Anthropos 79. 1984: 113-128 
Marital Discord and Dissolution Among 
the Hindu East Indians in Rural Trinidad 
Joseph Nevadomsky 
Introduction 
One of the more striking differences between 
marriage in north India and in East India commu 
nities in rural Trinidad is to be found in marital 
instability. Although some of the conditions 
creating domestic disharmony may be similar in 
the two settings, marital dissolution is not com 
mon in north India, particularly among the higher 
castes, because exceptionally strong values sup 
port the sanctity of marriage and severe disappro 
val meet those who violate them. Because senti 
ments regarding divorce are intertwined with the 
proscription against remarriage, especially for 
woman, rejected wives and widows are by custom 
barred from remarriage, which is looked upon as a 
scandalous act. The right and proper activity of 
such women is a state of chastity. Although the 
1955 Hindu Marriage Act makes divorce legal, on 
very limited grounds, the opportunity for divorce 
is viewed even today as a last resort to escape an 
intolerable situation rather than as a chance to 
establish a new life through remarriage. Divorce, 
then, in both the legal and customary senses, is 
negatively sanctioned. 
Among the rural East Indian in Trinidad the 
situation is quite different. As descendants of 
indentured laborers brought from the South 
Asian mainland in the second half of the 19th 
Joseph Nevadomsky, Ph. D. in Social Anthropology 
(1977, Univ. of California at Berkeley); he has carried out 
fieldwork in India, Trinidad, and Nigeria; he has published 
on the East Indians in Journal of Comparative Family 
Studies, Journal of Anthropological Research, The Eastern 
Anthropologist, International Jurnal of Women’s Studies, 
and International Journal of Sociology of the Family. 
century to work on the island’s sugar plantations, 
East Indians have abandoned traditional proscrip 
tions against the indissolubility of marriage. They 
accept with equaniminity keeper and common- 
law unions, the prevalent conjugal pattern in the 
Caribbean. Although divorce in the legal sense is 
extremely rare, as it is for all but the upper status 
groups which are the only ones that can afford it, 
marriages are easily terminated and either the 
estranged husband or wife may take up with 
another spouse. Second unions for women are 
uneventful and cause virtually no social disap 
proval. 
This paper examines contemporary patterns 
of marital discord and dissolution among the East 
Indians in rural Trinidad, including the duration 
of marriage, the incidence of separation, causes of 
separation, and remarriage, as part of a larger 
effort to describe changes in East Indian family 
organization. By and large, much of the ethno 
graphic research on the East Indians in Trinidad 
has not been concerned with change but has 
instead focused on cultural persistance (for a 
critique of this research see Nevadomsky 1981 a). 
This has led to the conclusion that a great deal of 
East Indian family life can be better understood 
by reference to the sociocultural system of India, 
from which it initially derived, than by reference 
to the local setting, in which it is presently found. 
By contrast, the crucial issues in the present paper 
are the extent to which social change has affected 
the stability of East Indian marriages and the 
kinds of conflicts and patterns of resolution that 
have emerged in this particular environment. 
Data for the paper derive from four sources: 
field research in a rural East Indian community 
that included a random sample survey of house 
holds; personal marriage histories; case histories 
and numerical data provided by the probation