The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

ISSN: 0732-9113 (Print) 2305-9931 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjlp20

Courting marriage: juridification of intimate

relationships in North India

Rama Srinivasan

To cite this article: Rama Srinivasan (2018) Courting marriage: juridification of intimate
relationships in North India, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 50:2, 213-234, DOI:
10.1080/07329113.2018.1501243

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2018.1501243

Published online: 20 Sep 2018.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 29

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjlp20
THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW
2018, VOL. 50, NO. 2, 213–234
https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2018.1501243

Courting marriage: juridification of intimate relationships

in North India
Rama Srinivasan
Author & Anthropologist, Germany

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper examines cases of elopements and choice-based mar- Received 4 February 2018
riages in North India that have consolidated into an established Accepted 13 July 2018
form of litigation in the past two decades. Through ethnographic
research at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, I delineate the KEYWORDS
nature and scope of legal processes in validating relationships of Court marriage; elopements;
choice and in mediating between couples and their kin groups. juridification of rights; legal
fictions; protection petitions
The proliferation of elopement cases, popularly known as court
marriages, reflects a juridification of potentially deviant marriages,
where discourses on universal rights both inform, and are, in turn,
shaped by the dialogue initiated in such courtroom proceedings. I
argue that court marriages signify a creative re-imagination of
law, a research subject that is gaining traction within the field of
legal anthropology but is, as yet, under-represented in the study
of gender and sexuality in India. While feminist scholarship from
South Asia has contributed immensely in highlighting the patri-
archal biases in judicial intervention on gendered violence and
discrimination, the creative possibilities inherent in legal proce-
dures continue to be under-emphasized. Combining recent
anthropological research on law and classical kinship studies on
marriage, I propose that court marriage is an innovative, context-
ually-driven effort to re-imagine both legal spaces and the institu-
tion of marriage itself.

1. Introduction
At the Chandigarh-based Punjab and Haryana High Court1, the sight of numerous
newly-wed couples inside courtrooms and in the corridors of the court complex
evokes no surprise and is part of the court’s daily routine. This paper is an exposition
on how the cases of elopements and choice-based marriages – also popularly known
as love marriages – in this region have, over a period of time, consolidated into an
established form of litigation, namely a petition for the protection of life and liberty.
Through ethnographic research conducted at the high court in May–August 2012 and
January–August 2015, I noted subtle shifts in courtroom interactions that signal the
existence and maturing of a legal morality that is discernibly distinct from other

CONTACT Rama Srinivasan rama_srinivasan@alumni.brown.edu

ß 2018 The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law
214 R. SRINIVASAN

normative orders (including the kinship order). Several judges and lawyers, in my
research, rhetorically claimed that every adult has a right to marry of their own
accord even if they openly disapproved of elopements. Despite some strongly-held
and explicitly stated opinions against what was often described as an example of
eroding sexual moralities, many actors in this space were able to distinguish the social
norms that they appeared to subscribe to from their stated positions on law and what
it can allow for. Through the ability to demarcate the boundaries between the realm
of law from those of social prescripts, these actors have been able to create an estab-
lished and socially-recognised legal mechanism for eloping couples, providing a
model for judicial intervention where actors, both in the legal space and beyond, are
able to support trends that they do not approve of.
Since at least 2010, an average of 50 couples from the states of Punjab and
Haryana have visited this court on each business day2. In this paper, I discuss how
protection petitions operate through both routine and exceptional events, addressing
the scope and impact of court intervention in elopement and related cases. Court
procedures both uphold the right of an adult citizen to marry a person of their own
choice (when family-arranged matches are the norm) and provide a ritualistic frame-
work where the court visit can later be coded as a ‘court marriage’.
The term ‘court marriage’ is hardly referenced in scholarly literature from India.
The only mention I have come across is in Perveez Mody’s The Intimate State. As part
of her research, Mody tracked cases of ‘court-marriage’, which she has described as
civil marriage or registration of Hindu weddings (Mody 2008:103), at an administrative
court in Delhi (Sub Divisional Magistrate’s court). In the context of inter-community
marriages, she quotes interlocuters in Delhi alluding to these court-marriages as both
steel-proof, in that the couples will not be separated from their dissenting families, and
a union of dubious social legitimacy (109–111). The court in her fieldwork refers to a
Magisterial office or the executive while in my study it refers to the judiciary.
Mody’s work is, additionally, concerned with competing discourses on the trend of
elopements within and outside state spaces in Delhi while this paper primarily focuses
on performative aspects of courtroom dialogue and procedures. Combining the ana-
lysis of judicial proceedings with themes from classical kinship studies from South
Asia (Ortner 1978; Raheja 1988), which perceived marriage in ritualistic and per-
formative terms, I delineate the specific settings within which such marital unions
are forged.
In the following sections, I will first discuss feminist scholarship on the Indian
state, law and legal orders. The paper will then reconstruct the short history of this
trend of protection petition litigation and outline the larger legal moves through
which some forms of marriage have become ‘juridified’. Next, I will turn to the every-
day courtroom interactions that discursively institute what is popularly known as
‘court marriage’ in this region. The paper will end with examples that highlight how
such interactions have, over time, become routine and predictable where even the
exceptional cases contribute to our understanding of a larger pattern. That is, borrow-
ing from Giorgio Agamben, I argue that the exception reinforces the rule (Agamben
2005), exposing how cases that are adjudicated with reasonable ease constitute more
sustainable ‘court marriages’.
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 215

2. Feminist scholarship on Indian state, law, legal orders

My ethnographic data resonates with several long-standing feminist debates, especially
those from a postcolonial context, such as law versus customs, individual and com-
munity rights, the interaction between jurisprudence and legal practice. South Asian
feminist scholarship on jurisprudence, in particular, has emphasised how cases involv-
ing women’s rights are often inaccurately framed as a confrontation between trad-
itionalist societies and a modern state. Both feminist scholars in the West and the
Global South have pointed out how the modern state is thoroughly enmeshed in the
private lives of its citizens, especially through its control on the marriage institution
(Pateman 1988; Okin 1989; Agnes 1999; Vanita 2011).
Feminist scholarship of law in India, especially by Nivedita Menon (2004), Ratna
Kapur (2013) and Flavia Agnes (1999) have critiqued the binary that pits laws against
customs, revealing that laws governing family and inheritance extend the rule of the
patriarch. The laws instituted by the state, feminist scholars have argued, carry the
perceptions of the dominant caste patriarchy and, in fact, further its goals as the
designs of governance. As Menon points out in Seeing like a Feminist, the state has
become the space where Brahmanical/upper caste and Victorian patriarchy have
found compatibility (Menon 2012:24). Pratiksha Baxi, who followed court proceedings
more closely, describes how adjudication on love marriages tend to view women as
abject bodies (Baxi 2006: 74) with conflicting claims of custody (62). She locates a
nexus between kinship and the state in cases of elopements that are framed as abduc-
tion, one that symbolises a privatisation of public law (62).
Baxi as well as Historian Prem Chowdhry address this in their work on abduction
cases where an eloping bride is conceptualised in courts as a kidnapped subject and
the judges were required to settle the question of her custody (Baxi 2006, 2014;
Chowdhry 2004, 2007). My ethnographic data testifies to this pattern but I have also,
additionally, observed individual judges, both men and women, often approach the
women’s question in contradictory ways. Courtroom performances allows for unpre-
dictable outcomes that depend on a variety of factors. In my research, the patriarchy
of the state itself does not follow lineally from the social order and is as such not
monolithic. As Jyoti Puri explains, recognising states themselves as subjective allows
us to focus on how preoccupations with managing sexual practices and forms of sex-
ual labour are discursively producing the state itself (Puri 2016). Governing sexuality,
she writes, helps sustain the illusion that states are a normal feature of social life,
“intrinsically distinct from society, and indispensable to maintaining social order
(2016: 2).” In other words, the legal order that is presumably re-shaping other norma-
tive orders is itself produced through the expectation that it should regulate sex-
ual practices.
A recent ethnography by Livia Holden on divorce proceedings in central Indian courts
illustrates how state spaces are moulded through this expectation (Holden 2016). Lawyers
in Central India, who are Holden’s informants, not only show an astute knowledge of
the customs that allow women from lower castes to divorce and marry several men they
also help the latter validate such relationships in courts. To end their marriages, these
women widely used the ‘notary public’ that works as an extension of the state where
people try to fit their refashioned personal lives within legal frameworks. As Holden
216 R. SRINIVASAN

summarises superbly: “The notary public, in spite of a cold paternalistic attitude, appears
wisely to manipulate a vast range of legal and metalegal categories and thereby creates
for his clients the sufficient platform for a legal recognition of their customs. Whereas
we would have expected a narrow interpretation of the law, we have instead a clever
bridge in relation to the official setting (144).” Holden seems to suggest that if the legal
text cannot serve the needs of some, citizens often believe that the state is still obliged to.
And those whose job it is to interpret the text, the lawyers, might actually manipulate
legal procedures to provide closures the official law is simply not capable of.
Building on her argument, I propose that legal processes gain their credibility not
only through the letter of law but also through the acknowledgement they receive
among community members. Legal consciousness shapes non-state normative orders,
determining the relationship between competing and complementary regula-
tory frameworks.
If feminist scholarship, as I have previously discussed, has played an important
role in disrupting the binaries of law versus custom and kinship versus state, this
body of literature still largely focuses on the ideological impulses of a patriarchal
state, whose power is perceived as coercive and omnipresent. While not losing sight
of the state’s patriarchal dispositions, this paper seeks go beyond ideological mechani-
sations to instead focus on the interplay between distinct but overlapping normative
orders. To borrow from Sally Merry, this approach aims at examining the ways in
which “social groups conceive of ordering, of social relationships, and of ways of
determining truth and justice (Merry 1988: 889).”
For the legal order to have any legitimacy, I argue, it would need the acknowledge-
ment, grudging or affirmative, from the community itself. As I will highlight through
examples of protection petitions, state and its spaces are placed higher on the hierarchy,
creating an opportunity to forge a marital union seemingly sanctioned by the state. The
juridification of love marriages through the deployment of protection petitions is a col-
lective exercise at meaning-making, a largely dialogical process where marriage is con-
ceived and legitimised through performative acts that depend on multiple orders. I will
return to this discussion on legal orders in the section devoted to juridification processes.

3. From protection to marriage: A short history of elopements at

Chandigarh high court
At the high court, eloping couples usually pursue writ petitions in reference to
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, namely, the fundamental right to life and lib-
erty. They file a petition for the protection of life and liberty that they claim has been
threatened as a result of their decision to elope and marry, presumably against the
wishes of their family and kin groups. According to one veteran lawyer, Manpreet3,
the trend of newly-weds filing protection petitions dates back to at least 1994 and has
run parallel to the more news-making trend of ‘honour killings’, where eloping cou-
ples from the region were brutally murdered. According to a news report, in 2002,
the then Chief Justice of the high court B.K. Roy lay the foundation for the expanded
role this court would come to play in cases of elopement by granting protection to
every couple who approached the court (Sura, A. 2015. ‘HC advises runaway couples
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 217

to follow social norms’. <seurld>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/

HC-advises-runaway-couples-to-follow-social-norms/articleshow/47608280.cms</seurld>
Date Accessed: October 8, 2017). The precedent set by him was followed with excep-
tions by several judges in subsequent years. In 2008, Justice Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia
took a suo moto (on its own, in Latin) notice on the huge volume of such cases handled
by the court, stating in his court order:
It is a fact that from the last 4–5 years, this court is flooded with petitions where
married couples come and seek protection. Times have changed but the response of the
state has not changed. I have before me number of young married persons, who struck
by cupid’s arrow, have exchanged vows of marriage and promises to each other to live
together, are running from pillar to post, chased by the musclemen or police (Alhuwalia,
K. S. in Kumar vs. B.Verma, A. Devi & S. Verma 2008: 8).
With this honest, if sentimental, court order that indicted the state directly in its
failure to respond adequately, Ahluwalia ordered the setting up of a committee of
advocates to look into the phenomenon of elopements and make suggestions on how
the high court could help these lovers better.
Human rights-based activism has also influenced conversations on this phenom-
enon given the unavoidable links between the phenomenon of elopements and
‘honour killings’. Two advocates, who have been closely associated with elopement
cases in this capacity, Navkiran Singh Fateh and Tanu Bedi (real names), today have
mixed feelings on the impact their efforts have had. Fateh and the Human Rights
Law Network he headed in Chandigarh raised the question of protection cases in two
Public Interest Litigations in the last decade. The first case hinged on the law
network’s project of constructing protection homes in every district in Punjab and
Haryana so that couples could get married in their own home district within these
shelters. The second petition challenged the infamous caste councils of Haryana,
which had, in the past, issued provocative statements justifying or even ordering hon-
our crimes. Files on both these cases, which I examined closely at Fateh’s office,
reveal not only a discussion on the idea of securing life but also a discernible effort
on part of different actors to set the parameters within which individual choice was
defined and articulated. When I asked Fateh specifically if his purpose was to initiate
this conversation by bringing it up in courts he immediately said: “It was exactly
that. And we have made a difference.”
The aims of the law network and Ahluwalia’s committee overlapped, resulting in
the former’s success in securing a court order on the construction of protection
homes. But since protection homes were created through a high court order, district
administrations that run these homes had deemed it fit to only accept couples osten-
sibly ‘sent by the court’4. Fateh appeared slightly bitter over this turn of events when
he spoke to me in 2015. He said: “Our whole effort was to prevent couples from visit-
ing Chandigarh and the courts. We hoped that marriage, protection, family counsel-
ling would just happen in couples’ own districts.” Though he believes that his
network has made a difference, change was not in the form he had petitioned for.
Bedi, on the other hand, admits to even being deeply ambivalent of law’s potential
to bring about social change due to her experiences as a court-appointed legal officer.
She has travelled extensively in both states to inspect protection homes and interview
218 R. SRINIVASAN

eloping couples and, according to her, a miniscule percentage of the couples who
acquired the court order actually approached police officers for protection. She had
come across couples who had not even spoken to their families about their intention
to elope and were clueless on whether the wedding would be opposed, let alone hav-
ing a real apprehension of physical harm. Her experience has led her to consider
these petitions a waste of precious judicial time and her efforts are today geared
towards weaning couples away from the high court space. While both differ on law’s
role in mediating social conflicts, Fateh and Bedi appeared to agree on one point –
elopements cases do not ideally belong in the high court. But in the absence of a
long-term, viable resolution the cases have continued to trickle in. The frustrating set-
backs faced by human rights advocates have coincided with the proliferation and rou-
tinisation of protection petition litigation with an average of 50 cases heard on any
given business day. Were the human rights lawyers let down by the Indian state’s
implementation of their innovative solutions or have the high court petitions become
indispensable where eloping couples are concerned?
Rather than focus just on the letter of the law, I observed courtroom interactions
and interviewed lawyers and couples5 before or after their court appearance to under-
stand how the protection petitions were serving them. While judges like Ahluwalia
were sympathetic to the plight of such couples, this form of litigation has remained a
source of great disquiet among others. One judge struggled to articulate his discon-
tent on an occasion I was present in 2015: “ … everybody is approaching this court to
get their (right to) life and liberty validated. As far as life is concerned I understand
… but liberty … Should we be validating the liberty to … (elope?)” His words
encourage me to probe the source of his confusion – it possibly comes from the
application of a Constitutional article in conjunction with the section 482 from the
Code of Criminal Procedure (protection from harm) for marriage-related cases, which
ideally belong under the civil law. While Article 21 refers to a broad range of issues,
the Special Marriage Act of 1954, the civil union law, directly addresses and guaran-
tees the right to marry one’s chosen partner but under specific conditions6. Though
Article 21 was widely used, in court proceedings it did not appear that the right to
marry was a fundamental or unalienable right. That is, its application only went as far
as ensuring that couples may live their lives as they desired without any interference
and harm. And yet many judges perused the paperwork carefully to establish the ver-
acity of the claim of marriage. These efforts produced different dialogues in various
courtrooms but court orders of almost all judges (public documents, available for
download on the court website) contained a variation of the following phrase: “ …
while not commenting on the claim of marriage … ”
Through my time at the court premises and through the study of case files and
interviews with lawyers and litigants I came to see protection petitions as a routine
yet unpredictable process where the desired outcome was highly anticipated but not
taken for granted. The ‘right to marry’ that judges often claimed every adult citizen
possessed was negotiated on a case-by-case basis but not explicitly articulated in
orders. When judges studied the wedding evidence (certificate from a religious
authority and photographs) they accorded it virtue and their physical act of reading
case files and their interactions with couples brought these marriages under the legal
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 219

preview. Expanding on an idea I first heard Justice Kamini (pseudonyms have been
assigned for all the judges I observed) articulate in 2012, we could see the court order
as a ‘marriage certificate’ of sorts, which lends credence to a popularly-held belief
within communities that the court has approved the wedding. These marriages are
today also known as ‘court marriages’ within communities in North India and can be
perceived as a form of civil union.
In North India, marriage also bestows adulthood in the eyes of family and com-
munity members but it is a privilege mostly afforded to those who conform to kin-
ship norms. The court procedure reverses this process, that is, petitioners are first
recognised as legal adults7 and, consequently, as rights-bearing citizens. While it is
possible for individuals to have their adulthood recognised without marriage8, such a
privilege is often not accorded to those without social capital. Eloping couples who
visit the high court largely belong to rural backgrounds and are often in relationships
that defy caste-based restrictions9. The possibility of being recognised as rights-bear-
ing citizens is slender for these groups. On the other hand, where judges granted the
protection order to legal minors claiming that “even a minor deserves protection,”
they validated a wedding that consequently allows for an emancipation of sorts for
such petitioners, where the guardianship of parents is effectively rejected.
Courts, hence, provide a crucial site for both negotiating potential conflicts with
kin groups and for validating one’s choices as a rights-bearing citizen. But speaking
of this issue under the framework of universal human rights is only effective depend-
ing on the positionality of the speaker. Eloping couples are often perceived and spo-
ken of by many actors as undeserving of the time and space they are provided with
at the court. Several lawyers, including Bedi, have argued in interviews with me that
such cases do not belong to the space of the high court where judges are expected to
adjudicate on ‘more important and urgent’ petitions.
Judges, on the other hand, are clearly in a position of authority to state that choice
in intimate relationships is a (human) right. In this contractual arrangement, couples
speak of their aspirations in court and expect a person in a position of authority to val-
idate their aspiration as a legally viable one. Such efforts represent an effort at negotiat-
ing rights that are not assumed as universal in legal parlance. In the next section, I will
make a case for analysing this exchange on rights as an effort at juridifying marriage.

4. Juridification of love marriages

The negotiations couples undertake, with varying levels of support from lawyers, fall
under what Upendra Baxi would term ‘politics for human rights’ rather than the
‘politics of rights’, where the focus is on “practices and forms of transformative polit-
ics for dignity and justice for all humans everywhere (Baxi 2012: 276).” Baxi sought
to redirect focus away from advocacy efforts undertaken within the human rights
framework to everyday, individualised negotiations, a scholarly move that is particu-
larly relevant for legal anthropologists. Julia Eckert and others, who build on his
work, argue in Law Against the State that we should trace the gradual process of
change in normative orders that has not been imposed from above, that is, not
through the initiative of state institutions. They propose, instead, we study the “effects
220 R. SRINIVASAN

of people’s legal choices, trials and errors in eclectic situated processes of juridifica-
tion (Eckert et al. 2012:3).”
In my research, I focus on a localised phenomenon that holds the potential to
inform and mould global discourses on human rights as well as state institutions. The
protection petition is a writ petition where the state (represented in court by states
such as Punjab and Haryana) is the main respondent with family and kin groups as
secondary10 respondents. But the protection petitions do not just signify application
of state law against the state, as juridification processes in human rights litigation do.
I would argue that they also mobilise the state and its bodies to participate in poten-
tial conflicts within social and community orders.
In effectively utilising the right to life and liberty in this negotiation, couples and
their lawyers do not necessarily display an ignorance regarding the finer distinctions
between constitutional, penal and civil laws. They rather voice demands through a
discourse and a legal provision that is more efficient and expedient in getting results
than the Special Marriage Act11. The resultant court order does not necessarily signify
a favourable result in that the claim of marriage is never explicitly endorsed. But cou-
ples read endorsement and court approval into the text, a leap in which they are also
joined by various participants in the courtroom and the community outside. The
modes through which legal knowledge travels between court spaces, where judges and
lawyers explicitly state that courts do not conduct or sanction weddings, and the
community, which believes they do, are arguably a form of juridification.
In my ethnographic research, couples rarely asserted their rights explicitly within
community or state spaces but the protection petition allows them an opportunity to
phrase their demands with docility, that is, without directly challenging political and
social hierarchies. Leaving the task of articulating the existence of marital or citizen
rights to judges signals a depoliticisation that is typical of juridification processes as
Eckert and others have noted (2012). If courts adjudicate on a case-by-case basis,
couples make individualised, depoliticised claims – they only assert their own aspira-
tions and the life choices they have made. Despite forming a significant group both
inside court spaces and outside, eloping couples are not united by their aspirations or
their decision to visit courts. If there is something that links this disparate group it is
that they have heard about what Eckert would call a ‘rumour of a just court,’ one
known of its neutrality (2012: 148). While district courts are assumed to function
within the matrix of local hierarchies and networks of patronage, according to even
some of the lawyers practising in these courts, I learned that the high court in
Chandigarh is popularly understood as a neutral and fair institution. Several peti-
tioners claimed in their interviews that they were impressed with the high court with
adjectives like ‘neat’ or ‘straightforward’, with one groom observing: “Achcha hai
yahan ka system (They have a good system here).”
In courtrooms, I observed that the litigation process was smoother when there
were no caste or community-based affinities between the judges and the petitioners.
As my third courtroom example will show, any familiarity the judge may have with
the social location of the petitioners, especially that of the bride, could result in a
situation where the rule of law is circumvented. But exceptions have not dissuaded
more couples from visiting the court.
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 221

As Eckert has already discussed in The Rumour of Rights, subjects are well aware
of their vulnerability when it comes to legal processes. Law, she argues, is the site of
both hopes and fears where the rumour of rights come with the uncertainty that is
inherent to how rumours usually work (2012). But if her informants in Mumbai
slums are acutely aware of the ability of law to “make people illegal (2012:150),” my
own observations from the courtrooms in Chandigarh reveal a process which may
end in subjects becoming legal. As I have argued earlier, marriage as a rite of passage
bestows adulthood and rights.
Jurisprudence Professor Anil Thakur at the Chandigarh-based Panjab University
stated in a private conversation with me that there is a strong tendency among the
people in the region to ‘bring facts to the knowledge of the state’. Petitioners at times
did not appeal for resolutions but rather sought to ‘inform the courts’ of facts per-
taining to their lives – possibly to ensure that they were still leading legitimate lives.
Using this framework, one could argue that eloping couples recognised that the high
court visit was not just an opportunity but also perhaps a necessity.
The couples’ move represents a willingness to embrace subjectivity of the state in
order to live legally tenable lives. As Jo~ao Biehl had noted while surveying the trend
among Brazilians to sue the state for their medical expenses, the struggle is not just
about extending life. He finds it significant that his informants use the expression
entrar na justiça, “to enter the judiciary” or, literally, “to enter justice” (Biehl 2013:
421) while referring to their lawsuits. They assert that they no longer want to live
outside the zone of justice and, also, tacitly accept that the space of the court is, in
fact, the space of justice. According to Biehl, realising citizenship through this inter-
pretation, allows citizens to remake the spaces and themselves (422).
I propose, in turn, that eloping couples feel the need to enter the zone of justice, a
seemingly neutral state institution, where they can be assured of leading legally ten-
able lives despite a contentious change in their marital status. Consequently, the solu-
tion offered by Fateh’s law network – protection homes in home districts where
couples can get married – could have stripped them of this opportunity. Couples per-
haps continue to visit the high court12 because it is a relatively neutral and just insti-
tution with an established procedure that validates potentially deviant choices
in marriage.

5. Protection petitions as legal fictions

Lawyers practising at the high court often claimed in casual conversations that in ‘a
majority of cases’ where a protection order was granted, the threat perception was
actually minimal. My interviews with petitioners regarding their motivations behind
filing the petition have corroborated this claim. While honour killings continue to be
a part of North Indian landscape, protection cases often involve couples who may
anticipate social boycott and micro-aggressions but not actual physical harm.
According to one lawyer, Nakul, who had a cynical disposition towards his profes-
sion, such petitions works best where the possibility of kin groups contesting the
union is already negligible. The specific cases I will discuss in the next section repre-
sent a spectrum – they range from mildly contentious to outright tragedies. But it is
222 R. SRINIVASAN

important to mention that a substantial number of protection petitions – around 60-

65 percent on any given day – were wrapped up within minutes without much dis-
cussion or unpleasantness.
The petitions are usually premised on the anticipation of physical threat, conjectural
in most cases. Most judges displayed awareness – with subtle or explicit speech – that
they were cognizant of the fact that couples sought legal validity for their weddings. The
idea of physical threat was accepted in principle by judges and validity through court
procedures was assumed by the couples when state protection was granted. The observa-
tion of a new judge on one of his first days in the court was illuminating in this regard.
By way of learning his way around this line of litigation, he observed: “The court only
states protection of life and liberty. Age underlines validity for the wedding.”
Though human rights advocates are dismissive of this convoluted legal procedure
that in effect upholds the right to marry, lawyers who specialised in these cases were
acutely aware of the role they played in creating and sustaining these constructed
meanings. One can posit this construction in terms of an invented ‘legal fiction’
(assumed accurate for legal purposes but may be only partially true or even com-
pletely false). As Bruno Latour explains: “lawyers can indulge in a power to invent
fictions, and to introduce what they call ‘constructive solutions’ (Latour 2004:110).”
But he warns almost immediately in this piece that the “special prowess of adjudica-
tion turns into a cynical nightmare of arbitrariness (110).”
My courtroom ethnography has largely justified Latour’s scepticism. For example, an
occasion in which a clear and visible apprehension of physical harm existed within the court-
room, the legal fiction fell apart, allowing little or no state protection in its wake. A smooth
rite of passage through the courtroom appeared to be an essential aspect of this procedure.
The court spaces very often afforded the sight of brides who appeared in wedding
fineries and after visiting salons specialising in what is popularly known as ‘bridal
make-up’. Even when they did not make such efforts, they wore chudas or red ban-
gles which, in this region, signifies that the bearer is a newly-wedded bride. Women
who belonged to communities where this practice was not as common, non-Punjabi
speaking Haryanvis and Muslim women, frequently appeared in courtrooms wearing
such wedding markers.
These observations effectively blur the false binary between law and custom and
support one of central arguments in this paper: the courtroom provides a ritualistic
space to perform a wedding disapproved by kin groups. The court experience is as an
integral part of the social event of a wedding, rather than an ancillary procedure pur-
sued to have the claim of being wedded legitimated. The protection petitions were, in
most cases, a legal fiction aimed at completing the wedding ritual itself. In the next
section, I will build on this hypothesis through select observations of courtroom pro-
ceedings that highlighted the creative ways in which subjects read and re-crafted state
spaces for their specific needs.

6. Courting desire: Navigating legal spaces as precarious subjects

Justice Ranjit (judges have been assigned pseudonyms) presided over cases of elope-
ments in 2012 and 2015 when I conducted research at the high court. He often
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 223

managed to unnerve eloping couples by asking them rhetorical questions such as

‘their thoughts’ on customs and traditions, indirectly suggesting that they were defy-
ing customs through their decision to elope or through their choice of partners.
While his broader perspectives remained fairly consistent, subtle shifts in his posi-
tions were clearly discernible when I returned to the high court in 2015. On one
occasion in 2015, I observed him admonish a lawyer who had been negligent with
preparing the petition with the following words: Sir, please take pity on these couples.
They are in great trouble … they are on the run.” Ranjit’s evolution, which in some
ways serves as a reflection of the high court’s own, is probably best captured in the
following interaction I observed between him, a couple, the bride’s parents, and the
latter’s lawyer in 2015:
Justice Ranjit (in Hindi): You must accept this change. What can you do?

(Parents sob by way of reply.)

JR (continues in Hindi): Parents of both (bride and groom) are unfortunate. But that is
not the case here.

Mother: Girl has been brought here by force.

JR: The girl is right here. You can ask her.

Parents together: Please let us talk to her.

JR: Sure, you can talk to her.

Bride: I don’t want to return to my parents. I want to marry him.

JR: You can get married but at least talk to your parents.

Bride: No, I don’t want to talk to them.

JR: How did you manage to hate them so much over night? Why is there so much
poison (in your outlook?)?

Bride: I don’t want to talk to them.

JR to parents’ lawyer (in English): I have asked her. She is not willing (to speak to her
parents). What more can the court do for you?

Parents (simultaneously, in Hindi): First you bring them up. Then you educate them.
Why should we kill (them)? Other people kill their own children but we are
educated people.

JR (also in Hindi): The court has utmost sympathy for you. The court understands your
pain. I hope that she will realise her mistake after a month or so and return to you.

Parents: What is the point then? Tab toh waqt nikhal jayega (By then it would be too late.)
224 R. SRINIVASAN

Ranjit’s interaction reflects several issues that connect various threads in this paper:
1. He posed a direct question to the parents’ lawyer on what the court can do for
them. 2. While empathising with the parents, he had clearly articulated that their
emotions were irrelevant to the case. 3. The bride had insisted that she wanted to
marry the man she had eloped with in an inconsistent reply to the urge for dialogue
with parents, which she subsequently refused to engage in. She had hinted, through
her choice of words, that the act of marrying – particularly a wedding ritual – had
not taken place. Or, perhaps closer to the truth, the wedding ritual was, as yet,
incomplete. A smooth passage out of the court would seal this wedding that was, as
yet, still marked by ambiguity. Such cases, where parents contested the wedding, add-
itionally highlighted the ways in which legal validity is perceived, both in state and
non-state settings. While religious weddings are considered legal according to per-
sonal laws, their legality only comes into question through contestation. An uncon-
tested religious wedding is presumed legal but elopement and/or love marriages will
very likely be challenged.
The question Ranjit asked the parents’ lawyer – What can the court do for you? –
repeatedly resurfaces and guides, in some ways, former and current judges’ court-
room conduct on protection petitions. Ranjit’s day-to-day conduct was still geared, as
it had been for Justice Ahluwalia, towards deciphering what people who visited the
court, petitioners, and parents of petitioners sought from the space on an immedi-
ate basis.
High drama, where the parents of the bride appeared in front of the court to
plead for dialogue or allege foul play on part of the groom, has become a familiar
routine over time. The number of such episodes had significantly increased in 2015,
as compared to 2012. I attribute this to both increased knowledge and familiarity of
the high court procedure – high volume of cases where couples have ‘succeeded’
through court intervention – as well as a phenomenal growth in cell phone data
coverage in rural India, which makes accessing high court websites and causel-
ists easier.
Many such cases roughly followed the pattern outlined in the first example. On
some occasions, when multiple set of parents appeared in the same courtroom, the
cases tended to subtly influence each other. I include a brief description of one such
morning where two elopement cases were placed before Justice Kishore. In both cases
his courtroom conduct played a significant part in consolidating the weddings. The
occupants in the courtroom were convinced by the end of the episode that he had
validated both the couples. This courtroom drama began when parents of the bride#1
started the conversation by talking about their honour.
Justice Kishore (in English): Is there any honour left now?

Parents’ lawyer (in English): Please just ask her to meet the parents. She is 20, they
cannot do anything (about the wedding).

Bride#1 (in Hindi): I will meet them later.

JK (also in Hindi): Why don’t you meet them now? Here? You can sit down right here
(gestures to some seats on the right behind his elevated desk).
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 225

As the mother approached the bench, he addressed her (in Hindi) in a gentler
tone than the one he had used with the lawyer: “You have to talk to her calmly.
Don’t fight with her now.” While bride#1 had this conversation from a spot behind
the judge that was, for me, imbued with state power and protection, a discomforting
scene proceeded in front of him. Where the legal counsel and the parents in the first
case had appeared relatively respectful, the second case started on an offensive note,
consequently making the judge brusque and short in his replies.
Parents’ lawyer (in English): They got married at some place and got certificate
elsewhere. It is not a valid marriage, my lord.

Justice Kishore (in English): We are not here to give a stamp of approval for the
wedding. The question here is of protection.

Lawyer: It is not a valid marriage.

JK (in English): Even if there is no marriage … There is no need. They are both majors
(legal adults).
Parents now tried to force a conversation by getting physically closer to the
woman. When other family members started speaking to the judge simultaneously,
he ordered that relatives, with the exception of parents, should leave the courtroom
before addressing the latter directly.
JK (in English): Girl has taken a step she should not have. What can be done?

Father of the bride (in Hindi): Aap humare chehre dekho. (Look at our faces – Please
judge us by our appearance.)

JK (in English): This is not trial court, sir. (Father repeats the prior sentence as
Kishore replies.)

JK (In both Hindi and English as it appears here): Chehra dekhen kaunsa
(Which face should I examine)? Don’t say chehra (face) again. Do minute me
dikha doge aap toh (It won’t take you more than two minutes to show me your
real face13).
Despite the judge’s disapproval, the bride’s mother pushed her way ahead, shoving
the bride roughly in the process. Kishore was, by this time, furious.
JK (in Hindi): Dakhkhe se nahi mil sakte yahan (You cannot push your way around
here to meet your daughter.)

Parents’ Lawyer (in English): Just 10 minutes (for a meeting), please.

JK (also in English): I cannot force her. She is not interested.

Lawyer: Only 10 minutes.

JK: I will not let her speak (to the parents) for even 10 seconds and you are asking me
for 10 minutes.
226 R. SRINIVASAN

The parents now desperately allege that she is under pressure to say she won’t speak
to them.
Parents (in Hindi): Let her meet us for 4-5 minutes and then it’s her wish.

JK (replies in Hindi): Our hands are tied (colloquial expression to claim that one is
being bound by a sense of duty).

JK to parents’ lawyer (in English): Knowing fully well that a conversation is not possible
you are still requesting for one. See this girl sitting here (gestures to the first bride who,
at this point, seems to be having a cordial conversation with her mother)? I cannot
force anyone.
After finally passing the protection order in this contentious case, Kishore turned
his attention to the first one that he had used to underline how his decisions are fair
and just.
JK to parents’ lawyer (in English): Are you satisfied?

Lawyer: Very much so.

JK: Both of you (lawyers representing the couple and the parents) should open a
mediation centre. Talk to each other about it. See if some mediations are possible.
Upholding not only his own conduct as an example, Kishore appeared to also
credit the role played by the lawyers in handling the case to the satisfaction of all par-
ties involved. His utterances on loss of parents’ honour and describing elopement as
“the step a girl must not take” appeared to underline subscription to kinship norms
but, as I had mentioned in the introduction, he had successfully separated the former
from legal norms. Kishore had, like Ranjit, upheld ‘the rule of law’ over popular views
on the elopement phenomenon (including loss of parents’ honour). With less
empathy than Ranjit had shown towards the parents, he had also responded strongly
to the potential disorderliness that had crept into the court at one point. The second
family had scant respect for courtroom protocol but in the exercise of his authority
Kishore had taken back charge of the court.
The legal process too had been evolved on a notion of best practices rather than
any pre-existing rules. There were no provisions for parents contesting the claim of
marriage during this stage of litigation but, in general, the high court had tolerated
and even indulged this form of intrusion. Kishore had followed this unofficial norm.
He was concerned with the individuals and what the court could to for them, evolv-
ing mechanisms and rules that he thought were just and fair as he proceeded.
Elopement cases presented one of the few examples in this institution where court-
room protocol was often actively subverted. The disorder in the second case repre-
sented an act of exercising male guardian’s rights over the daughter, a move in which
the women of the family also actively participated. In calling into the question the
validity of the wedding, the family in the second case had sought to emphasise that
their authority over the daughter was still valid and as such not a matter for the court
to preside over. As Baxi has previously argued, elopement cases were often reduced
to a custody battle (Baxi 2006) where the woman was viewed as a ward. But
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 227

Kishore’s conduct indicates that he had perceived the adult woman as a citizen and
not a ward who had strayed away from the control of her guardian. His conduct and
his style of functioning had an in-built mechanism of validating the couple, as adult
citizens who can make their choices, even without what he called a ‘stamp of appro-
val’. For these two couples, the ‘rumour of a just court’ had indeed proven to be an
accurate one although court processes still do not come with guarantees.
Observing courtroom proceedings over months spread over two different years
also afforded me an opportunity to record slippages, the exceptions that strengthen
the general rule as Agamben would have put it (Agamben 2005). The importance of
how the court is conducted was brought home to me in another case where the
judge, Hardeep, had responded to a similar situation in a diametrically opposite man-
ner. Where Kishore’s example had acted as an affirmation of life and citizenry of the
eloping couple, Justice Hardeep’s conduct had highlighted the precarity of a couple
when courtroom proceedings sided with patriarchal agents. The case involved a
woman from a wealthy Jat Sikh family from Haryana’s Rania district and was one of
the few cases I had observed in which clear and imminent danger was visible inside
the courtroom. As the conversations stretched over the course of the morning, the
courtroom had become increasingly chaotic.
In this case, ironically, protection was not the issue the presiding judge concerned
himself with – it was the validity of the wedding itself that most judges, including
Hardeep himself on other occasions, distanced themselves from. The proceedings
started with what, in Haryana, often dominates decisions regarding marriage alliances
among Jat families: how much land the bride’s family owns. While I heard and
scribbled in my notes that the bride’s family named the figure of seven acres, I later
found out that other people in the court may have heard different, much higher
numbers. The mention of this figure completely changed the judge’s body language
and the manner of his interaction with the petitioners’ legal counsel, Nakul.
Following is an extended description of my observations from the courtroom
that day:
Justice Hardeep to Nakul (in English): Think of yourself as the father or brother of this
girl. Not as a lawyer. What will you do?

Nakul: But she is a major (legal adult) …

JH: Don’t talk of advocacy. I am asking you to place yourself in this situation.
Nakul was now stammering with the legal vocabulary at his disposal. The personal
attack had rattled him. As he would confide later in an interview, the deeply personal
question continued to sting him in the days that followed. As his confidence waned
under the belligerent attitude of the judge, the Rania family members and villagers
seemed to file in to all available spaces in the courtroom. Their formation faintly
resembled a human fortification. After the judge decided to place this case to the last
of the urgent petitions causelist, Nakul began consulting with other lawyers – I spot-
ted some protection petition experts among his advisers.
A woman occupied the seat next to me at this point and started asking me ques-
tions about this case, explaining that she was a journalist. On my other side, a
228 R. SRINIVASAN

middle-aged man in Punjab Police uniform, answered her questions eagerly on my

behalf. Here, I noticed that besides his strong affinity towards a family I believe he
was not previously acquainted with, his narrative was not a strictly accurate account
of what had been previously exchanged in the courtroom so far. He had possibly, just
as the lawyers had, invented a fiction in his support for the Rania family. He told the
journalist, speaking across from me, in Hindi: They have 100s of acres of land. This
boy works on their farms. Jiska namak khaya … (He has eaten their salt – colloquial
phrase that means one must remain loyal to an employer at all costs14.)
At this point the women of the Rania family were trying to converse with and
physically surround the bride. The young woman held on desperately to her partner
in what I considered an act of self-protection but the policeman viewed the same act
as immodesty and became more emboldened in airing his views. A rhetorical
exchange between the three of us followed.
Policeman: Ladki ko sharam nahi aayi. Aise logon ko chad15 dena chahiye (the girl has
no shame. Such people should just be killed or bumped off).

Journalist: You are proposing that they should be killed just because they fell in love.
That is not done.
Policeman (under his breath): Journalist! (Scoffs.)

Rama: If they get the protection order you will be responsible for protecting the couple,
not killing them.

Policeman: Woh toh baad ki baat hai, pehle judge-saab shaadi ki manjoori toh den (We
are not concerned with that aspect yet. Judge-sir has to first approve the wedding).

Rama: But you are still required to protect their lives. That is the law.

Policeman (heatedly): Kanoon saare galat hai (All these laws are just wrong). We are
suffering on its account. Siyapa hai (They just mean trouble).
When the petition was taken up again, Nakul presented a copy of the landmark
Supreme Court judgment Lata Singh vs State of U.P. from 2006, which obligates state
institutions to protect eloping couples from potential honour crimes. Hardeep imme-
diately declared that the protection order cannot be denied – something he could
have said at the outset but chose not to. I left the court premises that day in a state
of great distress. For, though Hardeep had passed the protection order, his court con-
duct had in no way provided an approval for the couple to stay together. As the
police officer had illuminatingly noted, he did not have to worry about protecting the
couple till the judge has approved the couple’s wedding. Without an implicit validity
for the wedding, an explicit order for protection would have meant little to the officer
– and to the family members themselves.
Protection of life and liberty was not an issue for him as he had himself advocated
the couple’s cold-blooded murder. We cannot be sure that his behaviour would have
been any different if the case had been handled by Justice Kishore instead but the for-
mer had imputed significant meaning into judges’ ostensible approval for weddings.
It is possible, although this is speculative, that if the judge had validated the wedding
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 229

in terms the officer recognised, he may have grudgingly agreed to protecting such
couples while complaining that he suffered on account of “unjust laws,” as he had
stated in our exchange. But that, unfortunately, had not happened. The legal fiction
had fallen apart, leaving the couple horrifically exposed.
Nakul later confirmed my cynical assumption that the protection order passed in
the Rania case did little to save the couple despite his best efforts. He had requested
Hardeep to additionally order forces under the court’s command to escort the couple
to a protection home in Chandigarh but his plea had been rejected. He had then des-
perately appealed to the Chief Justice, where again he had encountered resistance. His
initiative had rattled Hardeep enough though and the latter passed a second order
after 5pm, granting Nakul his request. But the court’s administrative offices were
already closed at this point and he found it difficult to procure a hardcopy of the
order. He dropped the couple off at the closest police station in the hope that the
officers would keep them safe but realised much later that he shouldn’t have trusted
anyone. The petitioners were finally cornered by the Rania family at a busy bus sta-
tion while still under police protection. The groom had been badly injured while
Nakul had reason to believe the bride was beaten up by an uncle. “The guy came to
see me after a few days and I suggested that we could file a habeas corpus (produce
the body in court, in Latin) case that would obligate the family to bring the woman
to a courtroom. He went back to think it through but I was never hopeful.” The cou-
ple was separated despite a court order mandating that they be protected by
state agencies.
It is this exception to the general rule the Rania case posited that strengthened my
previously stated hypothesis that the court procedure is a wedding ritual in itself or
at least part of the larger ritual where a smooth passage through the courtroom was
critical for the couple to emerge as wedded. Even in declaring that validity of mar-
riage was not a concern of the case, the judges implicitly validated togetherness or
approved the individuals’ desire for co-habitation. Legal validity, as I had previously
stated, was only brought into question through contestation. Hardeep had not uttered
at any point that the validity of this marriage was not a concern of the court – for
him, it very much was.
Taken together with examples of successful cases, it can be argued that when judges
say that validity is not the concern of the court, it is thereby construed by occupants of
the courtroom that the validity is not under dispute or being disputed in court. Other
state agents, lawyers and litigants perceive court authority as such and, at times, try to
engage the judge in aspects they wish court consideration on. This is especially relevant
in cases where family members of the petitioning couples have disputed weddings on
grounds ranging from critical issues such as the petitioners’ ages or bigamous unions
to unimportant, technical details such as inaccurate wedding certificates. The role of
the judge becomes critical in such a situation but one cannot assume that the judge’s
personal biases and views necessarily have a bearing on the case in question. Ranjit, for
instance, had routinely sympathised with the cause of the parents but his conduct
nevertheless validated the couples.
There is always a possibility that a judge will disentangle protection and validity,
as Hardeep had done, consequently removing the implicitness of the process. The
230 R. SRINIVASAN

unpredictability of the judicial encounter, as Alexandre Lefebvre terms courtroom

proceedings (Lefebvre 2008), keeps the suspense alive. The couple, their lawyers, court
staff, police officers, and petitioners from different cases participate in this theatre of
a kind. In his work on theatre and experience, Victor Turner argued that though the
script of a play is a familiar one, the potential for slippage exists in every performance
(Turner 1986). In my analysis of the courtroom drama, occupants double up as both
performers of their own play and as audience for other petitioners’ performances to
witness how these multiple, overlapping plays turn out. For elopement cases, the
audience serves as witnesses who construe not just the judge’s personal biases for or
against the phenomenon of elopements but also whether, despite these biases, an
approval of togetherness can be interpreted. Despite the familiarity of the script, every
performance holds the potential for a slippage.
In this script, the judge presides over the ritual of witnessing as a facilitator or even a
priest-like figure while the audience in the courtroom (lawyers, police officers, other liti-
gants, and, perhaps, even the belligerent parents) perform the act of social witnessing.
The religious ceremony that took place previously is part of the process but the court-
room ritual transforms the claim of wedding into an established fact and, hence, lends
itself to be interpreted as court marriage in other settings. In social spaces, court mar-
riages are perceived as a civil wedding of sorts. While eloping couples can opt to, in prin-
ciple, register a religious wedding, the practice of registration even in cases of arranged
marriages is not prevalent in this region. A visit to courts, preferably the high court, has
now become an essential component of elopements. The juridification of love marriages,
hence, fulfils a vacuum in legal practice to provide a viable form of civil marriage (though
relevant laws already exist) by making relationships based on choice legally tenable.

7. Weddings without marriages

The Rania case was a spectacular example of the legal fiction’s failure but other less
distressing exceptions exist. Neeti, who appeared in as many as four protection peti-
tion cases on some days, had held her cool when a case took an unexpected turn.
The bride in question stated in Justice Keshav’s court that she was withdrawing her
petition as her decision to get married was a ‘mistake’. She claimed that she preferred
a shaadi (a word that could mean both wedding and marriage) conducted according
to rituals and customs and wished to return with her parents who were present in
the courtroom. As the lawyer who was appearing on her behalf, Neeti was in a diffi-
cult position but insisted that the judge should not let her go easy until it could be
ascertained that the groom, who was conspicuously absent, was alive and well. Neeti
alleged that he could have been abducted by the bride’s family16. Keshav decided, in
the end, to record the petitioner’s statement and allowed her to return with her
parents. As we walked away together from the courtroom Neeti complained about
the judgment before shrugging it off by saying: “It doesn’t make a difference to me.
But I wanted her to be held responsible for her decisions … ”
As an audience member and not an actor with a role in the drama, I had myself
interpreted the bride’s statement as an attempt at taking responsibility. She had stated
in clear terms: “Galti se marriage karli. Apni marzi se ki thi (the marriage was a
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 231

mistake but it was my choice).” She had been explicit in not accusing her partner of
coercion. Even as she backed out, she had underlined that she was an adult and was
recognised by Keshav as one. Though the bride (who was not to be) had used the
English term marriage, her decision as well as an admitted desire to have a customary
wedding indicates a slippage to future tense that I had also noticed in the first case
from Justice Ranjit’s courtroom (“I want to get married to him”). While a religious
wedding had already taken place the judge as well as the petitioner seem to recognise
that the past event was dispensable. The courtroom, where the groom had not
appeared and the bride had backed out, had not completed the ritual. In this case,
the religious wedding had never transformed into a court marriage.
In some cases, the validity of the marriage could never be implicit. These were
bigamous relationships, where petitioners pleaded loss/unavailability of divorce certifi-
cates, abandonment by spouses or invalidity of the first marriage. Protection petitions
had a mechanism of extending the cautious legitimacy courts regularly grant to elop-
ing couples to cases where the court can only ensure togetherness. In courtrooms and
in rural Haryana, I heard about numerous cases where previously married women
had eloped with another partner but these petitioners usually withheld the informa-
tion regarding prior marriages at the first court hearing. When such facts were
brought to the court’s notice after the protection order had been passed the couples
did not return to court spaces. Judges like Kamini took some initiative in advising
state governments to pursue bigamy cases against the women while others refused to
get drawn into the affair. Keshav, for example, had on one occasion declared that it
was up to the first husband to file a bigamy case. A protection order, he repeated in
that familiar refrain, is not concerned with validity of marriages.
Keshav himself seemed to have made peace with legal fictions when created for
people in precarious positions. In another bigamy case, he brushed aside the question
of a false affidavit where the petitioner had previously withheld information on her
first marriage with the following words: “Sometimes one has to pretend these things.
If you are under pressure or worried about your life and liberty you do such things.”
Though a potential perjury had been committed, the judge had taken a lenient view,
choosing to focus on the question of protection itself where bigamy was not directly
relevant. He ordered that the protection order previously passed stays valid – ensur-
ing that the woman could leave the court with the partner she had eloped with.
Such cases straddled the precarious terrain between illegal and legal, never quite
making it to the other side. At least three lawyers have told me that bigamy belongs
to another category for this reason but I would argue that these cases also represent
attempts by individuals, especially women, with fewer opportunities to re-craft their
life situations. While a legally tenable marriage is something they may desire, divorce
is a much longer and uncertain process. Juridification of intimate relationships offers
them an opportunity the legal text itself may not. In other words, if the cases handled
by Nakul and Neeti highlight the importance of the court procedure where a smooth
passage is essential, in bigamy cases, a smooth passage through the courtroom spaces
ensures co-habitation and togetherness for couples whose weddings can never trans-
form into a legal marital union.
232 R. SRINIVASAN

8. Conclusion
The juridification of marriages signifies an effort by petitioners to accept a subject
position that draws attention away from social deviations. Couples are also rule fol-
lowers who fulfil court requirements to the best of their ability and expect that both
the state and their community members will recognise and uphold the rule of law.
Investing in law, I argue, helps individuals, especially women, navigate the legal pro-
cess better despite the evidence of its bias towards patriarchal and kinship norms.
The rumour of a just court that follows the rule of law is based on the ability of suc-
cessive judges from this court to uphold the legal order over social norms that they
occasionally appear to subscribe to in their courtroom utterances.
The privileging of legal order over social or kinship ones is something judges
appear to share with many of my interlocutors from community spaces.
Disapproving kin groups and families were often more likely to shrug off a love mar-
riage – or even seek reconciliation – if it is also a ‘court marriage’. Police officers, on
their part, usually stop pursuing abduction and/or rape charges filed by family mem-
bers after the court visit undertaken by the couple.
The romance that a court mediation might hold for courting couples is best sum-
marised by Payal, a young woman who had married a colleague with the consent of
both her mother and her spouse’s parents. Though all surviving parents had agreed
to the match (with her brother remaining opposed), Payal confided that she had her-
self wanted a ‘court marriage’, a desire that had remained unfulfilled. “Court se sab
achcha ho jata hai,” she explained. There are two possible translations from the ori-
ginal Hindi here: Everything works out well after court intervention or that going
through the court process makes it all good (achcha); it is a filter that purifies mar-
riage by removing all embedded ambiguity. While ambiguity regarding marriage,
especially a potentially deviant one, may leave people vaguely unsettled, court-facili-
tated marriages and reconciliations with family members provided much needed clar-
ity, legitimacy, and, perhaps, finality.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. The hierarchical structure of Indian judiciary is fairly straightforward with the Supreme
Court at the highest level, followed by state-level High Courts and, finally, district-level
courts. The High Court in Chandigarh is only one of two examples where two states
share a High Court.
2. I have studied the high court’s causelists, available for download on the court’s website,
over an extended period of time. The numbers of protection petitions range from 30 to
35, as some of the lowest figures, to 68–70 as the highest. But on an average, around
45–55 cases are listed on each business day. These numbers are corroborated by lawyers
practising in the court. During the month of June, when courts are on a summer break,
protection cases are still heard since they are classified as ‘urgent petitions’.
3. Unless specified, names of actors, including interlocutors and judges, interviewed or
observed have been changed to ensure anonymity. The exceptions include one professor
 THE JOURNAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM AND UNOFFICIAL LAW 233

of jurisprudence and two human rights advocates who have shared information and
opinions as experts.
4. I interviewed a project manager with the Chandigarh government department responsible
for the local protection home in 2012 and received this answer. Fateh and Bedi have
confirmed the existence of this practice.
5. These include in-depth interviews/unstructured conversations with 12 lawyers over the
course of several years. Interviews were conducted with 50–60 brides and grooms (they
were either both vocal or one dominated the conversation over the other).
6. Apart age and marital status related requirements, this law mandates a 30-day application
period during which the names of applications will be publicly displayed in the district
registrar’s office. This provision alone makes the law unviable for couples who are either
fearing physical harm or, at the very least, apprehensive of efforts by family members to
separate them.
7. Age of majority in India is 18 years. Hindu Marriage Act specifies 18 for women and 21
for men as the minimum age for solemnising a wedding. In courtrooms, there is a lot of
emphasis on the bride’s ability to prove her age but judges were mostly disinterested in
grooms’ ages.
8. In two cases I observed, unmarried women petitioned the court to escape the fate of
forced marriages.
9. While marriage between two consenting adults, identified as woman and man
respectively, is considered legally valid, regardless of community affiliations, legal
procedures make it difficult for couples to secure a wedding and validity for the same.
10. Protection petition requires litigants to mention the source of threat or harm. Usually,
the immediate family of the bride along with male uncles and cousins feature in this list,
making them secondary respondents.
11. See note #6.
12. According to a senior lawyer, district courts have started receiving more protection
petitions since 2017 but the high court continues to handle around 50 petitions on a
regular business day.
13. Perhaps in a veiled reference to the phenomenon of honour killings, Kishore appears to be
debunking the popular notion that only uneducated and/or rustic families indulged in such
acts. In his admonishing dismissal, he stresses that he was not taken in by the parents’ self-
perception (as urban, educated or civilised) and, indeed, does not trust them.
14. I must stress that there was no reference to the groom being an employee of the family.
It spoke rather to the police officer’s caste prejudice where he assumed that all men from
lower castes are employees of a village’s big landlords.
15. While he spoke in Hindi – possibly for our benefit – he did slip in a few Punjabi words
like chad and, later on, siyapa.
16. Neeti never found out what happened to the groom. The lack of background knowledge
(past, present or future) further underlines the theatrical atmosphere of the courtroom
where various participants are never fully apprised of each other’s motivations and
largely act independently of each other.

References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. (trans. Kevin Attell). Chicago, IL: The University
of Chicago Press.
Agnes, Flavia. 1999. Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Baxi, Pratiksha. 2006. “Habeas Corpus in the Realm of Love: Litigating Marriages of Choice in
India.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 25 (1): 59–78.
Baxi, Upendra. 2012. “Epilogue: Changing Paradigms of Human Rights.” In Law against the
€
State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations, edited by Julia Eckert, Zerrin Ozlem
234 R. SRINIVASAN

Biner, Brian Donahoe and Christian Strumpell, 266–285. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Biehl, Jo~ao. 2013. “The Judicialization of Biopolitics: Claiming the Right to Pharmaceuticals in
Brazilian Courts.” American Ethnologist 40 (3): 419–436.
Chowdhry, Prem. 2004. “Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural
North India.” Modern Asian Studies 38 (1): 55–84.
Chowdhry, Prem. 2007. Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
€
Eckert, Julia, Brian Donahoe, Zerrin Ozlem Biner, and Christian Stru€mpell (eds). 2012. Law
against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Holden, Livia. 2016. Hindu Divorce: A Legal Anthropology. London: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Scientific Objects and Legal Objectivity.” In Law, Anthropology and the
Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things, edited by Alain Pottage and Martha
Mundy, 73–114. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Studies in Law and Society. Cambridge
University Press.
Kapur, Ratna. 2013. Erotic Justice: Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism. London:
Routledge
Lefebvre, Alexandre. 2008. The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Menon, Nivedita. 2012. Seeing Like a Feminist. London: Penguin UK.
Menon, Nivedita. 2004. Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
Merry, Sally E. 1988. “Legal Pluralism.” Law & Society Review. 22(5): 869–896.
Mody, Pervez. 2008. The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi. New Delhi
[u.a.]: Routledge.
Okin, Susan Moller. 1989 Gender, the Public and the Private. Toronto: University of Toronto,
Faculty of Law.
Ortner, Sherry Beth. 1978. Sherpas through Their Rituals. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Puri, Jyoti. 2016. Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Raheja, Gloria Goodwin. 1988. The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation, and the Dominant
Caste in a North Indian Village. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Turner, Victor W. 1986. “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of
Experience.” In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor Turner and Edward
Bruner, 33–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Vanita, Ruth. 2011. “Democratizing Marriage: Consent, Custom and the Law.” In Law like
Love: A Queer Perspective of Law in India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta. New
Delhi: Yoda Press.

Court Order
Alhuwalia, Kanwaljit S. Ashok Kumar v. Bharat Verma, Asha Devi and Suraj Verma, Criminal
Writ Petition No.555 of 2008 (High Court of Punjab and Haryana).