Paper short abstract:

Through an engagement with the growing trend of ‘love marriages’ in a rapidly transforming north Indian agrarian state, I seek to link transforming aspirations regarding sexual intimacies with potential futures in a post-agricultural society

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic research in rural Haryana and its capital Chandigarh suggests a shift in aspirations with regard to marital relations in north India. While the panel abstract situates certain relationships of love and care as challenges to the norm of heterosexual, nuclear families among other categories, I utilize these very terms to view specific heterosexual relationships as 'non-normative'. That is, I argue that a growing fascination for self-choice in marriage is viewed as transgression, even by the couples involved, with family-arranged matches being the norm. I will describe how Haryanvis at times evoke the term 'love marriage' to talk about such non-normative relationships but sculpt definitions that both work with and go beyond the so-called western notion of romantic love. Haryanvis 'who date' and couples who opt for arranged or love marriages emphasize the significance of caring (especially by men), sharing and friendship in romantic/marital relations. These aspirations are largely seen as outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage in Haryana, where the purpose of marriage is often to consolidate agricultural land ownership. In this paper I attempt to evolve a conceptual framework for analyzing 'love marriage' as rebellious in a region that has not seen progressive social movements despite its prosperity. Here, utopia could well be imagined as breaking away from communities and coalescing ties. I see the transformations as re-alignments geared towards alternate, ambiguous futures in a neoliberal India, where Haryanvis anticipate moving away from agriculture - and hence its hold on marriage - but not towards industrialization as the inevitable trajectory.