Don't Marry Me to a Plowman! : Women’s Everyday Lives in Rural North India PDF
Preview Don't Marry Me to a Plowman! : Women’s Everyday Lives in Rural North India
Don't Marry Me to a Plowman! Don't Marry Me to a Plowman! Women's Everyday Lives in Rural North India Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery First published 1996 by Westview Press Published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright© 1996 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 13:978-0-8133-2621-4 (pbk) ISBN 13:978-0-8133-1994-0 (hbk) Contents Preface and Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Queen Today in a Red Sari! 38 2 Just Because I Was Angry 53 3 She's Brought Plenty of Wealth 69 4 A Girl Seems Burdensome to Both Her Parents 83 5 Leaving Her Father's House 98 6 Who Would There Be to Sit with Our Boy? 114 7 No One of Your Own Will Be There 127 8 I've Become Shameless Because of the Children 142 9 The Daughter-in-Law's Era 155 10 Love and Peace in My Mother's House 171 11 Should I Become a Pauper? 187 12 Toasted on One Side 201 13 Why Have You Married Me So Distantly? 216 14 If My Uncle Saw the Situation I'm in Now 231 15 A Woman Should Die Before Her Husband 245 16 Allah Gives Both Boys and Girls 259 Afterword 274 Glossary 277 Bibliography 281 About the Book and Authors 289 Name Index 291 v Preface and Acknowledgments Since the early 1980s, we have been working in Bijnor District in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. People's lives there are being influenced by numerous interlinked changes: Whether in connection with agriculture, religious conflicts, or health, the Indian state plays a central role. Within this rapidly changing context, our research has primarily focused on aspects of domestic and gender politics, especially on issues surrounding women's autonomy and childbearing. During our research, our expectations concerning how we would write about our experiences in Bijnor followed well-trodden tracks. Our thanks, then, must go to Carolyn Elliott for prompting us to experiment with the storytelling genre that we have adopted here. We are very grateful for the funding we have received over the years from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Overseas Development Administration, and the Hayter Fund at the University of Edinburgh. None of these, of course, bears any responsibility for what we have written here. During our research in Bijnor, we were helped by Radha Rani Sharma and Swaleha Begum in 1982-1983, 1985, and 1990- 1991; by Savita Pandey in 1982; and by Zarin Ahmed, Chhaya Pandey, and Swatantra Tyagi in 1990-1991. The material in this book comes from just two of the villages where we have worked, Dharmnagri (a caste Hindu and Harijan village) and Jhakri (a Muslim village). Radha and Swaleha worked particularly in these two villages, and we are endlessly grateful for the care and enthusiasm that they both brought to their work. We arli also greatly indebted to Khurshid Ahmed, from Jhakri. In 1982, he helped to dispel people's initial anxieties about us, and he prepared a map and a preliminary household census for Jhakri. From late 1990, he worked with Roger for some three months, smoothing our access to a nearby village, Qaziwala, where the combination of the Ayodhya crisis, the brewing Gulf War, and Muslims' worries about the implications of the national decennial census was threatening to derail our research. While we were based in Bijnor we relied on many people in Delhi (and in 1990-1991, in Mussoorie) for hospitality and for intellectual and moral support. In particular, we thank Meera Chatterjee and her family, vii viii Preface Bina Agarwal, Loki Madan, Walter Fernandez and others at the Indian Social Institute, Jennifer and Robert Chambers, Carolyn Elliott, Kamlesh and John Mackrell, James and Willi Barton, June Rollinson, and Kunwar Satya Vira and his family. Since completing our fieldwork we have exploited the patience and good humor of friends and colleagues who have commented on all or some of the manuscript or discussed the general issues raised by our writing. In particular, we thank our editors Alison Auch and Susan McEachern at Westview, Colin Bell, Mary Buckley, Pat Caplan, Judith Fewell, Ann Gold, Paul Greenough, David Ludden, David McCrone, Ritu Menon, Pravina King, Judith Okely, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, Ursula Sharma, Peggy Duncan Shearer and Jennifer Shearer, Nandini Sundar, Sylvia Vatuk, Susan Wadley, and Shona Wynd. Toby Morris provided valuable page-setting assistance. Catherine Robin based her lovely line drawings on some of our own photographs, and we thank her for all her efforts, which far exceeded what we had a right to expect. As a two-year-old, our daughter Laura shared our first fieldwork in Bijnor. She, too, has commented on this text, and we thank both her and Kirin for their usual forbearance with our preoccupations. As people in Dharmnagri and Jhakri often told us, our hearts are in two parts, one "at home" in Edinburgh and one "at home" in Bijnor. In no small measure this is because of the kindness and warmth so many people in the two villages extended to us while we lived among them. It would be impossible ever to convey our gratitude adequately and invidious to pick out just one or two people for special mention. We can only hope that something of our affection for them comes through in the stories that follow. Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery Edinburgh Introduction 0, mother, marry me to a man in service, Don't marry me to a plowman! When a plowman returns from his plowing, A revolting stench comes from afar. When an office worker returns from his office, A sweet perfume comes from afar. 0, mother, marry me to a man in service, Don't marry me to a plowman! When a plowman returns from his plowing, He eats a dozen or so pieces of thick griddle bread, When an office worker returns from his office, He eats just a couple of little puffed fried breads. 0, mother, marry me to a man in service, Don't marry me to a plowman! When a plowman returns from his plowing, His goad shows up from afar. When an office worker returns from his office, Wads of hundred rupee bank notes show up from afar. 0, mother, marry me to a man in service, Don't marry me to a plowman! In north India, there are many occasions when special happiness is marked by women singing in groups of varying sizes, usually with one of their number taking the lead by beating out the rhythm on a drum. Often, women's songs touch ironically on important aspects of women's lives.1 This wedding song-reflecting the bride's point of view-would be sung by women at the bride's house before a bride departed for her husband's house. The rural economy throughout the region is so dominated by agriculture that being married to a "man who plows" would be precisely what happened to most women, however. For many brides, indeed, the plowman would be just an agricultural laborer and not an independent farmer, as only the fortunate could hope to be married into a family that owned enough land to keep it in comfort. In the north Indian villages that figure in this book, then, very few women could seriously expect to be married to a man in "service," the local 1
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