From dowry and extravagant weddings to caste-controlled marriages, commercialised childbirth and expensive death feasts, Haryana needs a social revolution that dismantles inherited inequalities—not one that adds new ceremonies
By: Ramphal Kataria
“A woman riding a mare is a symbol of participation. A woman choosing her partner, rejecting dowry and exercising equal rights is a symbol of liberation. Confusing the two is mistaking spectacle for social reform.”
The illusion of a social revolution
The recent news report, “Bhiwani brides in the saddle, patriarchy takes a back seat”, published in The Tribune, celebrates the growing practice of brides riding mares during pre-wedding ceremonies in Haryana. Tracing the development to Monika Rani of Khaparwas village in May 2010, the report presents subsequent instances of brides undertaking the traditional groom's ceremony as an emerging expression of gender equality.
There is nothing objectionable about a bride riding a mare. She has every right to participate in any ceremony, adopt any tradition or reject any custom according to her wishes. The problem lies not in her choice but in the exaggerated social significance assigned to the act.
When did imitating a patriarchal ritual become equivalent to dismantling patriarchy?
If a ceremony traditionally reserved for the groom is now performed by the bride, what exactly has changed in the structure of marriage? Has dowry disappeared? Have caste restrictions weakened? Have women acquired greater control over matrimonial decisions? Have extravagant weddings become simpler? Are daughters receiving equal inheritance? Has the unequal burden of domestic labour diminished?
If the answer to these questions is largely negative, declaring patriarchy defeated because a bride has mounted a mare is an exercise in misplaced celebration.
The ritual has changed its performer, not necessarily its purpose, social meaning or economic consequences.
Indeed, if such practices become additional ceremonial expectations, they may contribute to the multiplication of wedding expenditure rather than its reduction.
A bride riding a mare is a matter of personal choice. Turning that choice into a new benchmark of progressive weddings is an entirely different proposition.
The distinction deserves serious attention, particularly in a society where marriage is already burdened with dowry, extravagant feasts, expensive gifts, multiple ceremonies and intense competition for social prestige.
“The revolution Haryana needs is not another ceremony borrowed from the groom. It is the freedom of a daughter to marry without dowry, without caste restrictions, without debt and without surrendering her individual choices.”
1. How meaningful customs become instruments of social exploitation
Human societies have always developed customs around significant events. Birth, marriage and death are universal experiences, and communities have historically evolved rituals to acknowledge them.
These practices were not necessarily irrational or exploitative in their original form. In agrarian societies, where families depended heavily on kinship networks, community participation provided emotional security, reciprocal assistance and social solidarity.
A wedding brought relatives and neighbours together. A birth was welcomed through customary gatherings. A death brought the community to the bereaved family's doorstep.
These practices served a social purpose.
However, customs are not static. They evolve with changing economic conditions, power relationships, religious interpretations and social aspirations. Some acquire new meanings; others lose their original purpose but continue through habit and social pressure.
A simple gathering gradually becomes an elaborate function. Voluntary hospitality becomes compulsory expenditure. A customary gift becomes an expectation. A community feast becomes a demonstration of financial capacity.
This transformation is central to understanding how customs become social evils.
Émile Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), examined the role of collective rituals in reinforcing social solidarity and shared identities. His work helps explain why communities attach considerable importance to ceremonies.
But collective solidarity can also become a mechanism of conformity. When a family is expected to perform a ceremony merely because everyone else does so, the custom ceases to be entirely voluntary.
Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) offers an especially relevant explanation through the concept of conspicuous consumption. He demonstrated how expensive consumption, gifts and elaborate entertainment become instruments for displaying wealth and social standing.
His observations are strikingly applicable to contemporary wedding culture.
Families frequently spend money not because a particular arrangement is necessary, but because its visibility communicates status.
Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979) further explains how consumption and social practices reproduce class distinctions. Families imitate the visible standards of wealthier groups to acquire social recognition and avoid appearing inferior.
The result is a cycle of competitive expenditure.
A custom that was once an expression of affection becomes a performance of economic superiority.
“A custom becomes a social evil when people stop practising it out of affection and start practising it out of fear of what society will say.”
2. Marriage has become a market of prestige, expenditure and social competition
In rural Haryana, marriage has historically been shaped by caste, kinship, landholding, family status and patriarchal expectations. Urbanisation and rising incomes have changed the appearance of wedding celebrations, but they have not necessarily dismantled the underlying social hierarchy.
The modern wedding increasingly resembles an economic exhibition.
Roka, engagement, ban, bhaat, mehndi, ghurchari, banwara, wedding feasts and other regional ceremonies have their own cultural contexts. There is no inherent problem with celebrating these occasions.
The problem is their continuous multiplication and commercialisation.
Every ceremony brings another set of expenses: clothing, jewellery, gifts, decorations, hospitality, photography, entertainment and guest arrangements.
A modest family celebration becomes several functions. A limited gathering becomes a large invitation list. A simple meal becomes an elaborate feast.
Urban households have added luxury hotels, destination weddings, designer arrangements and expensive entertainment to the same culture of display.
The geographical setting has changed; the psychology of social competition has not.
The most troubling aspect is that families increasingly measure the success of a wedding by what was spent rather than by the quality of the relationship being established.
A middle-income family may exhaust its savings to organise a wedding. Another may mortgage property, sell agricultural land or borrow money to maintain its standing in the community.
And all this is justified through the familiar argument that a daughter's marriage happens only once.
Why should a daughter's marriage become an occasion for financial exhaustion?
Why should parents have to demonstrate their social worth through the number of guests they entertain?
Why should a couple begin married life with the financial consequences of a celebration they did not necessarily need?
The economic burden is particularly unfair when the expenditure is concentrated on the bride's family, while the groom's family retains greater bargaining power.
This is not merely an issue of extravagant taste. It is an expression of unequal social relations.
3. Dowry: The elephant in the room that ceremonial empowerment ignores
The most glaring contradiction in the celebration of symbolic gender equality is the continuing prevalence of dowry.
The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, prohibits the giving and taking of dowry as defined by law. Yet demands for cash, vehicles, jewellery, property and expensive household goods continue in different forms.
Sometimes these demands are direct. At other times, they are disguised as customary gifts, parental affection, family expectations or demonstrations of social status.
Neerja Ahlawat's research, Marriage Norms and Dowry Practices: Emerging Scenario in Rural Haryana (2021), published in the Journal of People and Society of Haryana, documents how changing educational and economic circumstances have influenced marriage negotiations and the indicators used to assess matrimonial status.
The study is important because it challenges the assumption that education and modernisation automatically eliminate dowry. Educational qualifications, employment and economic position can themselves become bargaining indicators in marriage negotiations.
A groom's professional status may increase the expectations placed upon the bride's family.
Thus, modern education can coexist with deeply traditional economic inequalities.
This is the contradiction that deserves public attention.
A daughter may have completed postgraduate education, secured employment and achieved financial independence, yet her marriage may still be negotiated through the economic expectations of the groom's family.
What does riding a mare change in this arrangement?
Nothing, unless the social relationship itself changes.
A genuinely progressive marriage would be one in which neither family demands nor expects dowry, directly or indirectly. It would not involve expensive gifts presented as obligations, nor would it assess the worth of a bride through the financial capacity of her parents.
A dowry-free marriage is a far more powerful declaration of gender equality than the addition of another wedding ritual.
“Do not celebrate a daughter's symbolic equality at the wedding procession while negotiating her marriage through the economic superiority of the groom's family.”
4. The real patriarchy: Control over a woman's right to choose
The deepest expression of patriarchy in Haryana is often found not in wedding ceremonies but in the control exercised over matrimonial choices.
In several communities, marriage continues to be regulated through caste endogamy, gotra restrictions, village boundaries, kinship conventions and biradari expectations.
While legitimate restrictions concerning prohibited degrees of relationship serve important purposes, the enforcement of broader community boundaries frequently becomes a means of controlling individual choice.
Prem Chowdhry's research, Caste Panchayats and the Policing of Marriage in Haryana: Enforcing Kinship and Territorial Exogamy (2004), published in Contributions to Indian Sociology, provides a detailed examination of the intervention of caste panchayats in marriages that violate established social conventions.
Her research reveals how marriage is not simply a personal relationship but also a mechanism through which caste identity, territorial boundaries and community hierarchies are reproduced.
B. R. Ambedkar had identified this problem much earlier in his seminal paper, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development (1916).
He argued that endogamy, the restriction of marriage within a closed social group, is central to the reproduction of caste.
The regulation of women's matrimonial choices consequently becomes essential to preserving caste boundaries.
This explains why a society can celebrate a bride participating in a traditional ritual while resisting her decision to marry someone from another caste or religion.
A woman may be applauded for riding a mare but condemned for choosing her life partner.
She may be permitted to participate in a ceremony but denied the freedom to decide the person with whom she wishes to spend her life.
The contradiction is unmistakable.
The Supreme Court's judgments in Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. (2018) and Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018) affirm the importance of individual autonomy and protection against unlawful interference in marriages between consenting adults.
The constitutional principle is clear: family honour, caste prestige and community conventions cannot override the liberty of adults to choose their partners.
A genuinely progressive Haryana would celebrate parents who support inter-caste and inter-religious marriages rather than those who merely organise elaborate traditional ceremonies.
It would recognise the right of a daughter to make an informed decision about her marriage without fear of social exclusion, intimidation or violence.
“A bride may ride a mare before an entire village and still remain unfree if that same village refuses to recognise her right to choose her husband.”
5. Childbirth: Celebrating the arrival of a child or displaying the family's status?
The same transformation of meaningful customs into economic obligations can be observed around childbirth.
Traditional ceremonies such as godh bharai, chhathi, naamkaran, kuan pujan and other regional observances often provide emotional support to the mother and welcome the newborn into the family.
These practices can be meaningful expressions of affection and intergenerational solidarity.
But when they become occasions for expensive gifts, elaborate feasts, jewellery, cash transfers and competitive hospitality, their social purpose becomes distorted.
The problem becomes more serious when childbirth ceremonies reproduce gender discrimination.
Historically, son preference has influenced the treatment of newborn boys and girls in several parts of Haryana and northern India. The historical record of birth customs in the region documents differences in the social celebration of male and female births.
The issue is not whether every contemporary family follows such distinctions. Many families have moved away from these practices. The concern is the persistence of the underlying attitudes.
A society cannot claim to respect daughters merely because it celebrates their wedding ceremonies.
The real measure is whether a girl receives the same affection, nutrition, healthcare, education, inheritance and opportunities as her brother from the moment she is born.
The celebration of a son's birth through lavish expenditure, alongside a relatively subdued reception for a daughter, exposes the hierarchy hidden beneath customary practices.
There is another contradiction. Families may spend heavily on birth ceremonies while neglecting the actual requirements of maternal and child health.
A mother needs adequate nutrition, healthcare, rest and emotional support. A newborn needs protection, vaccination, nourishment and a secure environment.
These responsibilities are more important than ceremonial display.
A meaningful celebration should not impose financial expectations on relatives or create another occasion for competitive hospitality.
The birth of a child should bring happiness, not a new financial liability. And the arrival of a daughter should never be treated as a lesser occasion.
6. Death ceremonies: When mourning becomes an expensive social obligation
If marriage expenditure reflects competitive prestige, death ceremonies reveal the cruelty of social pressure at its most vulnerable moment.
Death is an occasion for grief, remembrance and emotional support. Families need companionship, assistance and time to recover from their loss.
Yet in several communities, mourning has acquired elaborate ceremonial obligations.
These include extended mourning gatherings, community feasts, distribution of food and sweets, religious functions and expenditure associated with the thirteenth-day ceremony or other locally observed rites.
The practice of organising a community feast after death, commonly referred to as mrityu bhoj, kaaj or by other regional names, deserves particular scrutiny when it becomes compulsory in social perception.
Consider a family that has just lost its principal earning member. It may be facing uncertainty about the future, outstanding debts, household expenses and the education of dependent children.
Instead of receiving financial assistance, the family may be expected to organise a feast for hundreds of people.
The situation is particularly distressing when the family has to borrow money to fulfil the expectation.
This is not an expression of social solidarity. It is an inversion of it.
A community that truly stands with a bereaved family should reduce its burdens, not add to them.
The problem has been recognised by community organisations in Haryana itself.
In November 2015, the Kaliraman khap urged residents of approximately 150 villages to abandon the practice of organising a feast following the death of elderly persons. Its leaders acknowledged that the custom had become an occasion for social display, forcing even middle-income and poor families to follow an expensive practice.
In March 2022, the Punjabi community in Hansi also initiated a reform agenda to curb lavish death-related feasts. According to The Tribune report, “Punjabis in Haryana seek to curb lavish social gatherings”, affluent families were reportedly spending approximately ₹8–10 lakh on such gatherings, while economically weaker households were sometimes borrowing money to meet social expectations.
These are not merely isolated examples of ceremonial extravagance. They demonstrate how social prestige can turn grief into a financial obligation.
The more disturbing question is why society demands hospitality from a family that should instead be receiving assistance.
If a community wishes to honour the deceased, it can contribute towards the education of their children, support the widow, help settle essential household expenses, plant trees or provide assistance to a needy family in the deceased's memory.
Would that not be a more meaningful tribute?
The dead do not need an expensive feast. The living may need financial support, education, healthcare and security.
“A community that makes a bereaved family borrow money to feed mourners has abandoned the very purpose of collective mourning.”
7. Why people continue to follow customs they cannot afford
The persistence of these practices cannot be explained merely through individual greed or ignorance.
Social pressure is a powerful mechanism of conformity.
Families often follow expensive customs because they fear criticism, humiliation or exclusion. They worry that relatives will call them miserly, that neighbours will judge their social position, or that the biradari will consider their conduct disrespectful.
The fear of social judgement becomes stronger than the ability to make rational financial decisions.
This is where Durkheim's understanding of social conformity and Bourdieu's analysis of symbolic distinction become particularly relevant.
Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption explains why visible expenditure becomes a means of displaying wealth. But the competitive process does not remain confined to affluent families.
Middle-income households imitate the practices of wealthier families. Lower-income families then feel compelled to follow the standards established above them.
The result is a downward transmission of economic pressure.
Families spend money they do not possess to reproduce a social appearance they cannot sustain.
A wedding may last two days, but the debt incurred to organise it can remain for years.
A death feast may last a few hours, but the loan taken to finance it can burden the family long afterwards.
A family may receive temporary social approval while sacrificing savings that could have supported education, healthcare, housing or productive investment.
This is the hidden economic cost of ceremonial competition.
“People are not always spending to celebrate. Increasingly, they are spending to escape the humiliation of being judged by people who will never share the resulting debt.”
8. Feudal mentality in modern clothing
One of the most disturbing features of contemporary Haryana is the coexistence of modern consumption and feudal social attitudes.
Luxury vehicles, expensive smartphones, designer clothing, destination weddings and elaborate celebrations are increasingly common. Yet the acceptance of inter-caste marriages, women's independent choices, equal inheritance and freedom from dowry remains uneven.
The material appearance of modernity has advanced faster than the social consciousness required to sustain equality.
Feudal thinking is not limited to landownership or hereditary privilege. It is also reflected in the belief that family honour must be maintained through control, hierarchy, obedience and public display.
In marriage, it manifests itself through the superior bargaining position of the groom's family, the expectation that the bride's family must demonstrate its worth, and the insistence that matrimonial decisions remain subject to community approval.
In childbirth, it appears through son preference and unequal treatment of daughters.
In death, it manifests itself through the expectation that a family must demonstrate respect through expensive ceremonies, even when it cannot afford them.
The common thread is the subordination of individual needs to inherited social expectations.
This mentality survives because customs provide a respectable appearance to practices that would otherwise be recognised as discriminatory or economically irrational.
A dowry demand becomes a customary gift. An extravagant feast becomes an expression of hospitality. Community interference in marriage becomes protection of honour. Unequal treatment of daughters becomes a matter of tradition.
The language changes, but the underlying power relationship remains intact.
9. What genuine empowerment should look like
The real test of women's equality is not the number of ceremonies in which women participate. It is the extent of their freedom and control over their own lives.
Can a daughter refuse dowry-related demands without fear of losing her marriage?
Can she choose her life partner across caste and religious boundaries?
Can she inherit property on equal terms?
Can she continue her education and professional career after marriage?
Can she decide where she wishes to live?
Does she have an equal voice in household finances and family decisions?
Is domestic labour shared fairly?
Can she challenge violence, discrimination and economic dependence?
These are the questions that expose the difference between ceremonial participation and substantive equality.
A bride riding a mare may be a visible gesture. A woman exercising equal rights within her family is a structural change.
Similarly, a family organising an expensive wedding with a message of women's empowerment does not necessarily advance gender equality.
A genuinely progressive marriage should have the following characteristics:
1. No dowry, direct or indirect, and no financial demands disguised as customary gifts.
2. A simple wedding involving a limited gathering of close relatives.
3. No unnecessary ceremonies, extravagant feasts or competitive hospitality.
4. Freedom of choice for both partners, including acceptance of inter-caste and inter-religious marriages.
5. Equal rights in property, inheritance, employment and household decision-making.
6. No loans, sale of productive assets or financial exhaustion for ceremonial expenditure.
7. Equal respect for the bride's and groom's families.
8. Recognition that marriage is a partnership, not an economic transaction between two families.
The objective should be to reduce social obligations, not invent new ones.
10. The responsibility of khaps, community organisations and civil society
Haryana's community institutions have demonstrated that collective action can influence social practices.
The Kaliraman khap's 2015 initiative against death feasts and its subsequent efforts to encourage austerity in social functions are examples of community-led intervention.
The reform agenda initiated by the Punjabi community in Hansi in 2022 also illustrates the willingness of sections of society to question inherited practices.
Such initiatives deserve appreciation.
However, the credibility of social reform depends upon consistency.
A community institution cannot claim to be progressive merely because it discourages extravagant feasts while continuing to interfere in the matrimonial choices of consenting adults.
Nor can it claim to empower women by permitting them to imitate a groom's ritual while denying them equal authority in family and matrimonial decisions.
Community institutions should move beyond ceremonial regulation and address the structural inequalities that sustain these practices.
They should promote voluntary, inclusive resolutions against dowry, expensive marriage functions, compulsory death feasts, discriminatory childbirth practices and social restrictions on matrimonial choices.
They should encourage simple marriages, equal inheritance, girls' education, financial independence and the protection of couples facing social opposition.
Above all, reform should be based on persuasion, individual liberty and social support—not coercion, punishment or community diktats.
The purpose of a progressive community is to protect its members from exploitation, not to regulate their private lives.
11. Redefining social prestige: The courage to refuse
The most important reform required is a change in the way society measures respectability.
A family that marries its daughter without dowry should receive greater recognition than one that displays expensive gifts.
A couple that chooses a simple wedding should be admired more than one that spends beyond its means.
Parents who support their daughter's inter-caste or inter-religious marriage should be considered more progressive than those who sacrifice her autonomy to preserve community prestige.
A family that welcomes a daughter with the same affection as a son should be more respected than one that celebrates a birth through expensive ceremonies but perpetuates gender discrimination.
A family that refuses to organise an expensive death feast should be commended rather than criticised.
And a community that helps the bereaved should be valued more than one that expects hospitality from them.
The courage to reject an unnecessary custom is itself a form of social reform.
Society must stop treating conformity as respectability and extravagance as prestige.
The ability to say no to an unreasonable social expectation is more progressive than the ability to organise an elaborate ceremony.
Conclusion: Haryana needs fewer rituals and more rights
The story of brides riding mares in Bhiwani deserves recognition as an expression of individual choice. No woman should be denied participation in a ceremony simply because it has traditionally been associated with men.
But celebrating the imitation of a patriarchal ritual as a social revolution is an intellectually weak understanding of gender equality.
The more urgent struggle is against the economic, social and cultural structures that continue to restrict women's freedom and burden ordinary families.
Dowry, extravagant weddings, caste-controlled marriages, compulsory hospitality, discriminatory childbirth customs and expensive death feasts are not isolated social problems. They are connected through a common mechanism: the conversion of social expectations into obligations that individuals are often afraid to refuse.
The consequences are particularly severe for women and economically vulnerable families.
We must stop confusing the preservation of culture with the preservation of exploitation.
A meaningful custom deserves respect because it promotes affection, solidarity and human dignity. A custom that produces debt, discrimination, humiliation and coercion deserves reform, irrespective of its age or religious and cultural justification.
Haryana needs a new social movement.
It should advocate marriages without dowry, without extravagant expenditure and without unnecessary ceremonies. It should encourage inter-caste and inter-religious marriages between consenting adults. It should challenge the authority of caste institutions over personal choices. It should demand equal inheritance, education, employment and decision-making for women.
It should welcome newborn daughters without discrimination and support bereaved families without imposing the cost of public feasts.
Let families celebrate according to their means and personal preferences. Let traditions remain voluntary expressions of affection rather than compulsory demonstrations of status.
Let marriage be a partnership, childbirth a celebration of life and death an occasion for collective compassion.
The next social revolution in Haryana must not add another ritual to the marriage calendar. It must remove the burdens that have made marriage, birth and even death expensive obligations for ordinary families.
“Do not teach daughters merely how to occupy the ceremonial positions of sons. Build a society in which they enjoy the same freedom, property, dignity, opportunities and authority as sons.”
“A society that spends lakhs on a wedding but hesitates to educate its daughters has its priorities upside down. A society that organises a lavish feast after death but refuses to support the bereaved has lost its sense of humanity.”
“The real measure of progress is not how extravagantly we celebrate life's milestones, but how little we burden people while they pass through them.”
Haryana does not need another ceremonial competition in the name of empowerment. It needs the courage to reject unnecessary customs, dismantle inherited inequalities and place human dignity above social prestige.
Stop adding rituals. Stop glorifying expenditure. Start dismantling patriarchy.
References
1. Ambedkar, B. R. (1916). Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development. Paper presented at Columbia University; subsequently published in Indian Antiquary, 1917.
2. Ahlawat, Neerja (2021). “Marriage Norms and Dowry Practices: Emerging Scenario in Rural Haryana.” Journal of People and Society of Haryana, Vol. XI, No. II.
3. Bourdieu, Pierre (1979). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press, English edition, 1984.
4. Chowdhry, Prem (2004). “Caste Panchayats and the Policing of Marriage in Haryana: Enforcing Kinship and Territorial Exogamy.” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 38(1–2), pp. 1–42.
5. Chowdhry, Prem (2004). “Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India.” Modern Asian Studies, 38(1), pp. 55–84.
6. Chowdhry, Prem (2019). Political Economy of Production and Reproduction: Caste, Custom, and Community in North India. Oxford University Press.
7. Durkheim, Émile (1893). The Division of Labour in Society.
8. Durkheim, Émile (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
9. Veblen, Thorstein (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. Macmillan.
10. Government of India. The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.
11. Government of India. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005.
12. Supreme Court of India (2017). Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
13. Supreme Court of India (2018). Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M., (2018) 16 SCC 368.
14. Supreme Court of India (2018). Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192.
15. The Tribune (3 November 2015). “Kaliraman khap tells villagers to shun feast on death of elderly.”
16. The Tribune (22 March 2022). “Punjabis in Haryana seek to curb lavish social gatherings.”
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