Inter-Caste Marriages Melting the Barriers in Bihar

No hue and cry. No honour killing. No complaint about kidnapping. No caste panchayat issuing fiats to uphold social norms. Happening silently. Where? In Bihar. Caste factor has taken a back seat in social relations, and youths are marching ahead breaking through the barriers all over the state with no strong resistance in sight.

The last most stubborn forte of the caste system– inter caste marriage– is breaking down without any reformers moving around and preaching about it or any revolutionary haranguing for its dismantling.

The last four decades or so have seen upper caste youths in Bihar entering into marriages with girls or boys bracketed as Backwards and the Untouchables in a natural way. It is not only the educated urban youths who are breaking the walls, rural areas also have seen such marriages happen in large numbers. Of course, the parents of these youths initially feebly resist their decisions but finally they kowtow before their wishes of their sons or girls or just leave them do what they desire. Also, marriages are taking place within the same gotras (common ancestors). So, both endogamy and exogamy, marriages within the caste and marriages outside the same gotras, are breaking down.

Majority of such alliances begin with love affairs before maturing into marriages. It has also ended the once rampant practice of forcible marriages (pakadua vyah). Earlier, as poor parents were not able to meet exorbitant dowry demands, they would kidnap boys and force them to marry their daughters. Though dowry demands are still high and extensive, inter-caste marriage is an attack on this obnoxious practice as well.

Forward castes silently see the breakdown of the marriage norms based on the caste apartheid. They debate it among themselves with concerns but bury the matter and forget and forgive. The inter-dining taboo between the upper caste people and the Backwards and the Untouchables is long gone.

There was a time when people belonging to the Backward castes and the Untouchables would throng at the community feasts organised by the Forward castes uninvited during the ‘shradha’ for a sumptuous meal. No longer. Now, they come on calling and share the meal sitting together with upper caste people in the same queues. Though no systematic survey has been conducted on this peaceful dismantling of the caste practices in the state, very many examples can be cited to make it clearer.

A rural girl of an upper caste rich peasant family married an Untouchable boy of the Paswan caste more than a decade ago. A girl of a poor peasant of a Bhumihar family eloped with a boy of a Backward barber family (Nai) and later married him. They were of the same village, and the girl’s father is a Jajman of the boy’s father.

Another Bhumihar girl eloped with her engineering batch mate belonging to the Yadav caste and later the two got married, despite the girl’s family putting her under strict 24x7 surveillance. Yet another girl of the same caste married a boy belonging to the Untouchable Chamar caste two decades ago. There are many such examples which show how the caste system is becoming irrelevant in social relations in the state.

To top it all, the son of IPS office, late Kishore Kunal, a devout Hindu and a Bhumihar but a staunch non-believer in the caste system, married the daughter of a Bihar Minister, a Scheduled caste but not an Untouchable.

Ambedkar said in "Annihilation of Caster” that the caste system is built into the Hindu religion. Unless Hinduism is itself annihilated, the caste rigidities would not go. He cited Hindu scriptures where the caste system has been justified. But all this analytical hypothesis has become a passe now in Bihar.

Even in rituals the varna system has broken down. Fifty years back, Brahmins would not agree to conduct marriages and shraddha rituals of the Untouchables. If any of them broke off and went to preside over their rituals and rites, they were despised, though not excommunicated. It is no longer so. Brahmins are now visiting their houses and performing pujas for them.

Temples are open to all, irrespective of castes.  There was a time when the Untouchable Hindus would offer their prayers standing outside the temple premises. No more so. Decades ago, upper caste people and the Untouchables would not sit together on the cot or have the same sitting arrangements. But now not only do they sit together, they eat together as well. Scriptural Hinduism is no longer practised among common Hindus. Of course, there are still people who practise caste purity-pollution but they are far and few between. It is seen particularly among elderly people; youths have shunned it.

Case violence at times does occur but the ritual status has nothing to do with it. Politically, the Backwards, the Untouchables and the Forwards are equally empowered, rather the former two are more. Economic advantages, landholdings and jobs, do not come into play when it comes to social clout. The Backwards and the Untouchables match the Forwards word for word.

What has led to the slow but steady collapse of the caste rigidities in the state? Are they caving in under their own unbearable, undesirable weight of its own in the Internet age or the political empowerment of the Backwards and the Untouchables has changed the social equations and dynamics and the Forwards have seen the writing on the wall? These are just conjectures the silent revolution taking place can be attributed to. Whatever way we analyse and attribute it, it is happening and is visible on the ground.  Youths, who have not grown amid the caste rigidities visible and being practised at homes or in the neighbourhoods, are carrying out the changes in a natural way, even being unaware that they are causing a so important social churning.

Though when caste leaders mobilise their brethren politically, the equations come up strongly and sharply. The strongholds of the caste system are still noticeable, but they are fighting a rearguard battle.

Two examples will lend credit to it. When the father of a forward caste doctor son went to persuade his son’s girlfriend's father to counsel his daughter against going ahead with the relationship, her father told him it was his son who frequently called his daughter, please ask him to stop doing it. The boy’s father was left speechless and relented. He had the wrong notion that being a Backward caste girl, it was she who was soliciting his son. The two later got married, amid full presence of the two families. 

In another interesting episode, the father of a Forward boy sent the henchmen of a muscleman to threaten the family of a Backward caste girl to stop their daughter from marrying his son. The girl's father got scared and warned his daughter not to proceed with the relationship. The girl called the boy and narrated the incident angrily to him, threatening to end the relationship. The boy gave an ultimatum to his father; he would either marry the girl he had chosen or would remain bachelor for life. His father relented; the love birds got wedlocked.