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Indian Express
01-07-2025
- General
- Indian Express
Band, baaja, budget: Bhuj's Ahirs say no to wedding ‘show-off', embrace tradition
Sitting in her husband's home in Kotay, a small village located around 30 km from Bhuj, newly wed Krupali Batta, 23, is all smiles as she whips out her smartphone to pull up photos from her May 25 wedding. Pointing to her bridal attire, a traditional hand-embroidered chaniya-choli, Krupali says the ceremony and wedding feast in the Gujarat village cost her parents just Rs 28,600 — all thanks to a recent resolution passed by Lodai Prathariya Ahir Samaj, her community's supreme body. Fed up with 'show-off', 'competition' and 'shunning of traditions' during wedding ceremonies organised lately by Kutch's Ahirs, the supreme body of this agro-pastoral community passed a unanimous resolution on April 15 that has put an end to all 'exorbitant' expenses on marriages. Members of the Lodai Prathariya Ahir community traditionally get married just once a year on Andhari Teras, the 13th day of the Vaisakh month. The resolution applies to Bhuj's 31 villages, which are spread over a radius of around 90 km and have an estimated population of 31,000 Ahirs. While all 31 villages have their own local Ahir samiti, comprising a president and members, the Lodai Prathariya Ahir Samaj remains the community's supreme body. On May 25, 1,057 Lodai Prathariya Ahir couples got married in accordance with these rules across the 31 Bhuj villages. From clothes to be worn by the couple and ceremonies that can be organised to the number of dishes served during the wedding feast and fine amounts in case of violations — the resolution not only attempts to reduce financial burden on families, but also tries to preserve the community's traditions. Instead of sherwanis, the resolution states that grooms must wear the traditional khamis (shirt) with vandani (dhoti) and pagdi (turban). In the case of brides, instead of buying or renting lehengas, they must be dressed in the traditional chaniya cholis, made out of coarse cotton that is hand-embroidered by women. The resolution has also restricted the quantity of gold that can be bought for the wedding to a total of 80-90 grams. It also prohibits the bride's family from observing gor, a ritual to ward off evil eye from the groom by showering money on the wedding party's musicians and horsemen, both during the wedding and as the baraat (wedding party) departs. Bhurabhai Batta, 57, Krupali's father and the leader of the Lodai Prathariya Ahir Samaj, says the restrictions on gold has helped bring down wedding expenses to Rs 8-9 lakh. 'There was no limit earlier. Families would spend Rs 30 lakh on a single gold ornament for the wedding,' he adds. When it comes to ceremonies, haldi has given way to the traditional pithi ceremony, during which the family applies turmeric on the bride's face. Instead of a big mehendi function, families have been told to organise a simple ceremony at home. Organising sangeet or garba as part of wedding festivities has been banned. Even the food menu has been slashed considerably for both individual ceremonies and mass wedding events organised in the village. 'Any six dishes other than pulses, rice, buttermilk, water, salad and papad can be offered. While the violation of the food rule will result in a fine of Rs 2.51 lakh, in other cases, the family will have to pay a fine of Rs 1.01 lakh,' the resolution states. Krupali, who tied the knot along with 24 other couples in Kotay village on May 25, says the mass wedding, including six community meals, cost each family a total of Rs 28,600. One of these families told The Indian Express, 'The entire wedding, including gold jewellery, cost us around Rs 7 lakh. Earlier, our expenses would run in Krupali's father says he felt compelled to introduce the resolution after witnessing families sell their land to pay for 'exorbitant' weddings. Batta says, 'As people became prosperous, they started spending more and more on weddings. Competition with other families within the community and outside drove many parents to sell their land to fund lavish weddings. A man I know sold his four-acre farm for Rs 28 lakh to pay for his son's marriage. Of the Rs 28 lakh, he spent Rs 25 lakh on the wedding.' Batta introduced the resolution soon after he was elected as the president of the Samaj on March 19. 'At first, it was difficult to convince the community to accept the resolution. So I held meetings with the community in every village. The resolution was finally passed unanimously on April 14,' he says. Calling pre-wedding shoots a 'menace', Batta says his community first heard of this concept nearly three years ago. 'Inspired by the pre-wedding shoots done by youth from other communities, our children started demanding the same. A pre-wedding shoot costs anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 5 lakh. Instead of the traditional pithi, they would insist on a haldi ceremony and compel their entire family to wear yellow clothes for the ceremony, adding at least Rs 10,000-15,000 to the total expenses,' he says. Mavjibhai Ahir, the president of the Kotay Ahir Gram Samiti, says their community has prosperous families but nearly 30% of them cannot afford to pay for lavish weddings. 'Families would take loans and end up paying it off all their life. The resolution has also placed restrictions on ornaments that can be given during marriages. It allows families to spend on just three items — ram rami (a traditional necklace for the bride), a mangalsutra and one pair of earrings,' says Ahir. Having spent around Rs 8 lakh on the May 25 wedding of his fourth child, his 21-year-old son, in the village, he says he had spent over Rs 25 lakh on his daughter's wedding in 2022. The resolution has also affected couples who got engaged earlier. 'My brother got engaged last year. We had planned to spend Rs 25 lakh on the wedding. However, due to the resolution, we kept it simple. Even the bride's family did not insist on a lavish wedding,' says Bhavika Batta, 23, a resident of Kotay village who got married on May 25 alongside her brother. Sitting on a charpoy under a neem tree in her house in Nadapa village, around 25 km from Gujarat's Bhuj, 62-year-old Vejiben Kovadia's fingers move nimbly as she uses a green thread to secure a mirror on a red chaniya (flared skirt) for her daughter's trousseau. Kovadia, a former sarpanch, says the women had initiated a similar movement a few years ago to restrict expenses on weddings, but had faced resistance from the community elders. 'The current resolution is a welcome move. The money saved on lavish weddings should now be spent on our children's education, especially girls. Our children can now be sent to hostels for their higher education,' she says, as she continues to embroider the chaniya. Four weddings were solemnised in her village on May 25. Like Kotay village, the ones held in Nadapa village too had a community feast and the total expenses were split among the families. A Nadapa village-based groom says the resolution will help bring 'equality' in the community. 'Those who cannot afford lavish weddings will no longer be driven to take loans, leading to a financial crisis.'
Indian Express
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
From Census of nearly a century ago, a roadmap — and a note of caution
The government's surprise announcement of a caste census as part of the upcoming population enumeration exercise may have dented the Opposition's campaign but the experience of John Henry Hutton, an anthropologist-civil servant from nearly a century ago, frames the challenge on the road ahead. Those were the heady days of Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience movement. Hutton, a Yorkshire-born, Oxford-trained officer who as Census Commissioner of India conducted the 1931 Census, the last to tabulate data on caste, writes with a hint of annoyance that the exercise 'had the misfortune to coincide with a wave of non-cooperation, and the march of Mr. Gandhi and his contrabandistas…'. Hutton, who joined the Indian Civil Service in 1909 and served for the greater part of his career in the Naga hills writing two voluminous monographs on Naga ethnography, brought to his census office his experience as an anthropologist. On the complexities of counting caste, his census report, laced with insight and wit, refers to former census chief Sir Herbert Risley, whose formulation of the caste system as a racial hierarchy in the 1901 Census laid the basis for subsequent surveys and policies on caste. 'All subsequent census officers in India must have cursed the day when it occurred to Sir Herbert Risley… to attempt to draw up a list of castes according to their rank in society. He failed, but the results of his attempt are almost as troublesome as if he had succeeded, for every census gives rise to a pestiferous deluge of representations, accompanied by highly problematic histories, asking for recognition of some alleged fact or hypothesis of which the census as a department is not legally competent to judge…' he wrote in the section titled 'The Return of Caste'. Saying that doing away with caste entries 'would be viewed with relief by census officers', Hutton wrote, 'Experience at this census has shown very clearly the difficulty of getting a correct return of caste and likewise the difficulty of interpreting it for census purposes.' Among the many challenges the census officials faced as they asked people to identify their caste was 'misrepresentation' and people used the data collection exercise to jostle for a higher spot on the social order. The census also offered examples of multiple castes consolidating into a single caste for bolstering their numbers or claiming a new social status. 'The best instance of such a tendency to consolidate a number of castes into one group is to be found in the grazier castes which aim at combining under the term 'Yadava' the Ahirs, Goalas, Gopis, Idaiyans and perhaps some other castes of milkmen, a movement already effective in 1921,' the report said. It also noted that 'carpenters, smiths, goldsmiths and some others of similar occupations desired in various parts of India to be returned by a common denomination such as Vishwakarma or Jangida, usually desiring to add a descriptive noun implying that they belonged to one of the highest Varnas of Hinduism, either Brahman or Rajput… Of the two, Brahman was usually desired at this census though in some cases a caste which had applied in one province to be Brahman asked in another to be called Rajput and there are several instances at this census of castes claiming to be Brahman who claimed to be Rajput ten years ago.' The census explained these as attempts either at upward mobility, a 'desire to rise in the social estimation of other people', or 'a desire for the backing of a large community in order to count for more in political life'. Despite the complexities the exercise involved, the anthropologist in Hutton recorded the social benefits of counting caste. Addressing the criticism 'for taking any note at all of the fact of caste', he wrote, 'It has been alleged that the mere act of labelling persons belonging to a caste tends to perpetuate the system… It is, however, difficult to see why the record of a fact that actually exists should tend to stabilize that existence. It is just as easy to argue and with at least as much truth, that it is impossible to get rid of any institution by ignoring its existence like the proverbial ostrich… Indeed the treatment of caste at the 1931 census may claim to make a definite, if minute, contribution to Indian unity.' Recent scholarship, including Nicholas B Dirks's Castes of Mind (2001), has, however, argued that under colonialism, caste became a 'single term capable of naming… subsuming India's diverse forms' and that census operations such as Hutton's reinvented and essentialised caste – rather than simply capturing what was already there. Hutton's report quotes from the Government of India's instructions on counting the 'depressed classes' (defined as 'castes, contact with whom entails purification on the part of high caste Hindus'). In these instructions are both a roadmap and a forewarning for what lies ahead. 'It will be necessary to have a list of castes to be included in depressed classes and all provinces are asked to frame a list applicable to the province. There are very great difficulties in framing a list of this kind and there are insuperable difficulties in framing a list of depressed classes which will be applicable to India as a whole,' read the instructions that were issued to various Superintendents of Census Operations. Hutton's prediction that, with time, there will be other ways to represent demographic data — beyond caste and religion – is open to debate to this day. 'The time will no doubt come when occupation will serve the purpose at present served by religion and caste in presenting demographic data, but that time is not yet, and at the present moment their barriers have not so far decayed that their social importance cannot be ignored for public purposes, though progress in this direction may well prove much than one anticipates,' he had said. The following Census, in 1941, though caste details were collected, it was dropped from the final tabulation. Hutton's successor, M Y M Yeatts, a Scott whose term as Census Commissioner coincided with limitations imposed by World War II, wrote, 'The time is past for this enormous and costly table as part of the central undertaking and I share Dr. Hutton's views expressed ten years ago. With so constricted a financial position and with so many fields awaiting an entry there is no justification for spending lakhs on this detail.' In the 1951 Census, in a newly Independent India shaped by the ideals of equality and secularism, the government led by Jawaharlal Nehru decided there would be no caste enumeration. Hutton, meanwhile, tapped into his experience to write Caste in India, considered an authoritative source on the subject. He retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1936 and moved to Britain, where he continued his academic work and was elected to the William Wyse Chair of Social Anthropology in Cambridge, then among the most prestigious academic positions in British anthropology. He died at his home in Wales on May 23, 1968 – over two decades before the Mandal Commission reshaped the salience of caste in society and politics.
