The Women History Forgot: Kulin Wives, Widows, And Sex Workers
‘Beriye elaam, beshya holam, kul korlam khoy
Tobuo kina bhatar shala dhomke kotha koy’
Translation: I came out and became a whore, blackened my kula (family), yet even now, this bastard of a husband yells at me. (Sen, 1979)
When we think of women in history, we tend to focus on the trailblazers, pioneers, and trendsetters. But it is time we shift focus to the women who never make it onto history books, other than when they are used as examples to illustrate social oppression. This is especially the case with the women married under the oppressive Kulin marriage system in Bengal, who find little mention in history books beyond this lens of victimisation.
The Kulin marriage system
The Kulin system was a polygynous system of marriage that traces its roots to the eleventh century. According to local legend, King Adisura is said to have invited five Brahmins to Bengal, from somewhere in present-day Uttar Pradesh, and designated them as Kulin Brahmins, i.e. Brahmins of a superior rank/status. In the next century, King Ballal Sen is said to have invited the 56 descendants of these Brahmins to his court and formalised the Kulin system or Kulinism. However, the veracity of this claim explaining the origins of the Kulin Brahmins is dubious.
These Brahmins were allowed to marry as many times as they desired, as long as they did so within agreed-upon kinship rules. Within this system, it was considered a privilege for women and girls to be married to a Kulin Brahmin.
These Brahmins were allowed to marry as many times as they desired, as long as they did so within agreed-upon kinship rules. Within this system, it was considered a privilege for women and girls to be married to a Kulin Brahmin. Girls were ideally married off before puberty, because the prevailing belief was that if girls were to be married after puberty, they would bring terrible dishonour to the family.
Women and girls wed under this Kulin marriage system would remain with their natal families after the marriage and for the remainder of their lives. Children born out of Kulin wedlocks would be brought up by the natal families of the women. The husband would only visit occasionally, if that. In essence, these were contractual marriages that allowed the Hindu father to take care of his duty of ‘marrying off’ his daughters, but provided no rights to the woman within the marriage. Her conjugal rights and property rights (under the Dayabhaga system) remained out of reach to her.
The systemic economic imbalance that this would have created can only be speculated upon, due to the lack of narratives focusing on the lives of such women during this time.
This practice declined in the middle of the nineteenth century, reportedly due to a wide range of factors, such as a shift in social priorities and changing economic systems. Thus, we can gather that for about eight centuries, there was a widespread practice of polygyny among men and hypergamy among women, whereby there was an entire category of women who were married but lived without husbands, and in their parental homes. The systemic economic imbalance that this would have created can only be speculated upon, due to the lack of narratives focusing on the lives of such women during this time.
The missing histories of Kulin wives
However, this is not to say that narratives about Kulin wives are completely missing. We have biographies of women like Nistarini Debi, who survived the Kulin system. But there appear to be very few authoritative historical sources that look into the lifeworld of these women beyond their representation as victims.
This erasure allows for many questions to go unanswered – What did the economic lives of these women look like? What social status did they enjoy as married women? Did they take up social causes? Were they invisibilised even within circles of married women? How did they contribute to their natal family set‑ups? Nistarini Debi’s personal account, in her dictated autobiography Sekeley Katha, does provide a few of these answers, but it is safe to assume that her account doesn’t incorporate centuries’ worth of stories, which will forever go unheard.
Beyond narratives of heroism or victimhood
The problem with framing historical facts as narratives of heroism or victimhood is that it leaves little room for facts. However, what remains a fact is that the practice of polygyny and hypergamy resulted in women being forced into sex work and increasing rates of female infanticide. An official report from the mid-nineteenth century highlights how nearly 10,000 of the 12,000 sex workers in the Greater Calcutta region were wives or widows of Kulin Brahmins.
An official report from the mid-nineteenth century highlights how nearly 10,000 of the 12,000 sex workers in the Greater Calcutta region were wives or widows of Kulin Brahmins.
Nistarini Debi in Sekeley Katha speaks of running into a ‘sister-wife’ at the Kalighat temple complex who had not yet received the news of her husband’s passing. Nistarini Debi reportedly felt that she was lucky that the news of her husband’s passing had at least reached her on time.
Malabika Karmakar, in her paper, Reflection on Kulin Polygamy – Nistarini Debi’s Sekeley Katha notes, ‘Wherever the Kulins married, they kept a book of records. My paternal grandfather [Nistarini Debi’s], Madanmohan Bandyopadhyay, had an exercise book of this kind. In it were written the addresses of (the homes) his fifty-six wives, and wherever there was a little space in the book, he would fill in details of relevant monetary matters, information on his children, and whatever was useful in securing his social dues.’
She further notes, ‘The copybook was like the ones which recorded the transactions of those who buy their daily essentials on credit. Like a register in a collectorate listing how much revenue was due from whom, it noted down which girl was married when and how much dowry was received. His visits were proportionately more frequent to homes where more was to be got, both financially and otherwise.’
This highlights the transactional nature of these marriages and their role in advancing the economic positions of the Kulin brahmin household. For the Kulin man, these marriages were how he was feeding his own family. Karmakar’s paper notes, ‘There were only two instances during her long life when Nistarini’s husband came to her natal home. She, of course, never went to his village. On the first occasion, when Iswar’s presence was required for a family wedding, he could only be lured onto the boat for the journey to his in-laws’ home on the assurance of Rs 5 per month being paid to his family.’
A system built on the neglect and exploitation of women
In essence, this form of marriage enabled impoverished men, with nothing but an arbitrary legacy of ‘superiority’, to marry countless women, without a sense of responsibility towards them. In all social memory, a Kulin marriage was akin to a funeral. Shriya Bandopadhyay, in her paper, Women’s Voices From Within: A Study of ‘Pati-Ninda’ and ‘Jamai-Ninda’ from Bengali Mangalkabyas, notes that marrying a polygamous husband was considered a great calamity. However, the Kulin system also had a sense of ritual purity attached to it and was much sought after in the eighteenth century.
The pursuit of ritual purity, coupled with social perceptions of chastity and honour, kept a system of marriage alive for centuries that exploited and neglected women.
Bandopadhyay notes, ‘From the writing of Bharatchandra Raygunakar, court-poet of Krishnachandra of Nadiya, we can understand how child marriage, in Kūlīnism, was justified by arguing that it will preserve women’s chastity.’ So, the pursuit of ritual purity, coupled with social perceptions of chastity and honour, kept a system of marriage alive for centuries that exploited and neglected women.
Circling back to the quote that this article began with, it becomes important to focus on the words ‘beshya holam’ (becoming a sex worker). What this tells us about the women is that they most likely had only a few options. Retire as a widow to Varanasi (as narrated by Nistarini Debi), become a sex worker, or be poisoned to death (poisonings of Kulin women were passed off as cholera deaths, as noted by Brahmo Samaj reformer Dwarakanath Gangopadhyay).
When attempting to understand child marriage in the Bengal region, the Kulin practice is key to understanding the roots of this system. And when thinking of women in history, we must never forget those whose names were probably never remembered, even by their own husbands. It becomes the job of feminist historiographers to attempt reconstruction of the lifeworlds of women history forgot, so that we may be able to imagine their existence beyond a lens of historical victimhood.
References
Chakrabarty, D. (2014). The Kulin Brahmin and Polygamy Debates in Colonial Bengal. Indian Economic & Social History Review, 51(3), 345–366. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156594
Chatterjee, I. (1995). The Politics of Caste and Gender in Colonial Bengal. Social Scientist, 23 (1/3), 39–63.https://www.jstor.org/stable/3520431
Chatterjee, I. (2019). Kulin Brahmin Wives and the Question of Marriage in Bengal. Indian Historical Review, 46 (1), 1–23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26668724
Editor’s Note: The translation of the Bengali text (Sen, 1979) contains language that many readers may find crude or misogynistic. We have rendered the translation faithfully to convey its original tone accurately. The editorial decision to retain these expressions reflects a commitment to accurate representation, not approval of the sentiments expressed.
Utsarjana Mutsuddi, is a PhD Research Scholar working in the broader area of Cultural Studies with a focus on Performance, Cultural Texts and Indigenous Studies. She loves to write, create, cook and dream.