘’ He only uses me as a slave and sometimes when he wants
to have sex. I am telling you all this because you’re a girl Amna.’’ Nina tells me that it is because
of my being a girl, I should know and learn from her narrative. The same stories in the same
tone, however, cannot be shared between Nina and Imran, between Rajesh and Aleena or
between Aleena and Rajesh’s parents. The same questions can certainly be posed; the answers,
we can predict with near-certainty, shall differ largely.

This means that there are multiple realities making up an experience and they make themselves
present in different situation while remaining completely absent in others. The conceptions of
presentation and appresentation provided by phenomenology are extremely relevant here.38
Unavoidably, the entire experience of something can never be conveyed to another. The whole is
always conveyed in parts and some parts are presented while others remain appresented. The
other, as Schutz explains Husserl’s idea of appresentation, is presented to me in two forms; the’
material object’ which is presented and the ‘psychological presence’ which is ‘copresented’ and
hence ‘’it is not presented but appresented’’ (Schutz, 1970)

A General Narrative
Inter religious marriages like love marriages in Mody’s analysis ‘raise eyebrows’ in the society
(Mody, 2008) These marriages are considered controversial and are a common topic of debate
and discussions. This is not a research which tries to locate an issue of the periphery and
highlight it. From state intervention, to the ‘special’ laws for these marriages and finally to the
constant media highlights of these marriages; they’re already a well-known phenomenon. The
number of popular films that Bollywood makes based upon inter religious ‘love’ each year,

38
The reality of everyday life is shared with others. But how are these others themselves experienced in everyday
life? Again, it is possible to differentiate between several modes of such experience. The most important experience
of others takes place in the face-to-face situation, which is the prototypical case of social interaction. All other cases
are derivatives of it. In the face-to-face situation the other is appresented to me in a vivid present shared by both of
us. I know that in the same vivid present I am appresented to him. My and his 'here and now' continuously
impinge on each other as long as the face-to-face situation continues. As a result, there is a continuous interchange
of my expressivity and his. (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)

42
making tremendous financial profits with box office successes only contributes more veracity to
its social eminence as a thing of common knowledge. You do not need to make people aware of
it. We know the general narrative of marriages, but then what general narrative do we construct
of exogamous marriages?

Even to a single researcher, different realities are portrayed. Aji told me, in her interview with
me, that she had never opposed Khirad and Suneel’s marriage and only her husband had done
so. Her granddaughter, Neha tells me that Aji was the one to oppose the marriage for an even
longer while than Suneel’s father who had only initially opposed it. A similar instance of varied
answers is of neither Suneel nor Khirad telling me that Khirad converted to Hinduism in order
to marry Suneel; it was their daughter Neha who told me that her mother had converted and also
the fact that perhaps her parents did not want to share this fact with me.

Another example I would describe here is of my interviews with Prabtoj. I know Iftiqar and
Prabtoj through a familial link as Prabtoj is married to my cousin brother Iftiqar. I would
include my own ‘self’ experiences in this instance keeping the ‘researcher’ as constitutive and a
part of myself. Over the past twenty years, the relations between Iftiqar’s and my family have
been strained and almost hostile. The reasons for this are mostly the temperamental and general
personality differences between our families. Due to this, the interactions between us have been
fairly limited and restricted to weddings and celebratory or grievous occasions of the family.
Engagements on a daily or weekly basis have not been the norm and this is acknowledged
informally by everyone. If it may be expanded to that length, the differences in lifestyle and
behavioural preferences are so large that both the families may be seen as portraying one another
as (a term we use in academia) the ‘other’ or as ‘unlike us’.

I had been an active part in organising Prabtoj’s wedding to Iftiqar but my interaction with her
was limited to a few family occasions after the wedding. However, this changed when I
approached Prabtoj for my first interview with her. I explained to her my research question and
she expressed her fascination for this study by saying how little anyone speaks of the aftermath
of such marriages. The first interview with her lasted for almost four hours where she shared
innumerable details about her single life, her parents and their initial disapproval for her decision
to marry a Muslim man, the struggle they both waged to convince her parents and also about the
religious education they were imparting to their daughter. After almost three hours, she shared
with me the fact that a day prior to their wedding, the gurudwara community her parents belong
to (not mentioned here for ethical purposes) sent out an email to their entire community across
the world stating that anyone who shall go to this wedding shall be boycotted from the
community perpetually. Prabtoj wept expressing her gratitude for her parents and the relatives
who did not abandon her even after this event.

As I conduct more interviews with Prabtoj and Iftiqar, my personal relations with them improve
simultaneously. Often I visit them without the purpose of an interview wishing to just to meet
them. It isn’t that I do not conceive the same differences as I did earlier but I somehow look
above them. It is a growth I perceive in my own self as I interact with the ‘researched’. It is as
though a new ‘relationship’ is formed between us owing to this research. And it is a relationship
which could not be formed when we were related by blood and kinship ties.

43
My internalisation of the ‘other’ (a category I was using to oppose caste, religious and gender
identities in my research) transformed and became anchored to my ‘self’ more than the ‘other’.
When we delve on inter-marriages and read B.R Ambedkar or the Self Resect Movement of EV
Ramasami Periyar or the Satyashodhak samaj of Jotirao Phule; our attempts are to understand the
reserved and imagined implications of merging the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. The ‘transformative
capacity of the domestic social world’ is exemplified best when marriages happen between
diverse cultural identities as this directly attacks the progressive ‘colonisation of the lifeworlds of
the state, the community and the individual.’ (Mody, 2008; Das, 1995) This is essentially the
concept of my research as well. Do we not see subversion in the acts of being ‘close’ to the
‘other’?39 Eating with ‘them’, talking to ‘them’, sharing experiences with ‘them’ and eventually
marrying ‘them’ are the cultural transformations that persons working to eradicate hierarchies
and differences intend for. If observed as a rudimentary comparison, a heightened interaction
and emotional proximity between myself and Prabtoj did precisely this. In that sense, the
categories of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ need to pre-exist. For if they don’t, what shall we transgress?
That is the idea behind inter-marriages and that is what happened in my interaction with Prabtoj
as well.

It is these transgressions that also become transformations. In Nina’s case, I went from having
an objective approach towards the couple to a methodological bias (not interviewing the
husband) While in the case of Prabtoj, my own biases were challenged and defeated. This leads a
researcher to question; where is the plane where objectivity in research operates, if it does at all?
What is ‘ethicality’ in research? I would argue that subjectivity, and not objectivity, is indeed
ethical.

Locating the Everyday

When I could not find the questions which would construct the idea of everyday life that persists
in my respondents, I chose to rely on their answers itself. The ordinariness or everydayness of
this marriage need not be studied by the questions I ask. But rather, when I proposed this
concept to them, what were the narratives that they chose to tell me? I do not ask them
particular questions from the parameters o which I imagine their everyday life constituted. But
rather they should tell me whatever they think of when I ask them what constitutes your daily
life. What do you bring out from your stock of knowledge when asked this? 40 Therefore,
everyday life in this study days within sociology and does not go into philosophy. ‘Everyday life

39
My own presence, my identity and location in my family played a significant role in this case as can be
understood from Berger and Luckmann, „‟ The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an
intersubjective world, a world that I share with others. This intersubjectivity sharply differentiates everyday life
from other realities of which I am conscious. I am alone in the world of my dreams, but I know that the world of
everyday life is as real to others as it is to myself. Indeed, I cannot exist in everyday life without continually
interacting and communicating with others. I know that my natural attitude to this world corresponds to the
natural attitude of others, that they also comprehend the objectifications by which this world is ordered, that they
also organize this world around the 'here and now' of their being in it and have projects for working in it. (Berger
& Luckmann, 1966)

40
It becomes a digital question (for example: the way Google gives you answers when you type search words)
44
of inter religiosity is what inter religious couples everywhere say it is’ as of now this is what I
have gathered. 41 This is explained in the beginning of the text by Berger and Luckmann in order
to establish what distinguishes sociology as a discipline. Schutz explains the daily life in the
following manner;

„‟Man in daily life …finds at any given moment a stock of knowledge at hand that serves him as a scheme of
interpretation of his past and present experiences, and also determines his anticipation of things to come. This
stock of knowledge has its particular history. It has been constituted in and by previous experiencing activities of
our consciousness, the outcome of which has now become our habitual possession. Husserl, in describing the
constituting process that is here involved, speaks graphically of the „‟sedimentation of meaning‟‟

[Alfred Schutz, 1970]

Schutz says this stock of knowledge is structured and also is in a continual flux. He makes two
significant points which help any phenomenological enquiry. The Now when it is perceived is
immediately referred to different zones of our knowledge and made sense of. The various
constituents of an experience float endlessly until broken apart by the cognitive call of the
familiar and the unfamiliar producing not only conceptions but also perceptions of an experience
and contribute further to our stock of knowledge.42 An understanding of phenomenology then
is crucial to understand the relation between the phenomenon one is studying and the
consciousness. As Husserl says, ‘consciousness is always of something’ and therefore ‘the forms
of consciousness are tied to the content of experiences.’ It is extremely important to engage
deeply with phenomenological conceptions of consciousness to develop a detailed understanding
of everyday life. The noesis, the phenomenological reduction and the bracketing of the ‘outer
world’ leads one to perceive the world as a ‘stream of consciousness’ (Schutz, 1970)

Challenges- ‘Tell me, what happened?’

‘’Like spirits, they stood in front of each house – mute- but seeing things that were invisible to
us.’’ Veena Das describes an intuition she had in her ethnographic study; that the person was, ‘’a
victim of language- as if words could reveal more about us than we are aware of ourselves.’’
(Das, 2007) Through Life and Words, Das has attempted to examine the violence of the Partition

41
For example, the man in the street may believe that he possesses „freedom of the will‟ and that he is therefore
„responsible‟ for his actions, at the same time denying this „freedom‟ and this „responsibility‟ to infants and lunatics.
The philosopher, by whatever, will inquire into the ontological and epistemological status of these conceptions. Is
man free? What is responsibility? What are the limits of responsibility? How can one know such things? And so
on. Needless to say, the sociologist is in no position to supply answers to these questions. What he can and must
do, however, is to ask how it is that the notion of „freedom‟ and has come to be taken for granted in one society and
not in another, how its „reality‟ is maintained in the one society and how, even more interestingly, this „reality‟ may
once again be lost to an individual or to an entire collectivity. (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)
42
‘’it is the particular problem we are concerned with that subdivides our stock of knowledge at hand into layers of
different relevance for its solution, and thus establishes the borderlines of the various zones of our knowledge just
mentioned, zones of distinctness and vagueness, of clarity and obscurity, of precision and ambiguity. It is clear that
any supervening experience enlarges and enriches it. By reference to the stock of knowledge at hand at that
particular Now, the actual emerging experience is found to be a „‟familiar‟‟ one if it is related by a „‟synthesis of
recognition‟‟ to a previous experience in the modes of „‟sameness‟‟, „‟likeness‟‟, „similarity‟‟, „‟analogy‟‟ and the
like.‟‟ (Schutz, 1970)

45
and of the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Das’s
primary engagement is with the concepts of the subject, the world and experience using which
she examines the question; how do you see the violence of an event? Wittgenstein’s concepts of the
subject and the world are relevant in examining what we refer to as an event (in this case being the
Partition). The lines from his work that Veena Das quotes are, ‘’ the subject is the condition of
experience. The subject does not belong to the world. Rather, it is the limit of the world.’’ This
may be understood through Das’s analysis wherein she says that the experience of being a subject is the
experience of being a limit. (Das, 2007) The subject is also the ‘’ boundary of the world, then there is
no particular point in my life when my subjectivity emerges.’’ (Das, 2007) Dealing with these
philosophical categories of the subject, world, boundaries, experience and limits to understand
communal violence is the attempt that Das has made through her work.

Her larger move is to establish that the experience of communal violence is in fact not lived in
the event (as we understand it) rather is lived through the everyday ordinary lives of the people
who came under it’s impact. Of course, all instances and experiences of communal violence
cannot be explained through a single analytical frame (for instance, everyday life). The violence
of 1947 is linked to that of 1971, 1984 and these are further linked to 1992, 2002 and 2013.
43
There are of course more dates that I am not mentioning here. However, dates of communal
violence again do not widen the horizons of speakability for the subject. The limits of the
experience remain; regardless of how we imagine them in space and time. To think of communal
violence as events is a product of the way we understand history. The telos, the incremental
vision of history keeps us from placing the experience in everyday life which is inherently a much
larger notion of human life; an immanent plane whose complexities cannot be captured by the
selective and narrower vision of history. If history is the most tangible way for us to understand
and relate to events, and we do tend to think of the Partition, the anti-Sikh riots, the anti-Muslim
violence in Assam in 1983 and the Babri Masjid riots; all as events, then grasping the experience of all
these events remains an unthinkable and unimaginable task.

The risk of digressing to the experience of communal violence here is to indicate the
impossibilities of the expressive facilities that language does not provide, though it surely
pretends and even intends to do so. The everyday reality, the daily life in canonical texts of
phenomenology (within the field of sociology particularly) is presented as a ‘paramount reality’,
an ‘ordered reality’, a ‘reality par excellence’ and a ‘reality sui generis’44. (Berger & Luckmann) Yet

43
The violence perpetrated during the Partition of the Indian Sub-continent; the creation of Bangladesh, Babri
Masjid riots, Gujarat riots and Muzzafarnagar riots
44
Among the multiple realities there is one that presents itself as the reality par excellence. This is the reality of
everyday life. Its privileged position entitles it to the designation of paramount reality. The tension of consciousness
is highest in everyday life, that is, the latter imposes itself upon consciousness in the most massive, urgent and
intense manner. It is impossible to ignore, difficult even to weaken in its imperative .presence. Consequently, it
forces me to be attentive to it in the fullest way. I experience everyday life in the state of being wide-awake. This
wide-awake state of existing in and apprehending the reality of everyday life is taken by me to be normal and self-
evident, that is, it constitutes my natural attitude. I apprehend the reality of everyday life as an ordered reality. Its
phenomena are prearranged in patterns that seem to be independent of my apprehension of them and that impose
themselves upon the latter. The reality of everyday life appears already objectified, that is, constituted by an order of
objects that have been designated as objects before my appearance on the scene. The language used in everyday life

46
in order to capture it, as if in a ‘picture’, remains a task that till date has produced conundrums.
(Heidegger, The Age of the World Picture) This makes the study of the ‘everyday life’, as a
conceptual category, the most prominent challenge encountered in this research. What questions
does a researcher pose in order to grasp an understanding of the everyday life? How is the daily
life studied at all? Is it possible to develop and deliver an explanation of someone’s ‘everyday
life’?

As mentioned earlier, I have never possessed a certain set of questions that I pose to my
participants which provide me with information about this distinctive yet large category of
‘everyday life’. In that sense the relationship between myself and the ‘researched’ forms a
fundamental concept itself because it is the questions that I shall ask which shall give form to this
category. It is to illustrate this point that I explained earlier in this paper why I arrived at this
research question. I turn to a text by Veena Das to understand the confrontation between the
‘event’ and the ‘everyday’ and the near impossibility of studying ‘everyday life’.

What constitutes the experience of the everyday? This becomes a question one may ask when such
transformative texts and arguments are put across in discourse. In the study of inter-marriages,
perhaps the choice and the heavy and vehement disapproval that follows it become the events; the aftermath
and everyday life after that is what I intend to study. The work of all scholars around inter
religious/caste marriages has focused upon the forces that restrict, prohibit or cause an outage
around such marriages. However, once such a marriage enters into the everyday, what is it’s
experience constituted of?

Conclusion
I argue that the relationship between the researcher and the researched is never one between
two, but is rather almost always between three. I deliberately discuss Mody’s notion of the law,
Veena Das’s notion of the subject or my own understanding of inter-marriages or the Self
Respect movement in order to highlight that the conceptual as well as empirical narrative of a
research is what most strongly shapes its foundations and the nature of the relationships formed
within it. I approach Nina as a woman who herself has a cultural background of being both a
Brahmin Hindu and a Christian who later married a Muslim. The deliberate intention of
choosing the subject for study and the reason behind it majorly shapes the relationship one
forms.

The researched is a resource, a reservoir of knowledge for the researcher. I meet the researched
through her/his identity. Not to say that everyone needs to rely on concepts before they go to
the ‘field’ of their research, but the interaction that is produced, created and reproduced is in itself
a category. There is therefore, the researcher, the researched and the interaction between them. It

continuously provides me with the necessary objectifications and posits the order within which these make sense and
within which everyday life has meaning for me. I live in a place that is geographically designated; I employ tools,
from canopeners to sports cars, which are designated in the technical vocabulary of my society; I live within a web of
human relationships, from my chess club to the United States of America, which are also ordered by means of
vocabulary. In this manner language marks the coordinates of my life in society and fills that life with meaningful
objects. ((Berger & Luckmann, 1966))

47
is within this interaction that the reservoir is formed and shaped and reshaped and this most
strongly transforms the research. The subject position is reached through that very interaction.
And that interaction is neither here, nor there.

What is intrinsic to both the researcher and the researched is the research itself (both
etymologically and experientially). As I went to the field, all my theoretical propositions
collapsed. The research changed when I heard Nina speak and so the relationship between the
researcher and the researched changed. I was immediately biased as I did not interview Imran. I
have to keep that promise to Nina as it matters to my own sense of ethicality.

In that sense I feel it prudent to locate these marriages in the contours of inter religiosity that
traditions such as the Cirrapuranam and Bulle Shah’s qissa draw. All marriages, as established
through gender and kinship debates, are sites of politics as they are sites of material production.
They are also sites of identity production. Both materiality and social/cultural identities are
reproduced in order to reproduce the society as a whole to preserve the existing structures of
exploitation and production.45 Marriages are, in general understanding, sites where societal
structures and their ideologies are replicated. (Mody also borrows heavily from Veena Das’s
Critical Events: The state colonises the lifeworld of the community and the community colonises
the lifeworld of the individual) however here the inter religiosity that has the potential to be
produced is in direct connection and relies on the inter religiosity that is created. Because it has been
created, it has to now be produced as well. A Brahmin marrying a Brahmin or a Muslim marrying
Muslim or a Christian marrying Christian will produce predictable structures and life styles but
what will these couples produce? When we link politics so directly to them, then even their
everyday is subjected to scrutiny by me and then by their own selves (as they answer my
questions), texts like the Cirrapuranam becomes very relevant because both the imagination as
well as a true blend of inter religiosity exists within and of the text as well. This is why I deal with
daily practices to understand and construct (in the abstract) the inter religious subject. They
constantly shuffle from their created identity to their produced existences. That is, perhaps, the
everyday in these marriages.

45
The Marxist and Foucauldian conception of marriage
48
 Chapter 4
Conclusion: The Degrees of Conversion

In this dissertation, I have attempted to construct inter-religiosity as a subject for study in social
anthropology and sociology and further examined the veracity of potential in inter-marriages
through the everyday and the ordinary. A dominant concept within this study has been that of
inter-religiosity and my attempt has been to gather the many forms it appears in and present a
coherent analysis of the same.

While studying the confrontation of religious identities as they try to marry each other despite
opposition from their families (and even the state) and then the daily observance of religious
practices of the families born from these marriages; the concept of conversion appears again and
again in various degrees. Conversion, especially with respect to inter marriages, mostly is either
done nominally (only formally changing the name) or becomes a substantial conversion (a full-
fledged transformation of the observance of religious rituals.)

An understanding of inter-religiosity necessarily demands knowledge of conversion as an idea, a

concept and an actual event entails. After identifying its more static components, one engages in
grasping what the more fluid, unstable and ambiguous forms of conversion are. I wish to
examine the degrees of conversion in order to complete my description of what constitutes inter-
religiosity as a concept.

In all the cases of this study, conversion is present in various forms; nominal and substantive and
even forms that can be placed in between the two. While Khirad and Suneel do not talk of
conversion, their daughter tells me that her mother became a Hindu in order to marry her father.
Though they are not daily practitioners of religion, they do celebrate Diwali and Eid in a
perfunctory sense. For them, that is the limit of their engagement with religion. Nina was
converted to Islam before she married Imran and is a believer and practitioner of both Islam and
Christianity, even conflating the philosophies and doctrines of the holy texts in her approach to
faith. Aleena and Rajesh had a wedding with Brahman rituals and in fact, are not registered
under the Special Marriage Act; Prabtoj, Iftiqar and Anjali and Shehreyar being the only ones to
be so. I have till yet, not presented any narrative I gathered from Mrs Sharma about Anjali and
Shehreyar. Mrs Sharma told me the reasons for her and her daughter reverting to Islam (they do
not call it ‘converting’) She tells me;

Now we don‟t say converted, we say reverted. You know why? Because when the child comes into this world
there is no God. When the baby comes, there is no religion. But the real religion is this, Islam. What is it? It
means you‟re submitting to God. It isn‟t something more. It simple that you have submitted to God. There is
nothing material in it. So you have reverted back to the way you were when you were born.

49
I have not heard Anjali and Shehreyar’s story from them as they do not live in Delhi. Mrs
Sharma is the one to tell me about her daughter’s love marriage to Shehreyar. Thiers was an
upper class Brahmin family (before Mrs Sharma also reverted to Islam, though she keeps the
same name today). She tells me where Anjali and Shehreyar met and why Anjali decided to revert
to Islam (not because of her marriage to Shehreyar);

Shehreyar used to work with someone in my family. Anjali had just returned from USA and she wanted
to learn one of the computer languages. He was good at that and Anjali went to him for classes. That‟s
how they met. They took their own time. He used to come over and I used to really appreciate him. You
see Anjali needed someone like her. She was very, very bright. Well read, bright, knowledgeable. I used to
wonder that who will I find for her to marry who would be of her calibre and even slightly better than her.
If we would have to do an arranged marriage, she would not have respected someone who was not of her
calibre. And any marriage needs respect.

Here comes Mr. Shehreyar Saeed. He was not only brilliant in his profession, he‟s from IIT. But till
then I didn‟t know what rigid and staunch believers they were. I wouldn‟t call them rigid believers, I
would call them staunch. The whole family is very brilliant and humble. They have educated persons from
IIT‟s, JNU and work in very big corporates. One of his sisters has married a Hindu. They are educated
and very, very bright persons. And bright does not mean that you‟re just bright in your subjects, but in
your values and morals also you are bright.

I didn‟t know that Anjali was also reading the Quran and she was also learning about the religion.
Shehreyar had never asked her to do so. He would talk about it and she asked questions and he would
explain things to her. He had never asked her to convert to Islam. His parents had come to meet us. His
mother was very upset. She said, „‟I come from a family of qazis (Muslim Clergy) and for me,
Shehreyar marrying a Hindu girl is very difficult. She was very worried. I told her there is nothing I can
do because for me also it is very difficult. See, it‟s very difficult to change you religion. After all, I
changed, that‟s a different thing. But her saying that she wants to become a Muslim ..you know. Itne
saale ka jo wo chalta hai (so many years it goes on) I have never been bothered about what people say. If
you bring up your children to think for themselves and they find a partner who they think is right then
you have no right to interfere. That‟s how I saw it.

There‟s was a registered marriage. That night she came home and tells me, „‟Mumma I have converted
and now I am going for my nikkah. The same night. The house was filled with people. They had
accepted the fact that she is marrying a Muslim. My mother-in-law, Anjali‟s grandmother didn‟t like the
idea but she attended the reception for my sake. We only had a reception. People were very accepting. But
for a long time I didn‟t tell anyone.

Anjali brought Shehreyar on the right path. She made him do the namaz. Till then, his family had not
accepted her, they had not done a waleema (wedding reception) for her there. But she had made him more
pious. After that, they accepted her completely. They stay in their house for months and months. And
now she is running an Islamic school and doing very well.

50
 She has accepted the religion completely, she has accepted the style completely. She makes it a point to
wake him up for fazr (the morning namaz), she makes it a point to make him keep the rozas 46. I don‟t
think she would have been happier anywhere else.

She changed her name to Saman. She writes that only now although all her documents are still of her
maiden name. Their children are named Fariha and Humayun. After marriage, she was learning the
rituals slowly, how to read the Quran, how to read Arabic. She made Shehreyar do these things also.
They just celebrate the two Eids. No Diwali or any other festival.

Anjali was never religious before she converted. We never had a temple in our house. I never encouraged
them to do so. I always wondered why are people praying to something created by themselves? Why are
they doing that? It‟s absurd. All these thoughts were in my mind before. You make something as
beautiful as you can, and then you pray to it, an inanimate object. Why? That is not what the Creator
has created. All these temples or anywhere you go, it‟s the same.

As Mrs Sharma describes it, Anjali did not revert to Islam because of her marriage to Shehreyar
but rather was more influenced and absorbed by Islamic philosophy and hence reverted. This
makes Anjali’s reverting a unique case in the light of other women (all women in this study;
Prabtoj, Nina, Aleena and Khirad) converting; whether nominal or otherwise.

Unrelated to her daughter’s turn to Islam, Mrs Sharma also reverted to Islam soon after her
daughter. Both their reversions involve a conscious critique as well as an acceptance of religions
and their respective philosophies. She explains to me that she had not done this because of her
daughter but because of her own personal experience of reading the Quran;

Then ten years back I also reverted. That was another story, nothing to do with Anjali again. I wanted
to read the Quran. I had told everyone that I have read the Bible and I have read the Indian scriptures
and now I wish to read the Quran. I was asking my friends for it but no one gave it. I was in the USA
at that time with Anjali where she was doing her MBA. She and Shehreyar had shifted into a house
very close to the masjid (mosque). There I asked this lady, she was South African and she was the wife of
the imam. She was one of the Americans who had become Muslims, it‟s very common there.

She gave me the Quran and I began reading it. I was reading the Sure Fateha (the opening chapter
of the Quran), I read the translation. I had accepted the thing that this is a divine revelation. This is
not something written by an anpadh. (uneducated person) Prophet was illiterate as you know. It is not
his imagination or anyone else has done it. This is definitely a revelation. Then I thought why not read it
in Arabic, why read the translation? Why not read it in the language in which it has been written. I
asked Anjali, on our long walks, many questions and answers and she was very helpful. To learn and
memorise it, you read and repeat the ayats again and again. I was doing this one night, before sleeping I
was revising the prayers for a few minutes. And then suddenly I saw everything become white and there
was a mist in my room. There was a feeling of immense and intense peace. Something unheard and
unseen. You can‟t even explain it. It was total bliss. Calm, peace, love, everything combine. I broke that
thing and came out and told Anjali. I asked them what had happened and Anjali told me that this was
a sign and now I should convert and read the kalma. She never had to convince me. Then I just had to
tell everyone.

46 the ritual Muslim fast during the holy month of Ramzan

51
Mrs Sharma tells me about the negotiations they did with their identity and she does not see it
changing simply because they reverted. She says that even though she has changed the identity,
it is still hers and it was her choice to opt for it; a choice she feels everyone should have. The
positions of identity and individual choice are always presented together. The perceptions of my
participants on the question of identity have been discussed earlier. The question of choice
however, I discovered was often directly linked to levels of education and liberality. The word
that was discussed often in this analysis was kattar. As Khirad told me;

In liberal families, in the ones with a liberal Muslim and a liberal Brahmin Hindu , this problem of the
everyday, where cultural differences are too much, this shrinks. They shrink because of being liberal.
Otherise theyre too much. For example, Suneel loves Islamic architecture, he loves ghazal, he loves
qawwali, he loves to go to Nizammuddin dargah. That was not something I taught him. As a human
he grew up appreciating these things. He grew up appreciating the geometry of Islamic architecture. I am
an art historian. I grew up studying temple architecture in a way that I knew it through and through. I
think the level of understanding and regard and respect for the cultures that we came from was immense.
So we had no conflict on that. But in other inter-religious marriages, these areas can become huge spaces
of conflict. After marriage, if you make it into an issue, you can rub it into someone‟s face everyday that
you do qurbani or eat meat etc. I grew up in Mithapur in Gujarat. It was a very secular town and a
small TATA town. It had no religious architecture. We played with children from all religions. I used to
go to Dwarka temple every week with these neighbours. My father only had cycle. Pujari uncle used to
take us in his car. Nobody stopped me for being a Muslim. I never thought of the temple as something
different. Suneel grew up in a boarding school, away from his house. It was a very highly evolved liberal
place with a secular form of education. „‟

Problems are usually sparked off by things which are totally insignificant and petty. You have to learn to
not be bothered by that. When Suneel was taking me to meet his family, he said you might find some of
my relatives obnoxious, they may behave strangely with you and might not give you gifts or their blessings.
But they were very nice to me. Except for some relatives who thought that I have whisked their boy away.
But now all the people whom Suneel used to call „kattar‟ come and stay in our house.

When I see the inter-religious marriages which have problems I see that they are usually there because
there is someone trying to keep their culture alive against someone else‟s culture. My teacher, a Parsi and
south Indian married a Thai Muslim. They divorced within six months even though she was pregnant.
He loved her very much. But his family converted her and made her follow the religion, made her eat and
dress in a specific way. That broke the marriage. If this would have been the case in my marriage, my
marriage would have been in a problem. I would not be able to leave my faith

Suneel explains that the attitude his family keeps toward Khirad is not that of hared but the lack
of understanding. He says that they try to make differences where there are none (for instance
Suneel’s mother will always say to Khirad that there is more ‘maas macchi’ cooked in the latter’s
house, an accusation that Suneel find absurd) He says;

So it‟s a clear bias. So called „man of the house‟ who is a Hindu‟s mother, she feels entitled to say things
like this, so called discriminatory, they‟re intended to differentiate. Intended to discriminate to not
necessarily hurt but to position. And they‟re clearly biased and unfair. Because none of that can be

52
 attributed to religion. It‟s a sort of brahmanical version of themselves, as being somehow pure vegetarian,
which they‟re not. And their son is a bigger carnivore. And it has nothing to do with my religion.

Suneel insists on a non-‘kattar’ approach to religion and says that Khirad’s religious faith is kept
to herself, not advertised through house decorations or other visible aspects. For instance, he
says;

She hasn‟t painted everything green and she hasn‟t put aayatein, and quranic verses everywhere as a
regular Muslim would do. She doesn‟t go around by starting her morning with daily rituals and she
doesn‟t make it a point to drill her cultural differences as part of her regular speech or thought or
thinking. This is a sensitivity. Its not that I can‟t take it. The point is why do you want to keep
repeating something which you‟ve decided is not going to be the basis of your relationship? Once you‟ve
decided that this is not the basis of your relationship, why keep stating that differences? There is speech
beyond „Bhagwan‟ and „Allah‟.

For both Suneel and Khirad, an erasure of an overt symbolism and expression of religious
difference is central to their marriage. They insist on the fact that a domestic space should be an
antithesis of religiosity, instead of being an explicit representation of your religion and religious
identity. Neha, Khirad and Suneel all refer to their ‘kattar’ relatives who are more concerned
about religion and hence their relations are impacted by that. Suneel says he prefers to keep his
distance from relatives on both the sides whom he sees as keeping a conservative mindset. In
their house, art architecture and literature are topics of discussion while religion is not dealt with.

There is a tendency to connect education with open mindedness. Neha tells me that religion
becomes dominant only when she interacts with her relatives on either side as at home, she has
been imparted other kinds of education. She finds her father’s side as more rigid because they’re
a typical Marathi and a Brahmin family. On her mother’s side, due to many inter-religious
marriages, they’re more accepting. Aleena talks with a similar tone about the problems she faced
because she had married into a Brahmin household. She tells me that she had to wear a sari (a
traditional Indian dress) at all times, even at night and for her this was an ordeal. She says;

I wouldn‟t wear sari at night, I would wear nighties (night gown). But I wouldn‟t be able to sleep all
night because I kept thinking in the morning what if someone catches me wearing a nightie? They wanted
you to bathe every morning no matter what. It made no sense. I used to wear such nice chunk jewellery. I
had to just throw it away because their family only wear Gold. You don‟t change things about yourself,
you just give up everything you did before you were married. They changed my religion, and then they
wanted to change my name too. I told Rajesh‟s father that my name was given to me by my father and it
is very important to me. My father-in-law let me keep my name.

Prabtoj and Khirad attribute the fact that they were not made to undergo substantive
conversions to a liberal and ‘non-kattar’ mindset (here also seen as belonging to an educated and
an upper- class family.) For both of them, an absence of these conditions would have threatened
the stability and even sustenance of their marriages. Prabtoj says;

In kattar families, they don‟t give space to the girl. Here it‟s not like that. I practise my own. He does his
own. We give space to each other. In the Indian mentality, they want the girl to follow the boy‟s religion.
My friend, a sardarni, ran away with a Muslim boy. She completely converted and now she wears a

53
 burqa. Her family completely boycotted her. They don‟t meet her. I am so blessed to have my mother in
law and father in law. They‟re so educated and they‟ve never asked me to do any such things.

Interestingly, for both Nina and Prabtoj, the reflections on ‘kattarness’ are all explained through
experiences with persons from outside the family, whom we interact with for ordinary purposes.
They constantly explain to me scenarios and examples in which they encountered persons who
were not. Prabtoj tells me;

Education really matters. I‟ll tell you an example from yesterday. Mummy (her mother-in-law) has a
tailor here in our apartments. He is a Muslim. I had gone to him for the first time and told him I am
Mrs Kirmani‟s bahu (daughter-in-law). I was with my sister and we were conversing in Punjabi. He
asked me how come I was speaking in Punjabi. So I told him that I am a sardarni and I have married
a Muslim. He immediately checked my name in his register. It was written as Preeti. He asked me why
haven‟t I changed my name as yet. I told him that this doesn‟t matter for me, this is such a small thing. I
have married him. I told him in a soft lehja (style) that how does the name matter? Then he agreed with
me. This is where education matters. Where people are uneducated, these questions come up. What‟s in a
name? I have grown up with this name, its my identity.‟‟

Nina constantly shifts between her Christian and Muslim identity, making it hard for one to
place her in one for a long period of time. She tells me that her husband’s family is immensely
‘kattar‟ and she has made consistent efforts to keep her children away from their influence. She
criticises them for not knowing the proper way in which to approach Islam and the correct ways
of practising. She has converted to Islam, considers herself a Muslim and imparts Islamic
education to her children but does not relate any aspect of her rituals, practices, faith or identity
to Imran’s family. She is heavily critical of the women who wear burqa, using the phrase ‘cartoon
lagte hai‟ for them. On many occasions she tells me she is a Muslim, on others she says;

On paper, my birth certificate, my bank account I am still „Nina‟. They changed my name to „Nargis‟
only for the nikkahnama.‟ To people, I always say that I am not a Muslim, but I am married to a
Muslim. This makes Imran very angry. ‟ A Muslim carpenter had come and he got to know that I am a
Christian. He told me to not tell my children that I am a Christian. When I said that I won‟t do so
because I am not a Muslim, he never came back to work at our place. I told him that I am not from my
husband‟s uneducated village. I always say I m a Christian. This family he belongs to is a qasba. They
are such dirty people.

Measuring the ‘Liberal’ and the ‘kattar’

The intermittent use of the word ‘kattar’ became an occurrence I could not overlook. All the
families I have interacted with differ in their approaches to religious practice considerably;
however, this is a word I have heard repeatedly in my discussions. The first thing to be alerted to
is the repeated usage of this term being done by Nina, Khirad, Neha, Suneel, Prabtoj and Iftiqar,
Mrs Sharma as well as Sara and Sohail. The second aspect to identify is the fact that the kattarness is
always ascribed to another and not to the self.

For analysis, I would like to take three cases; that of Prabtoj, Nina and Mrs Sharma. Prabtoj
married a Muslim and only went through a nominal conversion. She wished to retain her

54
religious identity and continues to practise her religion. When she talks about her friend, a
sardarni who also married a Muslim, she refers to their family as ‘kattar‟. She even asks me, ‘’why
do Muslims behave so staunchly about their religious texts? We don’t do it like that in our
religion.’’ She is critical of her friend for undergoing a substantial conversion to Islam, a thing
she clearly would not have done. She simply says ‘Assalam-alekum‟ (the traditional Muslim
greeting) to Iftiqar’s relatives. She has not learnt any Islamic prayer rituals such as the namaz.
Nor has Iftiqar learnt any Sikh rituals 47 He says his love for his wife is what is important and
religion does not matter to him. They are not ‘kattar’ and therefore are accommodating of each
other’s culture.

Nina, unlike Prabtoj, has converted to Islam. She learnt the Quran and also the way to offer the
namaz. She connects herself to both the religions, Christianity and Islam, especially in matters of
faith. While Prabtoj finds learning the Islamic way of life unacceptable, Nina does not. 48 What
Nina does not approve of, in terms of conversion, is the women who wear burqa and also of the
persons in Imran’s family who practise Islam without knowing its true meaning, according to
her. She calls their family ‘kattar’ and backward. When Imran tries to impose the burqa and the
namaz on Sara, Nina fights vehemently against him. That is, as she says, completely unacceptable
to her. The third family in this analysis is that of Anjali and Shehreyar. In my interaction with
Mrs. Sharma, she showed me a picture of her daughter, Anjali. In the photograph, Anjali was
standing in the school that she runs, wearing a burqa with her daughter, Fariha, who was also
wearing a burqa. Mrs Sharma tells me Anjali and her daughter both wear the burqa religiously and
are very pious in their approach to the hijab. 49

In totality, the word ‘kattar’ only floats; you can never catch it and place it in the present. In the
discourse and discussion around inter-religious marriages that I had with my participants, the
word ‘kattar’ was always gifted to another, it was never claimed and made one’s own. For
Prabtoj, Nina’s conversion is unacceptable and for Nina, Anjali’s burqa is the non-negotiable
aspect of an Islamic way of life. Mrs Sharma further defers the ‘kattarness’ by saying that
Shehreyar’s family is ‘not rigid, but staunch’ and establishes a further differentiation of rigidity.
This brings us to the degrees of conversion and the constant negotiations that inter-religious families
do with notions of liberality and ‘kattarness’. Not only does this defy other dominant perceptions
around inter-religious marriages (especially with Muslims) such as those of ‘Love-Jihad’ but it
also constructs a fairly stable understanding that not only is there no common understanding of
what constitutes an extremist framework of religion, but also that a single conception of it is
absent because it is always deferred. 50

47
Not to suggest that they need to/should do so. It is simply being stated so in order to establish an argument.
48
An examination beyond the scope of this research is the theological links between Christianity and Islam and
till what extent they are more conducive to conversion when compared to other religions which do not share their
„world views‟.
49
A first hand account from Anjali and Shehreyar was not possible to retrieve owing to the limits of this
dissertation.
50
Even though I have not gathered a stable definition of „kattar‟ in my study even heuristically (hence this
argument) colloquially it is a term used to refer to a50 religious fanatic.

55
As Veena Das explains, the daily life and the diverse cultures that constitute it lead us to examine
the traditions that are produced through proximity and an increasing intimacy of social relations,
looking beyond the ‘bounded civilizational histories of Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity’. The
reified categories disappear and the anthropologist is confronted with fluid intermittent
traditions which are not determined by clerical knowledge. However, larger events affect such
social relations deeply often damaging neighbourliness and even cordiality. 51 Post the 1990’s,
the increased political tensions in the Islamic world followed by numerous wars52 led to a
consequent link being formed between the image of the Muslim and the terrorist.
Fundamentalist Islam became not only undesirable but also something dangerous and grievously
threatening. Needless to say, this popular conception also impacts the formations of inter-
religiosity.

Prabtoj and Iftiqar, Mrs Sharma and Anjali see their marriage as not being a question of religion.
Their relationships are formed overlooking the religious identity (as Mrs Sharma says, Anjali or
her did not revert because of Anjali’s marriage to Shehreyar but because of their own desire to
practise Islam) But even in the absence of any reference to religious extremism in my questions,
my participants immediately make clear that they are not related to that aspect of Islam; passing
on that affiliation to someone else (as Prabtoj talks about her friend who converted) Prabtoj
defers it to Nina’s way of life, Nina to Anjali’s and the actual claimant is not arrived at.

The despised aspects of a particular religious identity create numerous tensions in any framework
where different religions merge; one such being multi-culturalism. Talal Asad has analysed the
events that took place in Britain post the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses leading
to Muslims all over the world objecting to the text as it portrayed the Prophet in a manner
considered profane in Islam. His field of analysis gives us an understanding of the degrees and
the extent until which the identity of the ‘other’ is tolerated and when it becomes necessary to
create a necessary disjoint with the segments of the ‘other’ seen as incompatible with the self.

The Satanic Verses, Religion and the Nation-State

In the last section of Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion Asad analyses the impact Salman
Rushdie’s Satanic Verses had on the British nation and its ‘cultural minorities’. The chapter
detailing this is titled ‘’Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair’’. This
essay of Asad’s answers a question anyone might pose after gaining sufficient knowledge of the
political climate in Britain post the Satanic Verses being published; first, why were the British seculars
and liberals so vocal and public in dealing with the Muslim outrage against Rushdie when thousands of protests

51
The structures of feeling in a neighborhood are defined by these networks of exchange and encounter as much as
by the pressure of authoritative discourses that try to police these practices. Yet these relations are also vulnerable to
events at different scales – relatively peaceful social life can be disrupted and relations between neighbours can
morph into violence – as detailed analyses of communal riots shows (Das 2007; Chatterji and Mehta 2007).
Pressures by reform movements that try to purge religious practices of folk elements that were absorbed through
different forms of proximity within a lived religion lead to a redrawing of boundaries around a religion. „‟While it
is easier to identify and track dramatic events, it is harder to follow the slow tectonic shifts through which ongoing
negotiations between different religious groups take place within local communities and which might, in time, lead
to cataclysmic changes‟‟ (Das, 2015)
52
The Gulf War (1990-91), 1991 Uprisings in Iraq, the Civil War in Afghanistan (1992-1996), the Arab
Spring among other.
56
around feminism, racial discrimination, labour rights etc. happen in Britain each year? A connected concept
and question is; what constitutes the British identity and in what ways and through what processes are „cultural
minorities‟ such as Muslims accepted into its fold? The answer to the first question may be derived from
the second.

The Satanic Verses were published in the year 1988 and in 1989, the Iranian President Ayatollah
Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the Muslims of the world to kill Rushdie. The Verses are said to
contain a blasphemous narrative of the Prophet Mohammed referring to the verses recited by
Allah to the Prophet as those actually recited by the devil and relating the names of wives of the
Prophet to prostitutes and brothels. Following the global outcry of Muslims against the text,
John Patten, the deputy to the then Home Minister of Britain wrote an open letter titled ‘On
Being British‟ which was widely circulated. Talal Asad links the reaction of the British Government
after the protests and the idea of the British identity to explain that the Muslims (along with the
Blacks, the West Asians, the South Asian immigrants) are assimilated into the British identity only on certain
conditions, legal grounds and restrictions.

Asad draws from Raymond William’s definition of ‘culture as a way of life’ to further arrive at
William’s elaboration on the fact that the modern sense of culture arises from an industrial liberal
society. A ‘common way of life’ is imagined which all citizens share and therefore are expected
to fashion themselves in its fold. This common life aims at ‘total qualitative assessment’ and
Williams stresses that culture and control then operate together. The totalising project of culture
aims at bringing adults into the fold of electoral democracy and growing articulation of civil
society. William’s conclusion is that all aspects of life whether they are social or biological take
politicised forms. This is inevitably and inextricably linked to the way colonialism changed the
way in which the West and the non-West perceive themselves and each other. Referring to total
colonial reconstruction, Asad wants to point out that culture was a part of the language of that
process. This language exclusively focused on normalisable totality of elements having
heterogeneous origins. Through Asad’s understanding of Malinowski and Barker, we understand
that culture (in the modern sense of ‘common way of life’) had by the 1930s and 1940’s become
part of the language of controlled reconstruction. The Colonisers did the same thing in Britain
and abroad as well; oppress subjects as well as transform them. Therefore, in both the contexts
the concept of culture was part of the totalising project that Williams identified with industrial
liberal societies.

I stress on the aspects of culture, of colonialism and of the ‘common way of life’ as they are
essential in understanding the space religion occupies in the nation-state after modernity and
after colonialism. The British Government felt the need to control the protest of the Muslims in
Britain because it was a perceived threat to a particular ideological structure, to a cultural
hierarchy organised around an essential Englishness which defines British identity. Asad explains
that the threat was not a matter of law and order or of freedom of speech. Rather, ‘’it is a matter
of the politicisation of religious traditions that has no place within the cultural hegemony that
defined British identity over the last century (especially as that tradition has come from a recent
colonial society.)’’ Asad stresses that political power does not unify, but in fact seeks to keep the
population indeterminate and contingent. And in order to segregate the subjects and administer
them well, a ‘pure and settled past’’ is not needed. Instead, ‘’ manipulatable and recreatable
present’’ is thrust forward with force. (Asad, 1993)

57
The present in Britain is that of the liberal, modern, White secular elite. Asad provides the
example of a law which defined an ethic group as a legal category in Britain and was proposed in
the House of Lords in 1983. The law uses criteria such as ‘common geographical origin’,
‘common language’ and ‘common religion’ and even though these criteria apply to the Scottish
or Irish, they are not identified as the ‘ethnic group’. That category is reserved for the South
Asians and the Blacks. They are legally defined as exceptions thereby legally regarding them as
cultural minorities. It is important to see the role of the law in defining and perpetuating a culture
where minorities are increasingly identified and thus created and recreated.

Similarly, the law in Britain restricts ‘freedom of speech and expression’ in the case of Rights to
do with intellectual property, patent (music, images, texts), protection of trade secrets. However,
the demand of the Muslims to ban the Verses is not seen to come under this fold. This is so
because the laws that deal with blasphemy and incitement to hatred are seen as undesirable
consequences of public communication. If the Muslims in Britain have to be ‘truly British’, then they
must be fashioned and designed in the ‘common way of life’ of Britain. This ‘common way of
life’ has to do with speaking the English language, reading English literature, following and
knowing the English law (which White subjects do not necessarily know, but Black subjects must)
and having a knowledge of English history. The knowledge that ‘cultural minorities’ in general,
and Muslims in this case, keep of their religious and cultural backgrounds must be relegated to
the domain of the ‘private’ and not brought into the sphere of the ‘public’. (Asad, 1993) The
religious views, sentiments, ideologies, debates, discussions and outrage have no place within the
public sphere of the British nation. Asad’s linkage of Raymond Williams, the open letter by
Patten, the outrage against Rushdie and the Law of 1983 are all testimony to the fact that the
modern liberal state only tolerates differences if they remain under the legal, economic and
political authority of the nation state.

Conclusion
The fear aroused in the Rushdie affair has to do with a perceived threat to authority and power.
Why should the Muslims in Britian use the language of equal rights against the secular British
elite and to avail themselves of liberal law for instituting their own strongly held religious beliefs,
when those beliefs do not fit in the ‘common culture’? ‘’ So in this case, what is crucial for the
government is not homogeneity versus difference but crucial homogeneities and differences.’’
He asks, ‘’how can the religious traditions of the south Asians be criticised if they cannot even be
identified?’’ Asad critiques multiculturalism but is not against the very idea of it. He stresses on
the point of the practice of multiculturalism and how it only reasserts the authority and power of the
modern nation state (which presupposes a ‘common culture’ only to keep the minorities in
check.) He says that once we use the word ‘multicutural’ we automatically assume there are two
‘pure’ cultures in the first place, whereas actually cultures are fluid. The question, I would
propose, to ask is; is it possible to begin an analysis on culture from the field of fluidity itself and not use
traditions to add them up in order to first prove the existence and then the dynamics of fluidity?

What Asad convincingly establishes is the inherent difficulty and eventual impossibility of a true
assimilation of the minority or the ‘other’ into the culture of the self. The nation, state, law,
communities and finally the individual are continually involved in the processes of assimilation
or dissimilation eventually becoming holistic components of a cycle of cultural dominance. The
term ‘multi-cultural’ and its various academic usages are very significant for this study as inter-

58
religiosity is a theoretical and performative subset of multi-culturalism. What makes marital inter-
religiosity a narrower unit of investigation is the fact that here the power play between
communities is dealt with between individual players and not institutional representatives of
religious and state ideologies. This makes examining concepts such as the „kattar’ an inspection
producing unembellished conclusions, such as the fact that none of my participants wish to be
seen as ‘kattar’ but referred to what ‘kattarness’ entails extensively. The degrees of conversion
and scales of acceptance are exemplified fairly neatly by exploring the perceptions of cultural
differences rather than the ideas around culture itself.

The predominance of fluidity in the scholarly discourse on culture and especially multi-
culturalism alerts us to the crucial relevance of studying this fluidity itself. With texts such as
Beyond Turk and Hindu, Genealogies of Religion or Cohabiting an Inter-religious Milieu, what has been
achieved is an exemplary presentation of the bivalent and intermingled religious landscape of
South Asian traditions. This dissertation explores similar planes of analysis as it has attempted to
engage with marital inter-religiosity in three different ways. In the first chapter, attempts were
made to establish inter-religiosity as a subject for study especially for the anthropology of
religion. Then the veracity of the political potential of these marriages is examined by looking
into the contestations between the gender, religion and caste identities which come together in
marriage. As the everyday life is the conceptual and philosophical lens on which this study is
undertaken, the phenomenological understanding of the ordinary was very important in
discovering the manifestations of inter-religiosity as a cultural entity.

This dissertation presents the various spaces through which inter-religiosity in marriage
configures and redesigns our conceptions of muti-culturalism. Inter-religiosity, everyday life and
politics are three crucial aspects of this study and assist us in examining what it may mean for
inter-religious alliances to proliferate. As a rudimentary display of expressions of faith, piety and
religious rituals; this work can further provide a basis for imagining the capacity a much larger
examination of the same elements should hold. Relying heavily on Mody’s analysis of the
interplay of the nation and the state, the legal systems, the community and the individual, the
idea of politics in this study becomes almost directly linked to the inter-religiosity, both that is
created and that is produced. As I establish through my fieldwork, inter-religiosity does not produce a
norm for itself, rather inter-religiosity is the loss of normativity itself. It is this lack of a norm which easily
facilitates a chaotic and disordered cognition of inter-religiosity in the first instance. As the latter
has to now be designed and produced in a daily life, its constant functioning again becomes a
pressing question; one which I engage with at a primary level.

The direct engagement with politics and the constant weighing of my participant’s arguments
with the rhetoric of the Self Respect Movement as well as the propaganda of the Love-Jihad
campaign is an effort on my part to immediately attach the ‘domestic social world’ to its
‘transformative capacity’ using collective movements as the middle ground. (Mody, 2008) The
question of the potential of course is attached inevitably to that of the ordinary. Because if inter
marriages have been the centre around which both polemical as well as reformist politics have
developed, through which spaces of the everyday life and the ordinary is this potential actualised?
My interactions with Aleena and Nina turned upside down, not any notion, but any assumption
we may hold with respect to the notion of the potential marriages hold for social and cultural
transformation in our world today. I investigate the degrees of conversion in the concluding

59
chapter as this leads the study, now grounded in the everyday, back to inter-religiosity and inside
the frame of multi-culturalism.

Providing a very basic understanding of Asad’s Genealogies and conflating it with the answers of
my participants in the field, the effort I have made has been to move beyond the idea of
conversion as an event and rather look at it as an important part of an individual’s daily life. The
degrees of conversion, as discussed earlier, are not in themselves also stable; one degree may not
entail the same characteristics perpetually and also may not maintain the same equation with
another degree in all instances. In other words, degrees of conversion are themselves susceptible
to immense fluctuation and cross overs.

The reflections and questions dealing with what inter-religiosity entails and comprises of in
contemporary India are important as they widen the details provided by academic and scholarly
works dealing with multi-culturalism. Terms such as ‘secular’ are constantly changing their
meaning and being appropriated by ideologies sometimes even antithetical to its spirit. Thus the
study of a space where multiple religions co-exist or do not becomes increasingly significant;
both politically and culturally. Thus, I engage with the terms and concepts of ‘inter-religious
milieu’, ‘presence’ and ‘proximity’ in order to construct an extensive framework of the place and
space where larger modern structures and communities manifest their governmentalities; the
family and eventually the individual.

This work is by no means complete. It simply provides a rough constitution for later and deeper
studies on inter-religiosity, the everyday life and the consequent politics that emerges from the
two when they are consciously merged. I would insist that a census of inter marriages would
prove immensely beneficial in order to analyse the larger sociological implication of inter-
religious alliances.

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References

Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. Annihilation Of Caste. [Bombay]: [B.R.

Kadrekar], 1936. Print.

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