Women's Traditions and Life Stages

The most striking feature of a Rajput woman's home life is an observance of some form of parda. Parda , which literally means "curtain," refers to the seclusion of married women.^[36] Rajput women refer to parda as the most characteristic aspect of a Rajput woman's identity. Their interpretation of the term, however, has proven fluid.

Traditionally parda referred to the division of a household into women's quarters (the zanana ) and men's quarters (the mardana ).^[37] The men of the family (husbands and brothers, fathers and sons) entered the women's quarters for brief visits. Sometimes they ate there or slept there with their wives. When they came, they announced their presence in advance by coughing, shuffling, or some similar cues. Nonfamily men were excluded from entering the women's quarters and married women were barred from entering the men's quarters. One middle-aged member of a royal household told me that even as a child she was not allowed into the mardana of her father's household, so strict was her family.

Because of this strict parda , women generally did not worship in local

[35] See David Dean Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 102; and Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Siva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 178.

[36] For an introduction to comparative conceptualizations and dimensions of parda , see Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, eds., Separate Worlds (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1982); David G. Mandlebaum, Women's Seclusion and Men's Honor (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988); Patricia Jeffery, Frogs in a Well (London: Zed Press, 1979); Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

[37] Observed by various high castes throughout India, parda has meant different things in different areas and communities. As examples, see two essays in Separate Worlds , ed. Papanek and Minault (Mary Higdon Beech, "The Domestic Realm in the Lives of Hindu Women in Calcutta"; and Rama Mehta, "Purdah Among the Oswals of Mevar").

temples (though they might occasionally travel veiled and chaperoned to faraway pilgrimage places or go briefly to a nearby shrine and worship there with their faces hidden from public view). Nor did they participate in religious ceremonies such as festivals, unless these were celebrated in the zananas of royalty or the nobility. Moreover, they lacked easy access to temples located in the mardana . For their visits special arrangements were always made.

Today some households still maintain a rigid interpretation of parda . Others have only recently begun to relax it. Most women today practice some modified form of seclusion. Whatever form parda takes, it is often summed up by the statement, "We Rajput women do not mix." By this is meant that although most Rajput women move about freely within their households—there being no longer a formal division of mardana and zanana —they do not mix or mix only minimally with male guests and then only with those male guests who are old family friends. Therefore, every Rajput social event I attended was really two events: the men gathered in one part of a household to enjoy one another's company and the women gathered in another part to discuss things of interest to women.

In accordance with parda , most noblewomen avoid going out in public. They have themselves driven across the street rather than walk, for the street is the quintessentially public place.^[38] A few women occasionally run errands in town, but when they do they take along a driver and perhaps a friend as chaperone. Servants and children do most of the grocery shopping. When necessary, Rajput women send servants to summon merchants and tailors to their homes.^[39] Most women will still not go into local temples, though some will visit outdoor sati and kuldevi shrines when their privacy can be ensured. It remains the case that women prefer to worship these and other divinities at home.

While maintaining parda to this extent at home, many women have adapted it to suit the exigencies of travel. They more or less conform to the policy of "when in Rome. . . ." Thus one royal woman told me that although she would never think of appearing in public in her home town, she would freely shop in the city of Pune (in Maharashtra) because no one there would recognize her. Similarly, many noblewomen who do not go out in Udaipur will go out in large cities, especially cities

[38] During my research stint, I knew only one woman in Udaipur who drove; she took up driving a jeep to help her husband in his political campaign. Two or three other women have taken up driving since 1985, and a few have appeared openly to campaign for Rajput candidates to national and state legislatures.

[39] Many of these merchants and tailors belong to families who have served Rajput households for generations.

outside of Rajasthan. Still others from the Udaipur area will never show their faces in their thikanas but will run essential errands in Udaipur.^[40]

Although parda is loosening, it remains an extremely cogent symbol. It summarizes what is deemed admirable in the character of Rajput women and serves as a standard for evaluating behavior.^[41] Therefore Rajput women say that although their way of life is changing, they want to educate their daughters to show respect for the ideal of parda by acting with modesty (sharam, laj ) and the honor and dignity that modesty confers on themselves, their husbands, and their families.^[42] As Rajput men do they emphasize that the old customs and values (riti-rivaj ) will help their children accommodate to change.

For women, the idea of preparing for change is nothing new. Rajput girls have always been told that they must learn modesty because when they marry they will have to live in a new family, accept its customs, and obey its elders. By teaching daughters modesty and the self-effacing sacrifice it presupposes, mothers prepare their daughters for the inevitable resocialization that they will undergo as brides.

Rajput mothers say they are strict with their daughters so they will be able to adjust to marriage,^[43] yet these women allow their daughters far more freedom than they give their young daughters-in-law. Except for ceremonial occasions an unmarried daughter does not wear traditional Rajput dress (kancli-kurti ), which consists of a long full skirt, a brief underblouse, a long vest, and a half-sari tucked in at the waist and pulled over the head and shoulders. While the daughter-in-law wears this traditional dress, or occasionally a modern sari, the unmarried daughter wears a western skirt and blouse to school and typically goes about her household in a three-piece Panjabi suit, which consists of cotton leggings, a kurta (a long shirt-like garment with slits up the sides), and a dupatta (a scarf draped over her breasts). She may even wear jeans or a dress. When the daughter marries, she may continue to wear such clothes on trips home but will change back to more traditional attire before returning to her husband's household (fig. 11).

[40] Parda here contrasts with that of Rajput village women, who say they also keep parda but not as strictly as noblewomen do. Because the men leave the village for the fields or other jobs each day, women move about freely outdoors until evening. They remain strict about veiling and speak only in whispers in the presence of elder male relatives.

[41] Such a symbol Sherry Ortner classifies as a key symbol ("On Key Symbols," American Anthropologist 75 [1973]).

[42] The honor that parda brings to women, their husbands, and families is discussed by the works cited in note 36 and in chapters following.

[43] Sudhir Kakar's work indicates that all girls learn this lesson (The Inner World [New York: Oxford University Press, 1981], 62). Rajputs feel that they are exceptionally strict with their daughters.

11.
Rajput noblewomen and children.

Some of the older women think that these days daughters are over-indulged. These women recall their childhoods, when spontaneity was discouraged and courtly decorum was everything. In their time they were not to laugh or speak loudly on pain of receiving a sharp slap or some stronger punishment. Back then, they add, most families did not want their daughters educated because education would make them dissatisfied with their lives. One woman said that she was taught to read but that her parents prohibited her from reading newspapers because they felt that women should not concern themselves with events in the outside world. Women should focus their attention exclusively on the home.

Now most aristocratic Rajput families send their girls to school. The girls attend private schools, often Catholic girls' schools.^[44] Recently many families have sent their daughters to college. They give two reasons for this. A college education prepares a girl for an occupation in case she becomes widowed and, by an even more unfortunate turn of luck, is left with no money to support herself and her children. Even more important, it helps a daughter's marriage chances. Families with educated sons want them to marry educated girls who will prove intelligent companions. Moreover, parents speak of the need for intellectually talented daughters-in-law who can bear and raise clever children. Even so, sometimes families who want an educated girl also fear that her education will make her too independent. I learned of several instances in which weddings were held just before a bride was to receive her diploma. Some of the timings may have been coincidental; auspicious marriage dates do often fall right before graduation. But others were certainly not coincidental. One young woman told me that her pregraduation marriage was a compromise demanded by her in-laws during engagement negotiations. She surmised this was fairly common. Other women I asked about this said they thought it happened only occasionally.

Despite the new (if qualified) emphasis on education for girls, the chief ambition that girls maintain is to be a good wife. Of course, this is easier if they acquire good husbands, and so many of them keep a weekly vrat , a religious fast, to please the god Shiv, whom they consider a model husband.^[45] As to the choice of husband, girls leave that up to

[44] Rajputs approve of the regimented education that such schools provide and appear unconcerned with the threat of conversion. I know of only one aristocratic Christian Rajput family in the Udaipur area.

[45] For more information on vrats , see the following section on protection.

their parents. Arranged marriages are an iron rule, a rule almost universally accepted as being in the interest of bride and groom. Young women and men are considered too inexperienced in the ways of life to be able to choose suitable marriage partners.

In Rajasthan, as in many other regions of India, families try to marry their daughters into families higher on the social scale than they are.^[46]Kul membership and position within the noble hierarchy are crucial determinants of social position. To some extent wealth is also recognized as a determinant for it typically accompanies social position, but wealth without status is considered insufficient.^[47] One young noblewoman explained the rationale behind this notion of hypergamy: "We always try to marry our daughters up. It's best for the families. We don't want to take a daughter-in-law from higher up because she'll be used to being treated highly and used to having lots of things; she just won't fit in." In other words, such a daughter-in-law will not be able to serve her in-laws well because she will feel superior to them.

Although "marrying up" is the norm, the contracting families' status difference is often small or even fictional. Families like to contract with families with similar backgrounds, standards, and ideas. When roughly equal families enter into marriage, it is the marriage ceremony itself that creates and states an inequality. This inequality is often temporary, for such families generally marry their own daughters into families with status similar to the status of those families from which its daughters-in-law come. It may even marry its daughters into the extended families of its daughters-in-law.

In times past, when marriages were polygamous, the same general notions applied to the first marriage a son made.^[48] Often between near equals, a son's first marriage was intended to ensure that heirs would come from the best possible stock. Second, third, and other wives, however, could come from less illustrious backgrounds. Some could even come from lower castes.^[49] When polygamy was practiced, hyper-

[46] On hypergamy see Ziegler, "Action, Power," 51; David F. Pocock, Kanbi and Patidar (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), esp. 158; Ronald Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Lina Fruzetti, The Gift of a Virgin (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982); Nur Yalman, Under the Bo Tree (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); and Mildred S. Luschinsky, "The Life of Women in a Village in North India" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1962).

[47] Rajputs display a special disdain for what they refer to as "new money" people.

[48] The Hindu Marriage and Divorce Act of 1955 disallowed Hindu polygamy.

[49] See Ziegler, "Action, Power," 52–55; and more generally S. J. Tambiah, "From Varna to Caste through Mixed Unions," in The Character of Kinship , ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

gamy was a more dynamic and influential principle of social organization.

The contemporary Rajput notion of hypergamy has one especially intriguing peculiarity: the principle of marrying west. Rajasthani Rajputs recognize that Rajputs living to the east of Rajasthan prefer to marry their daughters west toward Rajasthan, because that is where the most prestigious Rajput families live. Richard Fox notes that Rajputs in his area, eastern Uttar Pradesh, marry their daughters west.^[50] Michael Mahar finds this to be true of "Khalapur," a Rajput-dominated village in northern Uttar Pradesh.^[51] When at his invitation I visited this village, I was told by women in one Rajput family there that all Rajput families try to marry their daughters west toward Rajasthan. When I told her I was working in Udaipur, she also mentioned that Udaipur is the best place to be, for that is where the finest, bravest Rajputs are.

Sharing this belief, Rajasthani Rajputs try to marry their daughters within the state. As the young noblewoman I quoted above explained, "We don't want to give daughters outside Rajasthan because they won't fit in well and won't be happy. In Rajasthan we have high culture. Other places are usually less cultured." I found no convincing evidence, however, that noble marriages west are considered preferable within Rajasthan. One has to imagine that such a rule taken very seriously would drastically restrict marriage options in the western part of the state.^[52]

Once a woman is married, she participates fully in all the traditions of her conjugal family and is expected to abandon traditions she has brought from her natal family that might conflict with those of her conjugal family. This is true even down to her style of dressing. Beginning with her marriage costume, she must accept dress styles and patterns typical of her husband's region. Most families, however, allow a wife some latitude. For ceremonial occasions such as weddings she must wear traditional local fashion, but at home she may wear dresses that please her, including clothes from home and even full saris, which are not traditionally worn by Rajputs.

In terms of behavior, a wife's all-encompassing responsibility is to

[50] Fox, Kin, Clan , 38.

[51] Michael Mahar, communication to author, July 1984. This village was studied by Leigh Minturn and John Hitchcock, The Rajputs of Khalapur, India (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1960); and Hitchcock, "Martial Rajput."

[52] Rajput villages in the extreme western part of Rajasthan have a high incidence of female infanticide. A study of this practice would presumably produce a more complex explanation than this preferential marriage pattern.

protect the happiness and health of her husband.^[53] She carries out this responsibility by attending to his needs, serving his family, and worshiping his gods. It is felt that if she performs these activities successfully and so fulfills the norm of protection, he will prosper; if not, he will suffer and perhaps even die. Being widowed is the worst fate a Rajput woman can imagine. She is meant for one man only, her husband. Remarriage is forbidden.^[54] Thus becoming a widow is something that simply ought not to happen: a woman must do everything in her power to safeguard her husband's longevity.

In times past some women whose husbands died refused to become widows. Instead they burned themselves on their husbands' pyres. This practice was seen as a corrective for the fault of failing to protect a husband from premature death, of allowing his death to occur before hers. Those women who lacked the dedication necessary to die as satis were expected to lead a life of penance and privation. The general feeling was that a widow should want to live a hard life to make up for her failure as a husband-protector.

Today most women continue to feel that a widow should not greatly enjoy life. She should take pleasure in her children and family but should deprive her senses of physical enjoyment and lead a relatively stark existence. Widows should wear dull, simple clothing (though not necessarily the white clothing that is expected of widows in many parts of India) and no ornamentation. Moreover, they should no longer consume meat or wine, for they have no legitimate need for the passion such substances engender. In sum, the widow should shun merriment, devote herself to religious searching, and live out her life in anticipation of happier circumstances in her next life.

Although, as many Rajput women noted, there are cases in which widows are ill-treated, the general consensus is that in most noble families the widow continues to be loved. She is the mother of children, whose affection for her is undiminished. Society expects her to honor her husband's memory by living simply, but whatever harsh privations she endures should be self-imposed. The widow's life is not supposed to

[53] The idea of women as husband-protectors occurs throughout India. For selected recent explorations of this theme see Susan Snow Wadley, ed., The Powers of Tamil Women (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1980); Frédérique Apffel Marglin, Wives of the God-King (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); R. S. Khare, "From Kanya to Mata: Aspects of the Cultural Language of Kinship in Northern India," in Concepts of Person , ed. Akos Ostör, Lina Fruzetti, and Steve Barnett (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

[54] In most high castes throughout India only men customarily remarry.

be joyous, but most would condemn those who add to the widow's misery by scorning and abusing her.