Page 109 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

84 Karine Bates

arguing that her husband was too poor to adequately take care of her.
She was richer than him because she had inherited property as the only
child of her widowed mother. She also argued that he was suffering
from asthma and consumption and she was afraid of the temper of the
people who lived in his house. In addition, the lawyer made the point
that she had not given her consent to the marriage. In the first instance,
Justice Pinhey disallowed the argument concerning poverty. However,
he concluded in Rukmabai’s favour, since it would be ‘a barbarous, a
cruel, a revolting thing to do to compel a young lady … to go to a man
whom she dislikes, in order that he may cohabit with her against her
will’ (Masselos 1998, 9 Bom 534). The case went on appeal the follow-
ing year. Chief Justice Sir Charles Sargent reversed the Civil Court’s
decision. He condemned Rukmabai to prison, as recent legislation had
provided means to enforce marriage rights by setting the punishment
for refusing to restore conjugal rights to a maximum of six months’
imprisonment. The fact that she disliked him or that she was married
as a child were not appropriate justifications to annul the marriage. He
clearly stated that under ‘Hindu Law’ the marriage of daughters was a
religious duty imposed on parents and guardians. The Indian courts
should not enforce the English point of view, which sees marriage
as nothing but a contract to which the husband and wife must be
consenting parties (ibid., 9 Bom 312).
Rukmabai refused to stay with her husband and stated that she
preferred to go to jail for six months. Her husband decided not to
take the matter further and she had to go to prison. She later went to
England where she studied to become a doctor and returned to India
where she died in 1955, still unattached. This example shows that there
have always been women who resisted the ideal of the wife. Courts
were sometimes an indirect forum in which such women could object
to a social structure, and where some judges were intent on listening
and agreeing with the claims of some women. However, the courts
seemed to be more imbued with a Brahmanical ideal of women than
in previous times. As Masselos (1998: 129) summarizes:

Some women did manage to express an idea of free choice and as-
sert their agency as individuals, and some established relationships
of their own choice. Others resorted to the mechanisms of the state
legal structures to maintain their autonomy. In whatever way they