Love across Boundaries of Caste and Class

Romances discussed as romantic themes feature a pair of lovers who are by birth social equals. In two of the tales, the hero after falling in love declines in rank, becoming unfit as a marriage partner for the heroine: Majnun goes mad and becomes a destitute beggar, Ranjha works as a cowherd and servant to Hir`s family. Other Nautariks accentuate the transgressive nature of romantic love and bring out the theme of the lover`s self-surrender by situating the lovers in different classes or castes. In these stories, the beloved is ordinarily a princess or daughter of nobility, whereas the lover may be a merchant, an artisan, or other social inferior. It should be mentioned that hypergamy is the normative pattern for marriage in North India, that is, alliance of a groom with a bride whose family is of somewhat lower rank. The transgression inherent in the romantic liaison between the high-born female and lower-born male has two possible outcomes in the Nautanki plays. It may provoke an act of treachery leading to the deaths of both lovers the tragic pattern of earlier narratives or it may lead to an execution threat and a redemptive counter strike by the beloved, followed by marriage a melodrama with a happy ending.

The prototypical love affair between a highly placed female and a beseeching subordinate male is generally thought of as an Islamic legacy, just as the prevalence of unrequited love and the tragic ending are traced to Muslim sensibility and considered anathema to the Hindu mind. Within the body of romantic tales found in the Nautanki literature, however, the tidiness of these distinctions breaks down. Some classic romances like Laila Majnu or Shirin Farhad that end in both lovers` deaths clearly travelled from the Islamic nations to Indo-Pakistan. Others equally tragic tales have roots in the subcontinent and are thought of as the cultural property of a cross-section of communities. Similarly, the high-status beloved is not limited to one particular religious tradition.