Madam Mala Ashok raises an all-too-common situation, based on "All is fair in love and war", "Love is blind", 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments", "Love overcomes all", and similar admonitions through the centuries.
Facts are facts, and cannot be denied. The "animal attraction" between a young woman and a young man in their prime of life can well be attributed to the surge of hormones, to the natural mating instincts of the human adolescent and of the human adult, the irresistible infatuation of a healthy maturing adult with another similar adult in close proximity, to the sense of urgency imparted by a secret and anti-mainstream liaison, even to the temptation to extra-marital involvement.
Do principles apply here? Do laws and rules of proper conduct for humans apply here? Are all born equal, mate equal, and die equal? Are principles, laws, rules mere obstructions in the way of human desire? Should the human spirit be totally free to choose the path living humans wish to follow. Are constraints of society outmoded, impractical, cruel, restrictive, even oppressive to the free soul?
Should not each child, on attaining adulthood (or even before then, on achieving puberty), be released from all bonds, and be at full liberty to pursue its own inclinations, interests, desires, goals, ambitions, whimsicalities, ends, notwithstanding (or in defiance of) all community mores?
The loquacious theoretical freedom fighter will certainly say so.
Looking around, Brahmin girls marrying Brahmin boys seems to be the rare exception, rather than the normal case.
A close friend of mine, whose father was a principal of a Sanskrit school, sent his only child, a daughter, for university education to France. There, she met and quickly married a white Christian, and produced a child within a year of marriage. In the free and easy pattern of Western life, the husband met a white girl, made her pregnant, and brought her home. The marriage broke up, and daughter and her child returned home.
Another friend, qualified in Madras as a medical doctor, and working as a noted anaesthetist in a major hospital overseas, sent his daughter to Virginia, USA for post-graduate studies. She met a Dutch citizen, a black negro native-cultist from North Africa, underwent a registry marriage, and disappeared into Holland. Curiously, after her well-insured father died, leaving a sizeable fortune and a bungalow, she came home to take her mother to live with her in Holland (and be fulltime unpaid maid looking after her three black daughters).
A third man, a far relative, sent his daughter to Northern Ireland for MSc in Pharmacy. There she fell for a Chinese Christian "businessman", much older and with no post-school education. She registered her civil marriage, and returned with him to his home country of Singapore. Both the girl's family and the man's family rejected the couple. They tried living together in a small luxury flat near the seaside (bought in joint names but paid for by her), but the union broke up a few months later due to incompatibility. They had no children.
The orthodox view of all this would contradict the modern trend.
If one consults the "Manu-smruthi", the classical text on the subject, one would find in Chapter 10, under the heading "Prathiloma-jaathi", in slokam 12, the authoritative pronouncement:-
shoodraadaayogavaha kshaththaa chandaalaschaadhamo nrunaam
vaishya-raajanya vipraasu jaayanthe varnasangaraaha
Meaning, inter alia -- the child born of a shoodran and a Braahmana woman is lowest among humankind, and is called "chandaala". Such births (born our of men of lower varnam uniting with women of higher varnam) are "varna-sanggaram" (meaning a misfortune, a calamity).
Applying the smruthi to the given facts, Madam Mala Ashok's husband is (forgive me for the application) a chandaala. So is her daughter, despite the fact that she herself belongs to the Braahmana varna. The intended groom is a Naidu, of the Shudra varna.
THERE ARE NO VEDIC OR SHAASTHRIC RITUALS (that I know of) FOR A CHANDAALA MARRYING A SHUDRA.
It might well be that, in these Kali Yuga days, unprincipled (or uneducated) shaasthrigals, eager to make a quick buck (or quick rupee), might concoct some mumbo-jumbo mumblings and gestures, and then say the couple are married. I have witnessed such puzzling performances, even in normally respectable temples.
But when I try to query the officiating shaasthrigals after the event, they just shrug their shoulders, pocket the fat fees and generous gifts, such as silver thattu-thaambaalams, silver chombus, silver pancha-paathrfa-uddaranis, pattu veshtis, dakshinai and so on, and claim they were only carrying out the "yajamaanan" 's wishes. No discussion about the propriety or even appropriateness of the rites just concluded. "Avar kitte kelungo" is the stock response.
These folks in kudumi even "marry" local girls (for a fat fee) to visiting white tourists.
"Request you all to bless them (Naidu boy and her daughter in their forthcoming union on 24 March 2017) as i am sentimental and worried," says Madam Mala Ashok. The event took place three days ago at "pampady near palakkad".
Sorry, couldn't do that. Was attending Veda class, refining study of Ashvamedham and other subjects with other mature pupils.
S Narayanaswamy Iyer