Romeo and Juliet is in some ways the most subversive of all Shakespeare’s plays. The plot seems hackneyed to us now, but that is because of the immense revolution in perspective that separates us from Shakespeare’s day. We believe marriage is something that is made by the relationship between two individuals, not their families, their tribes, or their religious authorities. All these outsiders are involved in the relationship, and their traditions and their habits of thought will of course affect it. But none has the right of veto over it. Consenting adults must choose, wisely or unwisely, to marry whom they will.
There are still many societies and parts of many religions where the attitudes of the Montagues and the Capulets are entirely comprehensible. In the old patriarchal order men were not free to marry against the interests of their family and women were very much less free: they were treated as property.
Marriages were arranged in the interests of the family or community – choosing a partner was too important a step to be left to chance. Nowhere are these archaic prejudices clearer than in some attitudes towards interfaith union. The rising tides of religious fundamentalism tend towards both the exclusion of outsiders and the subordination of women.
The most recent display of these attitudes comes from the heart of England, where a group of 50 protesters, equipped if not armed with ceremonial knives, disrupted a wedding in a Sikh temple between a Sikh woman and her chosen Hindu groom. The protesters justified their action with reference to supposed holy words. In particular, their Facebook page spews views of Sikh exceptionalism such as: “We must strive to recognise how blessed we are to be born into Sikh families … a Sikh gives his daughter in marriage to another Sikh.” They contend that holy men have portrayed “giving a daughter to a non-Sikh” as a crime comparable to infanticide.
Obviously the great majority of Sikhs in this country would not accept such an interpretation. But dressing such arguments up as a point of theology just won’t do. What’s mistaken here is not so much the view of divine commands as the view of humanity. A daughter is not a piece of property, to be given by her father to another man. It is her human right not to be treated as such.
It would be unfair to single out Sikhism as a particularly intolerant or patriarchal religion in the UK. There are fundamentalist and patriarchal interpretations of all the world religions. There are some Muslim clerics – even in Britain – who condemn marriages between Shia and Sunni Muslims, let alone between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Roman Catholic church, within living memory, made it as difficult as possible to marry a Protestant, and insisted that the children of any such marriage be brought up as Catholics, which caused considerable distress within many families. Some Protestant sects are just as exclusive; a strain of Orthodox Judaism regards “marrying out” as something akin to a catastrophe.
This is not to condemn these religions, because they all include powerful progressive forces fighting for freedom and individual rights. Just as Shakespeare speaks to the whole of humanity, the freedom to marry for love is something that enriches men and women alike, and all the societies they live in.
