Paper short abstract:

In this paper I track the high number of ‘protection petitions’ filed at a High Court in North India by couples who elope with and marry a partner of their choice. I analyse the tactical utilization of legal options by subjects who seek State validity for a marriage that has no community sanction.

Paper long abstract:

Choice in marital relations and its legal and social ramifications have become topics of considerable interest in north India. In the state of Haryana, in particular, marriages that are legally but not socially sanctioned have dominated public imagination under different political registers for at least a decade. In this paper, I will analyse the procedures underway at the Chandigarh-based Punjab and Haryana High Court and how these tactical moves make certain marriages based on choice possible. A majority of Haryanvis who elope and marry a spouse of their choice petition for the ‘protection of life and liberty’ from disapproving parents and relatives. My research revealed that the threat to physical harm in most of these cases were minimal and conversations in and around courts often centred on the validity of such marriages. The petitions set off a paper trail and dialogue that, I argue, rework dominant conceptions regarding marriage in State spaces as well as in the communities outside.

I juxtapose research data from the court alongside interviews conducted in both rural Haryana and Chandigarh to discuss how the circuitous process of protection petitions, in the absence of a viable legal mechanism, provides eloping couples a form of legal fiction, as it is known in legal spaces, to legitimise their decision. My research follows the connections Marilyn Strathern makes between the anthropology of kinship and exchange and legal anthropology, engaging, in particular, with ethical questions raised by what she calls 'fabrication of persons and things' in legal parlance.