Pre-marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India

This paper is an inquiry into a form of intimate relationship that is garnering much public attention in contemporary India, namely, the pre-marital relationship. In order to query the rhetoric of individual agency and “freedom” that often gets associated with pre-marital relationships, this paper explores the family’s involvement in pre-marital relationships of young adults aged 24–31. The paper argues that though pre-marital relationships often fashion themselves as a disjuncture from the narrative of marriage, in reality, they model themselves on structures and expectations of a marital union. This paper also pays attention to the ways in which families position themselves vis-à-vis pre-marital relationships. Specifically, it discusses the strategies by which the family can obstruct or encourage certain pre-marital relationships over others, thereby highlighting the bearing of the family’s involvement in changing the course of a relationship: either from a non-serious form of relationship to a committed one, or leading to the breaking up of the relationship.