Decoding Marriage

"What is marriage?" my little cousin asked. I didn't know what to say. Even as I was crafting  answer in my mind, he fired another question: "why should one get married?" Now, I was starting to question myself: What exactly is marriage? Is marriage timeless, universal and natural? Can it have a sweeping definition?

I flipped through many books on anthropology before I came upon  one definition: "a universal institution that involves a man and a woman living together, engaging in sexual activity, and cooperating economically". This definition, however did not take into account real practices in many parts of the world. For example, in many tribes in Ghana and Indonesia it is common for spouses to live separately. Moreover, I recently read in a newspaper that in parts of Zambia, those married couples who live together often do not eat together but instead have their meals among those of the same gender or age or gender group. In addition, among the Yoruba and other African tribes, economic cooperation is not practiced between married partners; each person takes care of their own needs and the couple rely on their parents to support their offspring.

Marriage is also commonly taken as a union between a man and a woman, supposedly with the aim of begetting children. But many societies have already recognized marriage between partners of the same sex. In addition, Chinese and Sudanese marry live people off to ghosts or spirits--thus  putting an end to the possibility of producing children. In some cultures like Navajo of North America, legitimacy is not tied to marriage; rather they consider the concept of legitimacy strange and unnecessary. At the same time, gay and lesbian marriages across the world are challenging the mainstream definition of marriage and motherhood.

Turn the pages of history books and you see dramatic changes in the meaning of "marriage," which has, of late, come to focus on individual happiness and individual choice--and developed as a public affair as opposed to a private one. Child-bearing, property ownership, and family have all decreased in importance as the concept of marriage has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

Thus, no one definition applies  to all times. So, at a given time, marriage will mean different things to different people. "Marriage" is not finite, definable, timeless arrangement, but rather something which is determined by the time period and place we live in. Where as marriage between a man and a man or between a woman and a woman was simply unimaginable in the past, such a union has been recognized in many modern societies. The one-definition-fits-all approach is even more problematic in an ethnically diverse country like Nepal.

(Published in The Kathmandu Post)