Consanguinal Marriages in Pakistan: A Tradition or A Cutural Politics and Possible Management Measures?

Marriage, a holy bond between a man and a woman, has been celebrated for the longest time in all cultures and religions. Marriage is an indispensable starting point for family life. Pakistani society has always been a very complicated one, with many different castes and ethnic groups. Marriage pattern and marriage considerations vary from caste to caste but overall, is not the person rather the culture which decides when and whom to marry? Preferably marriages are arranged within the kin group. In Pakistan, cross-cousin and parallel-cousin marriages are both common. According to the recent Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), two-thirds of marriages in Pakistan are consanguineous, but the socio-cultural determinants of such marriages remain largely unexplored. In our culture, parents continue to be the prime decision-makers for marriages of both sons and daughters and individual consent is not given much priority. Consanguineous marriages are preferred among many ethnic groups particularly among sayyed, and Rajputs……and many others for a variety of socio-cultural reasons. This paper examines the relative importance of consanguineous marital unions with the help of qualitative anthropological data.