Marriage (Meaning, Functions of Marriage, Forms of Marriage, Recent Trends of Marriage)

The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and the Special Marriage Act, 1954 both regulate something sociology defines long before either statute existed: marriage as a social institution. Before you can argue a matrimonial case, you need to know what marriage is doing for society — why every known society regulates it, why its forms vary so widely, and why the arranged, patrilocal, same-caste marriage your grandparents expected is visibly changing in urban India today.

In two minutes

Marriage is a socially and legally recognised union between partners that establishes rights and duties between them and towards any children born of it, historically serving functions like regulating sexual behaviour, reproduction and property transfer, and now visibly changing in form and expectation across urban India.

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