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