Wedded for change

A revolutionary wedding fifty years ago 

Fifty years have passed since Kalegowda Nagawara’s revolutionary wedding to Kempamma in a small village in Channapatna taluk. Even today the tenets of simplicity and rationalism imbued in the wedding are just as relevant.

In 1972, the couple got married with no pomp and show at a progressivist convention without music, lunch or rituals. The wedding, instead, was a union between like-minded individuals and espoused their commitment to the betterment of society.

“Our country has many problems. Even today many houses don’t have toilets, many villages don’t have schools but families continue to spend their life savings on weddings and sometimes even take out loans,” says Kalegowda.

Inspired by Kuvempu’s concept of ‘Mantra Mangalya’ weddings that rejected social convention and embraced austerity, Nagawara and Kempamma’s wedding was an effort to show villagers that one need not have to take out loans for an event, a practice that is common in the Mandya-Mysuru region. He cites the example of author and progressive thinker Poornachandra Tejaswi, who had no more than 36 guests at his wedding.

In the process of conducting grand weddings, many people forget what it is supposed to signify, he explains. “For me the wedding would be meaningful if it involved two consensual individuals, who had mutual respect for each other and who together would move towards what is good for society at large,” he says.

Kempamma, too, is happy that the wedding happened in the simple way that it did. “I was convinced when I heard the reasoning behind it,” she says. Kempamma had known of the groom for a while and her brother was his friend. Five decades later she recognises how important simple weddings are, “All my three children were married in a similar manner,” she says.

A healthy appetite for scientific thinking and progressive authors and literature like that of Basavanna, Allama Prabhu, B R Ambedkar, Kuvempu, Ram Manohar Lohia and Periyar prompted the couple to look beyond the boundaries of ritualistic traditions.

Kuvempu’s concept of ‘vishwamanava’ or a ‘universal human’ was particularly influential. That human beings transcended the narrow walls of caste and religion became an important point to prove at the wedding.

Even though the wedding was between two individuals who belonged to the same caste, in order to shun discriminatory practices, the wedding was conducted by Veteran Congress leader and former Karnataka minister K H Ranganath, who belonged to the Dalit community.

Although such weddings were not unheard of at the time, the couple’s aim was to bring simplicity and meaning back into weddings of the hinterlands. “My family took some convincing but I explained the principle behind it. The wedding set an example. Many couples opted to have simple weddings after us,” he says.

The wedding was revolutionary, an event that people recall to this day, says Rajendra Prasad (35), a poet and an entrepreneur from Mandya. The ceremony invited disdain and resentment from sections of the society but it happened anyway.

“Because he was a college lecturer, it inspired so many of his students. Even many family members who attended the wedding were inspired to have simple weddings of their own,” he says. Prasad recently was wedded in the mantra mangalya style.

While there was a time when many people in the region opted to have simple weddings facilitated by farmer collectives, everything changed a decade or two ago. A wedding now costs Rs 30 to 40 lakh and people often sell their land or land themselves in debt to make this happen. “If a wedding like that could happen fifty years ago, in this generation we should carry forward the idea and build more upon it,” Prasad says.

A five-minute wedding

Not only was the wedding simple, devoid of any opulence, but it was also an event that lasted a duration of five minutes with no rituals of any kind. The wedding was held at a symposium against superstition and archaic rituals and traditions and was meant to send a message to the 2,000 residents of the Nagavara village as well as 4,000 attendees of the progressive convention.

At the end of the wedding, people came forward to commend the couple by appreciating the uncomplicated nature of the event. Such examples, they said, would help reduce the exploitation of the bride’s parents.

At the time, a wedding would have cost Rs 10,000 and would have needed a loan. “At the end of my wedding no one had a rupee of debt,” says Nagawara. Instead, the couple opted to donate Rs 500 to the development of a primary healthcare centre in the village.