The Pracice of Village Exogamy

The Practice of Village Exogamy --Gil Prost

Unlike the Miccosukee (Mikasuki) of South Florida which grounded their security system in clan exogamy, villages in Northern India grounded their security in village exogamy thereby classifying each village as "family" in the same way the Miccosukee classified the matrilineal clan as a kind of of "family."

Village exogamy meant your classmates in school had to classify you as a "brother" or "sister." To marry someone from the same village would be an incestuous act worthy of death.

Mahatma Gandhi is often quoted as having said: “Real India lives in its villages.” "In Uttar Pradesh, the average size of the village is 1,224 people." And more specifically,

"Members of the same village do not intermarry. People of a village consider

themselves as brothers and sisters. Therefore, people of one village take a bride

from another village. For example, in Rani Khera a village in Aligarh District of Uttar Pradesh, 266 married women had come from about 200 different villages averaging between twelve and twenty-four miles away; 220 local women had gone to 200 other

villages to marry. as a result of these exogamous marriages, Rani Khera, a village of

150 households, was linked to 400 other nearby villages."

But the question seeking an answer is: Why does this large area of North India compromising more than 400 villages spread throughout this mountainous area compel their young people to find spouses in other villages? The answer appears to be either a), the more villages with whom one can exchange sons and daughters in marriage, the better one's chances for preventing inter-village warfare and having positive relationships, or b), alliances are formed between two or more villages to counter a common adversary.

Since the rule of village exogamy serves as part of their defensive system against anxiety it is assumed that there existed a time when the villages of Uttar Pradesh lived in a state of constant strife and warfare over boundaries and use of land. SOCIAL EXISTENCE demanded a solution. Their solution? To stave of and prevent inter-village warfare, they formed alliances symbolized in the interchange of sons and daughter through marriage.

By classifying all persons of approximately the same age as “siblings,” villages of the district of Uttar Pradesh were able to compel young people to find spouses in other villages. Marrying, for example, an unrelated schoolmate would be classified as being an “incestuous act” worthy of death. This is no empty threat as evidenced by the "honor killing" in the picture below. Ten years ago in May, 2008 two unrelated schoolmates were murdered. Their crime was incest. Brothers and sisters do not marry. They failed to marry out. Village sentiment was: “We people believe people who commit incest should be killed.”

A Missiological Problem

If SOCIAL EXISTENCE in a particular environment is the medium for determining what constitutes a "family," then the contextualizers are right when they say: The missionary “must accept and work within structures and processes of others that are different from one’s own social game.”

But any missionary working in an area which practices village exogamy rather than nuclear family exogamy will have trouble explaining why Jesus, the Son of God should not be classified as being a "bastard."

How does one “accept social structures and processes” that according to their “social game,” classify Jesus as an “illegitimate” child, the child of an incestuous relationship because both Joseph and Mary had failed to find a spouse in another village? According to their "social game," Jesus' parents were “brothers” and “sisters.” And by playing their "social game," the missionary has no Good News to proclaim.

Convictions

In proclaiming that Jesus was an "exact representation" of God on earth, the missionary cannot avoid the Rule of Village Exogamy and how it negates his essence as the "Son of God."
When the people of Northern India finally hear and read the Gospel of Luke and discover that Mary and Joseph both lived in village of Nazareth and that Jesus was a “Nazarene,” they will immediately wonder why the elders of the village did not put Mary and Joseph to death like they would have, after all, the relationship was incestuous because they were classified as being “brother” and “sister.”

Gilbert Prost

June, 2019

BALLA, India (Reuters) - Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel.

They punched and kicked her stomach as she called out for her sleeping boyfriend “Jassa”, 22-year-old Jasbir Singh, witnesses said. When he woke, both were dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled.

Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita’s father’s house for all to see, a sign that the family’s “honor” had been restored by her cold-blooded murder.

A week later, the village of Balla, just a couple of hours drive from India’s capital New

Delhi, stands united behind the act, proud, defiant almost to a man. Among the Jat caste of the conservative northern state of Haryana, it is taboo for a man and woman of the same village to marry. Although the couple were not related, they were seen in this deeply traditional society as brother and sister.