Nationalizing marriage in Tamil India, 1890s–1940s

In the context of colonial modernity in India, dominant modes of patriarchy were called into question. In Tamil Nadu in particular, the conjugal relationship emerged as a critical site for the renegotiation of gender relations and the ‘women\u27s question,’ especially in terms of the family. As part of this process, the family was first rendered ‘private’; separated from the politics and authority of the modern, bureaucratic colonial state, families became available for incorporation into new discourses on domesticity, interiority, and emotionality. It was from this position of a supposedly de-politicized privacy that the family—and in particular marriage—entered public life in a new way. In the colonial law, in socio-political movements, and in a developing Tamil print culture, feminist and nationalist reformers produced a new politics that privileged conjugality at the expense of other social and familial relations—notably caste, patrilineage, and kinship alliance. As a result, not only marriage, but also community and nation were redefined