Hindu law

For Hindus, marriage is also portrayed as a religious requirement, for a different reason than it tends to be argued for Muslims, who are asked to avoid zina, any form of extra-marital sexual relationship. Hindu marriage seems at first sight prominently a socio-cultural phenomenon. However, on deeper analysis Hindu marriage should also be seen as linked with macrocosmic rita/satya and dharma complexes (Menski, 2003: 86–93; 2006: 204–209), always connected to the Grundnorm that at any time Hindu individuals should remain aware of the idealised need to follow these broad, ultimately global patterns of expectations of macrocosmic Order/microcosmic ordering to the best of their abilities. The pressure of such expectations does not mean there is no individual discretion; quite the opposite. In this polyvalent Hinduism, the ideal of marriage between two souls, including gods, has also been interpreted as making space for sexual diversity in marriages. ¹ Even the essentialised Hindu visions thus result not in rigid normative and ethnographic patterns but, in fact, quite the opposite, as happened in the totality of ethnographic evidence. Various expected forms of microcosmic ordering are expressed through many further, mostly idealised terms connected to dharma, such as strīdharma, the obligations of women; patidharma, a husband’s duties; and so on.