How can marriage, that ancient chain forged in the furnaces of caste and patriarchy, still be hailed as a moral institution? When caste can hide behind sacred scriptures, when patriarchy can disguise itself as love, why should marriage not be exposed for what it is: the oldest and most polished weapon of Brahminism? It is being re-examined today not out of idle curiosity but because its tyranny, like that of Brahminism itself, governs every corner of Indian life. The revolt against marriage is therefore no less than a revolt against the Brahminical order that sanctified it. The rejection of marriage must thus be recognized as the natural descendant of Anti-Brahminism, a philosophy that seeks to destroy the ideological fortress of caste, priestcraft, and patriarchy.
Marriage is no private affair. It is the ritual by which caste renews itself every morning and patriarchy every night. Behind its flowery rites and cinematic fantasies stands a vast system of control— religious, economic, legal—that decides who may love, who may inherit, who may live. From the hymns of the Vedas to the laws of the State, marriage has been the sacred thread binding woman to man, and both to the hierarchy of caste. That is why every inter-caste couple murdered, every woman policed for desire, every queer person denied legitimacy, bears witness to marriage’s real face: The face of the Brahminical patriarchy smiling behind a wedding garland.
The violence of marriage is not an aberration but its essence. The so-called “love jihad” hysteria, the murderous rage against inter-caste and inter-religious couples, the obsession with “honour” — all are rituals in defence of the Brahminical family. When Uttarakhand’s so-called Uniform Civil Code was passed, it was not a blow for equality but a weapon sharpened against Muslim men and women’s autonomy. When cinema and television glorify the Hindu wedding as the ultimate union, they too participate in this vast conspiracy: wrapping caste in chiffon, patriarchy in poetry, and oppression in romance. Marriage today kills with both ritual and romance. And yet, its defenders tell us that marriage is the cornerstone of society. Indeed it is! Of a society built upon the violence against women, Dalits, and queers.
Marriage thus functions as the central factory of social hierarchy: it determines property, lineage, domestic labour, even access to welfare and citizenship. Every bureaucratic form that demands “husband’s name” is the State echoing the priest’s mantra which declares that a woman’s existence is meaningful only through conjugal submission. In this sense, the Brahminical state and the Brahminical family are not separate; they are mirror images enforcing the same law of purity, control, and obedience.
Our history is not silent on this. From Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule, who stripped marriage of priestly monopoly by conducting Satyashodhak marriage to Periyar, who tore off its sacred mask and declared it a secular contract between equals with Self-Respect marriages, the war against Brahminical marriage has been waged for centuries. While many Ambedkarites quote Babasaheb’s injunction for inter-caste marriage, Ambedkar himself knew that the chains of caste cannot be broken by merely repainting the link. He saw that the so-called reform of Hindu marriage, without destroying its religious foundation, is a fraud — a cosmetic surgery on the corpse of justice. This is why he opposed the 1949 Hindu Marriages Validity Act, which seemingly aligned with his anti-caste politics and even seemed relevant to his own marriage to Sharada Kabir, a Saraswat Brahmin. But Ambedkar saw deeper: he understood that legalizing inter-caste marriage without replacing the religious foundations of Hindu law with secular, rational principles would leave caste untouched. To legalize inter-caste marriage without annihilating the very ideology that created caste—as he attempted through the Hindu Code Bills—is to place a crown on slavery and call it freedom.
Ambedkar’s insight, rediscovered by legal scholars like Saptarshi Mandal, shows that reform cannot touch the heart of the problem. The outer form of Hindu marriage may be altered, but its soul remains Brahminical. Even the most liberal marriage reforms have left intact the structure of inheritance, purity, and property, the triad upon which Brahminical patriarchy rests. To this day, the right to marry, the right to divorce, and even the right to love are granted not as freedoms but as permissions from the patriarchal State. What Ambedkar glimpsed, and what Dalit queer thinkers make explicit today, is that marriage itself, not merely its inequality, is the problem. The liberal delusion to reduce it to a choice is an abandonment of politics. To anecdotally see a “good couple” and justify the institution’s existence is to lose all perspective.
The anti-caste movement, if it is to remain true to its name, must awaken to this truth: marriage is the citadel of caste. Every wedding conducted within caste lines is a ceremony of caste survival; every priest chanting the mantras of purity and lineage is renewing the empire of Brahminism. Even those marriages that defy caste often carry within them its poison — the longing for social respectability, the inheritance of patriarchal order, the consolidation of bureaucratic caste. To democratize marriage is to decorate the prison; to abolish it is to break the walls.
Therefore, the rejection of marriage must rise as the new phase of Anti-Brahminism. It calls for the destruction of three intertwined institutions: the family, the caste, and the priesthood of conjugality. Against them, it upholds new forms of kinship, those bonds of care, equality, and chosen solidarity. These are not fantasies but the living practices of Dalit queer feminists and many others who build lives out of friendship and struggle, not ritual and property. In their defiance lies the blueprint of a society free from Brahminical patriarchy.
For centuries, Brahminism has policed not only who may marry but who may desire. The suppression of queer lives, the denial of legitimacy to non-monogamous and non-conjugal bonds, the criminalization of pleasure are all methods by which caste and patriarchy reinforce each other. To challenge marriage, therefore, is also to challenge heteronormativity. The Dalit queer critique has long exposed how both the sacred and civic legitimacy of marriage exclude the most oppressed. Their demand is not for entry into this institution but for its overthrow. They call for a world where care and intimacy are liberated from ownership and purity and where love itself is unshackled from the need for approval.
The annihilation of caste will not come through the moral purification of marriage but through its dissolution. Let no one mistake the reform of marriage for revolution. The real revolution begins when love ceases to ask permission from caste, religion, or the State. To imagine life beyond marriage is to imagine life beyond domination itself. This, and this alone, is the path toward liberation — the path of the truest and most radical heir of the long war against Brahminism.
The struggle that began against priests and scripture must now advance against the altar of conjugality. The Brahmin may have lost his monopoly on ritual, but he still rules the household through the invisible power of the family. Until that temple too is destroyed, the Brahminical caste will survive. The final chapter of Anti Brahminism will thus be written not in the courtroom or the temple but in the home — when love itself refuses to kneel. Only then shall we be free.
Kaushal Bodwal is a Dalit queer activist working alongside leftist, queer, and Ambedkarite movements and a doctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
