Marriage in Harappan Times

At Harappa, there is evidence for matrilocality - where husbands go to live with their wives' community. 

Nearly all cemetery inhumations conform to a similar layout that is not readily differentiated into distinct social classes.

Joe Ravi, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia

The skeletons found are generally healthy people which indicates an improved access to resources. A study found that the few burials that have been found (only 600 so far across hundreds of years of urbanized living across hundreds of settlements) may have related to first generation immigrants. These burials show they were respected and that mobility between villages and cities existed as also trade. 

A study from Farmana, in present day Haryana, showed trade links with present day Punjab in Pakistan, and Gujarat as well. There were signs of matrimonial linkages as well. 

More burials found at Rakhigarhi at Haryana have unearthed a man and a woman together, possibly in a matrimonial relationship. This may point to the earliest marriage (4700 years ago) for which evidence has been found. 

Uptill now historians believed the earliest marriage had taken place about 4400 years ago, in Mesopotamia. 

Historians believe that some of the beautiful painted jars found at various sites may have been used as marriage gifts. 

A bangle found at Susa in ancient Mesopotamia was made from materials found only along the Indus coast. Historians have speculated that 'it is possible that the woman wearing this bangle was part of a marriage alliance with a distant trading family in Susa. Such long distance marriage contracts can be documented historically and ethnographically. In the absence of strong state control, long distance kin relationships would have been a form of insurance in trade relations.'

Haryana, Gujarat, Kashmir, UP..

A relative wrote to me : ‘Kashmiris target our armymen and stone them.’ I wrote him back : It is a complex issue and I have not studied it yet. But it does appear that BJP uses real incidents only to twist their import :

1. What about Haryana, which lately has turned to the Hindu right ? This news from Feb 2016 – did not haryana Jat youth in large numbers act against the national interest and honour of the uniform ? The widespread violence, looting and murders went on for 10 days but I did not then see condemnation by BJP leaders that we routinely hear from them against Kashmiris. See this news article of that time. And here, and here.

2. You said Gujarat and Kashmir cannot be compared. Yes, they cannot be. ‘Scholars studying the 2002 riots state that they were premeditated and constituted a form of ethnic cleansing, and that the state government and law enforcement were complicit in the violence that occurred.’ So it is just fine when it happens in Gujarat, but awful when smaller incidents happen in the Kashmir valley ?

3. An international fact-finding committee formed of all women international experts from US, UK, France, Germany and Sri Lanka reported, "Sexual violence was being used as a strategy for terrorizing women belonging to minority community in Gujarat." I suppose this is the form of Hinduism the Hindu right is pushing us towards.

4. Rape has been routinely deployed against Kashmiri Muslim women as well : ‘Since the onset of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir in 1988, rape has been used as a weapon of war by Indian security forces; comprising the Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security personnel, against the Kashmiri population. The frequent rape of Kashmiri Muslim women by Indian state security forces routinely goes unpunished.’ The studies which back up these claims were published from 1994 through to 2017.

5. More examples of BJP's blatant hypocrisy : 'Non-Brahminical Hindutva has not given political mobility to Jats in the BJP (in UP), a party fundamentally upper caste in its orientation.' All of BJP and Sangh Pariwar's crying about 'caste divisions' is when the mathematics is against them. Caste divisions are fundamental to them and embraced when they work in their favour. In his address in Kairana in May this year, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath appealed to all Hindus to vote for the BJP irrespective of caste. 

In any case, is focusing on a religious identity any better than a caste identity ?