Marriage Migration and Gender through Bhojpuri Folk Songs: A Cultural and Feminist Reading

 

Marriage Migration and Gender through Bhojpuri Folk Songs: A Cultural and Feminist Reading

Ruchika Rai,

Assistant Professor,

Department of English,

VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology,

Hyderabad, India.

 

Abstract: In Bhojpuri-speaking society, marriage and migration are deeply intertwined social phenomena that shape both individual lives and broader cultural dynamics. Marriage, especially for women, often entails permanent migration, where a bride leaves her natal home to live with her husband’s family. This form of marriage migration is not only a rite of passage but also a structuring principle of social organization, kinship, and gendered experience in the region. This paper explores the intersection of gender, migration, and cultural memory through Bhojpuri folk songs sung/performed by women. Marriage migration, a routine yet transformative experience for women in Bhojpuri-speaking region, finds potent expression in the oral and performative traditions of the Bhojpuri region. By analysing selected Bhojpuri songs, the study unveils how Bhojpuri women articulate their emotional, social, and political realities within the deeply patriarchal structure of patrilocal marriage. Engaging with feminist theory and cultural studies, the paper argues that these songs constitute a living archive of women’s migratory experiences, offering both resistance and adaptation to dominant norms.

Keywords: Marriage, Migration, Gender-role, Women’s agency, Patrilocal, Performance

1.    Introduction

Marriage and migration are deeply interconnected social processes that are often shaped by entrenched gender hierarchies. While male migration is frequently recognized in terms of economic opportunity and labour mobility, female migration, especially through marriage is always overlooked or depoliticized. This gendered framing obscures the structural and experiential dimensions of women’s migration, which is often accompanied by reduced autonomy, limited access to rights, and heightened vulnerability to exploitation. In many regions, especially within patriarchal societies, marriage migration reinforces traditional gender roles by relocating women to their husband’s household or region, often severing their ties to natal communities and support networks. This relocation frequently entails a form of emotional and cultural displacement, where women must navigate through new languages, customs, and expectations, often under conditions of surveillance and subordination.

Moreover, the legal invisibility of women who migrate through marriage, particularly in transnational and cross-border contexts, exposes them to precarity, ranging from domestic violence to lack of citizenship rights. Despite the growing prevalence of marriage-driven migration globally, policy frameworks remain largely inadequate in addressing the unique needs and vulnerabilities of migrant brides. This paper explores the intersection of gender, marriage, and migration by critically examining Bhojpuri folksongs, in the context of socio-cultural, legal, and emotional challenges faced by women. It argues for a rethinking of migration narratives to include marriage as a politically and economically significant form of gendered mobility, deserving of greater scholarly and policy attention.

Marriage migration is a foundational social institution in India, particularly in the northern belt where patriarchal kinship systems dominate. According to this patrilocal system women leave their natal homes to reside with their husbands’ family post-marriage. It must be mentioned here that this process is both normalized and emotionally intense. While this migration is often framed as a rite of passage, it entails a significant shift in identity, belonging, and emotional labour of a woman. As aforementioned, the experiences of women in this context do not find any address in the mainstream conversation but Bhojpuri folksongs performed and sung by women offer a rich repository that provide insight into the lived realities of women undergoing such transitions.

These songs are not mere aesthetic expressions; they are repositories of emotional, historical, and cultural memory. These songs, often transmitted orally by women during rituals and communal gatherings, foreground the gendered dimensions of migration and kinship. By attending to the lyrical, performative, and symbolic content of these songs, this paper also argues that Bhojpuri folk traditions function as feminist counter-narratives within the broader patriarchal cultural logic. These songs give voice to the anxieties, loss, and resistance women experience as they navigate their identities in new familial and spatial contexts. Yet, beyond cultural expression, the lived experiences of migrant brides involve real vulnerabilities: limited autonomy, exposure to gender-based violence, lack of legal protections, and economic dependency. For example, the following song recorded and translated by Smita Tewari Jassal (2012):

“This Neem seed was a spirited one, beloved.

When the Neem seed began to grow,

Father-in-law was my protector.

When the Neem seed began to fruit,

Senior brother-in-law became my caretaker.

When the Neem seed began to ripen,

Younger brother-in-law took charge.

When the Neem seed was ready to drop,

Husband dear took control.” (Jassal 8-9)

 

This song uses the metaphor of a Neem seed to trace the changing dynamics of a woman’s life as she matures within her marital home. Known for its resilience and bitter-sweet symbolism, the Neem tree here is a powerful metaphor for the woman’s journey, transformation, and shifting dependencies. The song depicts a woman’s journey through marriage as one of gendered control and emotional neglect. As she matures, different male figures such as father-in-law, brothers-in-law, and finally the husband assert authority over her, symbolizing surveillance and reduced agency. Intimacy with the husband is delayed, highlighting the patriarchal structuring of relationships. The Neem’s bitter yet healing nature reflects the woman’s resilience and strength. Her growth, though continuous, occurs within constraint, emphasizing how marriage migration often entails increasing responsibility but limited autonomy for women within patriarchal Bhojpuri households.

The song also indicates clearly at the existing kinship structures that play a central role in shaping the experience of marriage migration in Bhojpuri speaking society. Through patrilocal norms, women are required to leave their natal homes and integrate into their husband’s kinship network, where they often occupy subordinate positions. Male relatives such as the father-in-law and brothers-in-law exercise authority over different stages of a woman’s life, reflecting how kinship becomes a mechanism of gendered control and surveillance. Emotional displacement is common, as ties to natal kin are severed and replaced with unfamiliar, often hierarchical relationships. Power within the marital household is both gendered and generational, with younger women subject to layered subordination. Belonging is conditional, earned through service, conformity, and fertility. Many Bhojpuri folk songs vividly capture these tensions, revealing how kinship dictates a woman’s autonomy, emotional life, and identity within marriage migration.

2.    Research Methodology

This paper adopts a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates cultural analysis, feminist ethnography, and oral history to examine the intersections of marriage, migration, and gender in Bhojpuri folk songs. The study draws upon both primary oral sources and secondary scholarly literature to critically engage with the socio-cultural and gendered dimensions embedded in Bhojpuri folk traditions. Given the oral and performative nature of these songs, the methodology prioritizes interpretive tools rooted in feminist cultural theory, ethnomusicology, and South Asian gender studies.

The primary data for this research comprises a curated corpus of Bhojpuri folk songs that pertain to life-cycle rituals, particularly marriage ceremonies, and songs sung by women during migration-induced separation from natal to marital homes. These songs have been collected through a combination of field recordings, existing anthologies, digital archives, and personal ethnographic encounters in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Western Bihar. Many of these songs were gathered during field visits to villages in the Bhojpuri-speaking region, where women continue to sing these traditions during seasonal festivals, marriage rituals, and communal gatherings.

In addition to in-person observations, the study also employs archival research to access published and unpublished compilations of Bhojpuri folk songs, such as those recorded by regional cultural scholars and linguistic departments. Oral testimonies and narrative commentaries provided by elder women singers, often custodians of these traditions, are used as interpretive anchors to contextualize the songs within lived experiences of gendered displacement and domestic transitions.

The analysis is guided by a feminist theoretical framework that draws on the works of scholars such as Judith Butler, Diana Fuss and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, particularly in relation to embodied knowledge and performance. Marriage and migration are approached not merely as demographic or social events but as cultural and emotional shifts that deeply impact women’s sense of identity, belongingness, and agency. Through this lens, the paper explores how folk songs encode resistance, resilience, sorrow, and cultural negotiation.

The study also engages with the concept of “embodied voice”, understood as the oral articulation of women’s emotional labour and spatial dislocation, thus situating folk songs as both aesthetic and political expressions. Attention is paid to lyrical structure, metaphors, repetition, tonal patterns, and the use of mythic and domestic imagery, all of which illuminate how the Bhojpuri-speaking woman navigates marriage as a site of both loss and transformation.

As a methodology rooted in feminist ethnography, the paper acknowledges the subjective position of the researcher as both observer and interpreter. Reflexivity is maintained throughout the analysis to avoid objectifying the singing women as mere sources of data. Rather, their voices are positioned as co-constructors of meaning. The performative aspect of the songs such as where and how they are sung, who sings them, and in what social context has been considered seriously as part of the interpretive strategy. Songs are not isolated texts but are viewed within the performative matrix of rituals, domestic labour, and communal interaction.

The use of thick description helps in narrating the experiential and affective dimensions of these performances. By paying close attention to bodily gestures, tone of voice, the timing of performance, and the gendered spaces (kitchen, courtyard, rice field) where songs are rendered, the paper treats performance as a key epistemological mode through which gendered knowledge is communicated and preserved.

3.    Theoretical Framework

This paper is situated within feminist cultural theory, with a particular focus on the debates around gender performance and essentialism as they manifest in Bhojpuri folk traditions. The paper critically examines how Bhojpuri women’s folk songs, especially those related to marriage and migration because these songs perform and potentially disrupt socially constructed ideas of womanhood. Central to this framework are the theoretical contributions of Judith Butler, and Diana Fuss, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, whose works interrogate the construction of gender, the risks of essentialism, and the importance of situated knowledges.

These songs, sung predominantly by women in the context of domestic rituals, agricultural labour, and marriage ceremonies, offer insight into how gender is not a natural but rather a set of reiterated cultural performances. At the same time, the tradition often invokes deeply essentialist notions of femininity, associating women with emotion, sacrifice, and domesticity which raises important questions about the role of folk culture in either reinforcing or destabilizing dominant gender ideologies.

3.1 Gender Performativity: Judith Butler

Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, as articulated in Gender Trouble (1990), is foundational to this study. Butler argues that gender is not an innate identity or essence, but rather a stylized repetition of acts that creates the illusion of stable gender identity. These repeated acts are governed by social norms and expectations. Within this framework, Bhojpuri folk songs can be read as gendered performances that both reflect and enact the cultural norms surrounding femininity, marriage, and migration.

In Bhojpuri culture, women are often expected to embody roles such as the obedient daughter, the sacrificial bride, or the devoted wife. These identities are performed and reiterated through song lyrics, melodic patterns, and the contexts in which these songs are sung such as during marriage rituals, farewells (bidaai), and everyday domestic labour. The performance of these songs thus becomes a ritualized affirmation of gender roles. However, in their repetition, cracks often appear. Laments about marital suffering, ironic verses about in-laws, or nostalgic invocations of natal homes subtly question or resist the very roles they appear to affirm.

The songs, then, are performative in Butler’s sense: they do not merely describe gendered experiences but constitute gendered subjectivities through their performance. They are also potential sites of slippage, where dominant scripts can be parodied, resisted, or undone.

 

3.2 Feminist Critique of Essentialism: Diana Fuss

While performance theory allows for a dynamic view of gender as constructed and contingent, it must be held in tension with the enduring power of essentialist discourses: the belief that women possess inherent, biologically-determined characteristics. In this context, Diana Fuss’s seminal text Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (1989) is particularly relevant. Fuss argues that essentialism is not merely a false claim about gender or identity but it is a discursive strategy that feminists must navigate carefully, as it can both enable and constrain political and cultural representation.

Bhojpuri folk songs often draw on essentialist imagery: women are likened to rivers, earth, and trees which are basically the symbols of fertility, patience, and rootedness. These metaphors naturalize women’s association with caregiving, endurance, and emotional sensitivity. Fuss warns that such naturalizing metaphors risk collapsing the social into the biological, reinforcing the idea that women’s roles are timeless, apolitical, and unchanging.

Yet, as Fuss also acknowledges, essentialism is not always regressive; it can serve strategic purposes in certain cultural contexts. In Bhojpuri oral traditions, for instance, evoking the essential suffering of women may serve as a culturally legible form of critique which is a way for women to articulate pain and injustice in a symbolic language that resonates within their communities. This ambivalence is central to the current study: Bhojpuri songs simultaneously rely on essentialist constructions of womanhood and open space for gendered critique through performance. This paper argues that Bhojpuri folk songs are located at the intersection of performance and essentialism, where women’s identities are simultaneously constructed through social acts and constrained by inherited symbolic systems. The repeated singing of songs that portray the woman as a sacrificial figure reinforces the gender normativity of the community. However, these songs also enable women to speak from within those norms, subtly bending or reshaping them in the process.

Songs of migration and separation, for example, often express longing for the maternal home, critique the coldness of the husband’s family, or yearn for emotional recognition but also asserting emotional agency. In this sense, gender performance becomes not only an act of social compliance but also a mode of articulation, a way of making visible the contradictions embedded in traditional gender roles.

3.3 Situated Critique: Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Finally, this framework is informed by Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s critique of universalist feminist narratives, which erase cultural specificity in favour of abstract categories like “Third World woman.” Mohanty urges scholars to attend to how women are constructed differently across local, historical, and linguistic contexts. Bhojpuri folk songs, while gendered, are also shaped by caste, class, and region. The women who sing them are not passive bearers of tradition but active agents crafting and transmitting cultural memory. Their performance of gender must be understood as embedded in the material realities of rural North Indian life, where marriage and migration are structured by patriarchy, economic necessity, and kinship codes.

4.    Marriage Rules: Patrilocality and Woman’s Agency

In Bhojpuri-speaking patriarchal societies marriage is governed by a set of cultural rules that reinforce gendered power dynamics. Patrilocality is one of those most dominant rules which expect the woman to leave her natal home and move to her husband’s household post marriage. This spatial relocation is not merely a physical movement but a symbolic and social reorientation as well which marks formal integration of the woman into her husband’s kinship group. Patrilocality reinforces the authority of the husband’s family over the bride and her family. And it often results in the severance or weakening of the bride’s ties to her natal kin, emotional support systems, and familiar cultural practices.

The consequence of patrilocality is a significant reduction in the woman’s agency. Upon entering the marital home, she is placed at the lowest rung of the familial hierarchy. She is expected to conform to the values, routines, and expectations of her in-laws. Her everyday life including mobility, labour, social interactions, and even bodily autonomy is frequently regulated by older family members, male kin, mother-in-law and sister-in-law. These norms reduce the scope of her decision-making power and independence.

Despite these constraints, women often find subtle ways to assert agency. Through emotional resilience, cultural expression like Bhojpuri folk songs, and strategic relationships within the household, many navigate their limited autonomy creatively. Bhojpuri folk songs, for instance, often express veiled resistance or sorrow, serving as emotional outlets and forms of indirect critique. Such as the following song:

“Just a handful of wheat, mother-in-law gave to grind.

Some was ground into flour, the rest was lost.

First, I ground and then I baked the bread.

Mother-in-law demanded bread and sister-in-law just abused.

All day long I search for some leftover crumbs.

I’ll bear mother-in-law’s oppression and sister-in-law’s abuse.

But for husband’s wrath, into the Yamuna, I’ll throw myself.”(Jassal78)

 

This song captures a married woman’s struggles within a patriarchal household. Despite diligently performing domestic duties like grinding wheat and baking bread, she faces constant criticism and emotional neglect from her in-laws. Her mother-in-law is authoritative, her sister-in-law abuses her, and she is left searching for crumbs, both literal and emotional. Though she endures family oppression but her husband’s anger is unbearable. Even the thought of it makes her to think of ending her life in the Yamuna.

This song deals with themes of gendered labour, emotional isolation, and the deep psychological toll of domestic abuse, offering a stark critique of women’s lived realities in traditional family structures. It also reflects upon the rule of patrilocality that institutionalizes a form of gendered migration where the woman’s agency is systematically curtailed.  It also narrates about how this structure ensures the continuity of patriarchal kinship systems, and produces a deeply gendered experience of displacement and adjustment that shapes the emotional and social realities of married women. This kind of narratives does not find an expression/mention in the mainstream discussion about gendered experiences post-marriage in Bhojpuri society. But Bhojpuri folksongs become a medium of expression in a socially respectful manner.

Resonating the same idea in the context of women’s new residence post-marriage, Rajni Palriwala and Patricia Uberoi (2008) write that

“Rules of post-marital residence do not generally find a place in discussions of the bargaining that decides which partner migrates and which partner follows… Nor, given the ubiquity of the ‘male breadwinner’ model,” that is “deemed relevant in understanding the disavowal of women’s work participation embedded in the category of ‘marriage migration’.” (29)

They further suggest that these gendered consequences of the residence pattern after marriage become even more pronounced when patri(viri)local residence is coupled with kinship systems based on patrilineal descent, inheritance, and succession. Together, these practices form a patriarchal kinship structure in the anthropological sense that systematically upholds and legitimizes the authority of older men over both women and younger men within the family (29).

According to Palriwala and Uberoi though marriage migration is considered natural but we must also consider its significant emotional, social, and economic consequences. This migration is not only personal but also shaped by broader discourses of modernity, family, class, and nationhood. Families often view marriage migration as a means to enhance status, secure mobility, and align with national or global aspirations. While women are central to these processes, their experiences are often overlooked. The act of leaving their natal home, adjusting to new kinship networks, and conforming to unfamiliar customs can lead to a sense of displacement. Although marriage migration offers some women opportunities for economic security and autonomy, it also reinforces traditional gender roles and hierarchies. (29-34)

Bhojpuri folksongs often present bleak reality of young women in their conjugal house as poignant theme. They highlight the emotional isolation, rigid hierarchies, and lack of agency. These songs reflect how not only the women, but also their natal families, are positioned lower in social status, reinforcing patriarchal norms and power structures across both kinship networks. Such as depicted in the following song:

“Mother-in-law, when my brother comes visiting, you know,

Mother-in-law, what shall I cook for the meal?

‘‘There’s plenty of spoilt kodon grain in the loft,

Daughter-in law, some salad leaves in the sandy field.’’

Mother-in-law, what shall I cook for the meal?

Mother-in-law, coarse rice I’ll cook

And ground Moong dal.

When husband and brother-in-law sat together, you know,

O Rama, brother’s tears started to roll.

‘‘Sister dear, such hardship has befallen you.

Sister, your life is so difficult.’’

‘‘My hardships, brother, to our mother don’t tell.

Mother seated on the cot spinning, you know,

Tossing aside the spinning wheel, will burst into tears, you know.

Brother, don’t tell of my hardships to sister.

Brother! hearing of my hardships, sister will refuse to go to her conjugal home.

Brother, don’t tell of my hardships to sister-in-law.

On hearing them, sister-in-law will start to weep.’’ ’’ (Jassal 45-46)

Smita Tewari Jassal proposes that this song highlights the emotional challenges women face in their marital homes. The mother-in-law’s lack of respect for the bride’s brother is coupled with her demands for specific preparations of the food which are nonedible. It subtly refers to cultural restrictions on visits from the bride’s natal family. Denying customary hospitality becomes a way to discourage such visits, reinforcing the bride’s isolation. The song cautions even brothers that they may not be welcomed warmly in their sister’s marital home. Through this, the song encourages reflection on the bride’s emotional state after her brother’s ritual visit is met with coldness and deliberate disregard. (46) The separation from natal kin plays a crucial role in limiting or enabling agency. The more isolated a woman is from her natal family, the more vulnerable her position becomes within the marital household.

5.    Conjugal Absence, and the Poetics of Protest

When it comes to weakening the agency or position of the bride/women in the marital household the absence of husband and his income as well play a decisive role. As argued earlier, marriage migration creates a significant socio-emotional rupture. It is not merely spatial but also symbolic of a shift in identity and social belonging. What exacerbates the problem sometimes is the absence of the husband in the household. Migration of men, in the search of better livelihood, is common practice in Bhojpuri speaking region. In that process, they leave their families and brides behind. Consequently, their brides, relocated to an unfamiliar household, frequently experiences their husband’s physical absence, making them doubly displaced, emotionally from their parental home, and relationally from their conjugal partner.

Ruchika Rai, in her chapter, Migration as History and Culture through Bhojpuri Folksongs (2022) notes that economic hardship often compels men to migrate in search of work, leaving behind their families, most significantly, their wives. Among those who are affected by his absence is the wife because she bears the deepest emotional and social toll. Her husband’s absence subjects her to prolonged loneliness and increases her vulnerability to domestic oppression or even sexual exploitation. Wife’s social standing within the household also becomes closely tied to her husband’s income. If he sends home substantial earnings, she is treated with respect; otherwise, she is often reduced to the status of a servant. Interestingly, in cases of domestic mistreatment, it is frequently the mother-in-law and sisters-in-law who emerge as primary aggressors. This dynamic likely arises from the wife’s marginal position within the household where she is seen as an outsider and is connected to the family solely through her husband. Whereas, his female relatives are considered inherent members of the familial structure. (131) Rai substantiates the same with the help of a song: 

“I remember my husband I cry a lot 

I remember my husband

Mother and sister-in-law compel me to bake loaves of bread

I throw away utensils I cry a lot

I remember my husband Mother and sister-in-law compel me to carry water

I throw away the pot I cry a lot

I remember my husband

Mother and sister-in-law compel me to sleep in the bed

I throw away the pillow I cry a lot

I remember my husband.” (Jassal 132)

It is evident that the song powerfully conveys the emotional world of a woman left behind in the absence of her husband. Its repetitive structure, “I remember my husband, I cry a lot”, serves as a refrain that underscores the depth of her sorrow and longing. Each note in the song juxtaposes her remembrance of her husband with the oppressive demands of her marital household, particularly from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who compel her to perform domestic tasks: baking bread, fetching water, and even fulfilling marital expectations such as sleeping on a marital bed. But the song also mentions about her acts of defiance such as throwing away utensils, the water pot, and the pillow. These acts symbolize her resistance to both emotional coercion and patriarchal domesticity. These are not merely tantrums or signs of helplessness; they are embodied protests against a structure that forces her into servitude and denies her emotional fulfillment. Her grief is not passive; it becomes a form of agency, expressed through refusal. The repetition of chores reflects the mundane, gendered labour expected of women, but the refusal to comply when emotionally overwhelmed by longing suggests that domestic labour is not emotionally neutral. In fact, it is deeply shaped by relationships and the woman’s position within the family. Ultimately, the song becomes a lyrical protest: it gives voice to the emotional and physical burdens of a woman caught between domesticity and belongingness, turning everyday actions into sites of resistance, memory, and emotional agency.

Therefore, Bhojpuri songs often become a subtle site of agency, where the women articulate their desires, laments, frustrations, and even resistance to patriarchal expectations. Through metaphor, repetition, and emotional intensity, these songs allow women to voice their inner lives in ways that are socially permissible yet subversive. The women’s lament is thus not just an expression of sorrow but a performative assertion of her presence, needs, and critique of the structures that marginalize her. Rai affirms this in another paper Bhojpuri work songs: Gender, Genre and Work Spaces through Embodiment Performances (2024). She emphasizes that while women’s songs often centre on domestic experiences, they also serve as subtle critiques of patriarchal authority by drawing attention to the burdens imposed on women by societal norms. Laments about marital hardships or the weight of domestic responsibilities can be read as implicit challenges to the gendered power structures that define women’s roles. Yet, the portrayal of power relations within these songs is rarely simplistic. There are many instances when women incorporate humour, irony, and satire to undermine traditional gender expectations and question patriarchal dominance. These subversive strategies reveal that Bhojpuri folk songs are not passive reproductions of cultural norms, but rather dynamic spaces of cultural contestation, where gender and power are actively negotiated and reimagined. (155)

6.    Cultural Discourse and Politics of Essential Ideas

In the context of marriage and migration the Bhojpuri folksongs can serve as rich cultural texts that circulate essential ideas about gender, identity, and social roles. These songs often portray womanhood as inherently emotional, sacrificial, and adaptable, framing migration from the natal to the marital home as a woman’s natural fate. Through repetitive motifs of longing, obedience, and endurance, the songs articulate what Diana Fuss (1989) calls an essentialist understanding of identity, where gender roles appear biologically ordained rather than culturally constructed (2). The emotional labour of women expressed in laments for leaving their maternal homes or in their dutiful silence in marital households is normalized as authentic feminine experience, thus reinforcing what Fuss critiques as the assumption that ‘attributes of a group... are fixed and determined by nature’ (2). As oral traditions, these songs operate as cultural discourse which shapes and sustains the hegemonic gender ideologies under the guise of tradition and authenticity. Rather than mere reflections of social reality, these songs are performative acts that help constitute women’s identities within patriarchal structures.

For example, the following song:

“When I just came to my marital home, to my marital home,

My love began advising me that Mother is very powerful and proud.

She measured out just a spoonful of rice, just a spoonful of lentils she measured out.

A spoonful of flour, just a pinch of salt, she handed me and one shout she gave,

‘‘Daughter-in-law, this is the ration we have, prepare and feed them all.’’

Sixteen men, there are here, seventeen women

Twenty children there are, and dogs and cats,

There are the village ploughmen. ‘‘Daughter-in-law, so many people are there. Prepare, and feed them all!’’” (Jassal 77)

 

In the song, the daughter-in-law is not just asked but ‘ordered’ to feed an entire household, including sixteen men, seventeen women, twenty children, and animals with only a meagre ration and without acknowledging her own needs. This expectation rests on the naturalized idea that women, by virtue of their gender, are infinitely nurturing, self-sacrificing, and capable of absorbing emotional and physical labour without any protest. The mother-in-law’s command, “Prepare, and feed them all” is not merely a domestic instruction; it is a performative act that inscribes the daughter-in-law into her socially constructed gender role. Fuss’s critique accentuates how the song does not just represent reality; in fact, it produces and sustains a discourse where patriarchal roles are normalized. The daughter-in-law’s silence or endurance in such songs is often read as virtue, but critically, it reveals how cultural texts function to legitimize essentialist gender expectations under the guise of tradition. The oral form itself which is passed from woman to woman, reinforces these roles. But simultaneously they also offer subtle commentary on their burdens and create a complex terrain of both compliance and critique.

Similarly, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity (1990), which challenges the idea of gender as a fixed or inherent identity, and suggests that gender is formed through repeated social actions, offers a useful lens for understanding gender and feminine through Bhojpuri folksongs. These folksongs, especially those focused on the figure of the daughter-in-law, offer a striking example of how gender roles are not only reflected but performed and reinforced through cultural discourse. Songs that depict newlywed women in their marital households, enduring separation from natal kin, or silently absorbing verbal abuse do not simply narrate gendered experiences but they stage them. As Butler writes, “gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame” (43). In this sense, Bhojpuri songs function as performative scripts that instruct women on how to inhabit their roles through acts of emotional labour, obedience, and domestic productivity. The refrain-like repetition of suffering, service, and sacrifice in these songs consolidates femininity as something one does, rather than something one is. These performances are often internalized and reproduced by women themselves, highlighting Butler’s point that gender is not merely imposed from above but sustained through daily, embodied acts. Thus, Bhojpuri folksongs of women serve not only as cultural archives of tradition but also as technologies of gender, through which femininity is ritualized, conceptualized, circulated, and policed.

Another valuable perspective for understanding gender, gender performance, and femininity in Bhojpuri society is through the lens of unpaid (reproductive) labour. In 2004, Sylvia Federici politicized unpaid domestic labour by revealing how women’s household work often framed as love or duty, underpins both capitalist economies and patriarchal social systems (98-99). In the context of Bhojpuri folksongs, this insight becomes particularly relevant. These songs frequently depict the daughter-in-law toiling in the kitchen, managing large families with scarce resources, yet receiving little recognition. In the aforementioned song, the mother-in-law’s command to cook for so many with so little is not only an assertion of her authority but also a reflection of how she has internalized her role as an enforcer of patriarchal discipline and bride’s labour is shown as an expected, almost natural, part of her role within the household. Federici’s analysis, here, supports how this portrayal masks the economic and emotional value of such work. But the song rather than romanticizing or normalizing domestic labour, makes the devaluation visible and well documented in oral tradition. It underlines a system in which women’s unpaid contributions are essential to social reproduction but remain unacknowledged. It exposes the cruelty of expectations that are placed on women. Therefore, this song can be read as a testimony of women’s unpaid labour, domestic servitude, and intergenerational power dynamics under patriarchal formations. It resists romanticized depictions of marriage and instead foregrounds the exploitative conditions under which reproductive labour is extracted.

7.    Challenging Universalist Feminist Narratives

According to Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003) feminists must situate women’s experiences within their material contexts, recognizing the ways in which unpaid domestic labour sustains social life. She articulates that “women’s work, especially in the home and family, is often not categorized as work precisely because it is essentialized as women’s ‘natural’ function.” (142). In the socio-cultural fabric of rural Bhojpuri-speaking regions, women’s labour is central to the reproduction of family, community, and tradition. Yet, much of this labour which is emotional, domestic, and reproductive, remains structurally invisible and culturally naturalized. Everyday acts such as cooking, caregiving, and emotionally supporting family members are seldom acknowledged as “work” in economic or political terms, despite being essential to the survival of the household. In Bhojpuri folk traditions, this invisible labour often finds articulation through oral and ritual performance, especially in women’s songs sung during life-cycle transitions such as marriage. Such as the following song:

“With a stoic heart she goes

Where there’s no father no mother, no real brother.

There, to show the glory of the natal home she goes.

With a stoic heart she goes.

Where there isn’t a shop, a market or bazaar,

There too, the daily meal must be prepared.

With a stoic heart she goes,

Where Ganga, Jamuna, and the Triveni flow.

There, every day is a pilgrimage to be made.” (Jassal 122)

 

This song poignantly captures the emotional and cultural dimensions of a woman’s transition from her natal home to her marital household. On the surface, it reads as an affirmation of women’s resilience and dutifulness, but when read through Mohanty’s postcolonial feminist lens, the song reveals deeper structures of gendered labour, symbolic representation, and cultural essentialism, which construct the woman as both a bearer of tradition and a subject of patriarchal control. Mohanty critiques the way Western feminist discourses have often essentialized “Third World women” as universally oppressed and passive victims, devoid of agency and historical specificity. In her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” she argues that he production of the ‘Third World woman’ as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (Western) feminist texts leads to the construction of an ‘average Third World woman’ who leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (sexually constrained) and her being ‘Third World’ (ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.) (18-22). Mohanty’s insight compels us not to reduce the female subject in this song to a flat figure of suffering. Instead, we must read her as a historically situated, culturally embedded subject, whose actions although shaped by patriarchy, reflect agency, endurance, and the performance of social and emotional labour.

 

For example, the line “Where there isn’t a shop, a market or bazaar, / There too, the daily meal must be prepared” in the song points to the continuity of gendered labour, irrespective of geography or economic structure. It affirms the expectations placed on women to reproduce domestic life under all circumstances. Even in places devoid of market infrastructure, the woman is expected to maintain household norms, cook meals, and fulfill her role as caretaker. This “naturalization” of labour is precisely what Mohanty critiques: women are not born into these roles; they are produced through ideological and cultural institutions, including folk songs.

 

Importantly, the woman in the song does not protest this expectation but her silent endurance and the communal acknowledgment of her labour raise critical questions. Is the act of preparing food in absence of a market a symbol of resilience, or of isolation? Is her labour sanctified, or is it invisible? Mohanty's framework helps us see how such depictions simultaneously celebrate and exploit women’s capacity to labour and endure.

 

The line “With a stoic heart she goes” is repeated throughout the song, emphasizing the emotional discipline expected of women in the face of marital migration. In traditional Bhojpuri society, marriage often involves the literal and symbolic removal of the woman from her natal environment, where love, familiarity, and kinship are replaced by duty, restraint, and unfamiliar social codes. From Mohanty’s perspective, this displacement is not simply personal it is also structural and political. The woman’s movement reflects a gendered mode of migration, often naturalized through ritual, song, and symbolism. However, instead of romanticizing stoicism as a feminine virtue, Mohanty would encourage us to see how cultural practices use emotional labour to normalize women’s dislocation and embed patriarchal expectations within affective expressions. The woman’s silence, her controlled emotions, and her ritual departure all function to preserve social order. And yet, through the act of voicing this journey in song, the community acknowledges the violence of separation. The woman is not speechless, she sings, or is sung about, and in that very act there lies a form of gendered articulation that troubles her objectification.

 

While the woman in the song does not overtly challenge her condition, her stoicism, her labour, and her symbolic role are made visible and shared through song. According to Mohanty, acknowledging the specificity of her experience including caste, region, language, and cultural norms are crucial. She is not the monolithic “Third World woman,” but a subject shaped by particular relations of power, whose voice though mediated, offers insight into the gendered structure of marriage and migration in Bhojpuri society. Thus, Bhojpuri folksongs can be understood as culturally embedded texts that do not merely have aesthetic value. They also serve as repositories of historical memory, social organization, and gendered experience. Rather than existing as passive remnants of tradition, these songs function as dynamic embodiments of collective memory and social dialogue, especially for women, whose voices are frequently marginalized or excluded from dominant historical and literary narratives.

8.    Conclusion: Mapping Gendered Memory of Marriage Migration

Intertwined themes of marriage, migration, and gender within the Bhojpuri cultural landscape, this paper has argued and analysed that Bhojpuri folk songs are dynamic cultural texts that mediate within the socio-cultural fabric of Bhojpuri-speaking communities. These songs emerge as powerful narrative spaces where Bhojpuri women articulate their lived experiences, emotional histories, and sociocultural negotiations. Grounded in the material and emotional realities of women’s lives, the songs form a genre of embodied memory and affective resistance.

The act of marriage which is often romanticized or idealized in patriarchal discourse is shown through these songs to be a moment of rupture and emotional dislocation for women. The songs express the anxieties, fears, and sorrows that women face when they are uprooted from familiar spaces and are thrust into unknown domestic and social environments. Migration, whether it is the movement of women due to marriage or the movement of men for economic labour, is revealed to be a gendered experience, where it is the women who disproportionately bear the emotional and social burdens of such transitions.

These songs serve as a crucial site of emotional articulation and cultural commentary. Sung primarily by women these songs allow for an uninhibited expression of grief, longing, criticism of in-laws, and commentary on gendered labour. They give voice to the affective experiences of women who are often silenced in formal spaces. Through a feminist lens, these songs disrupt the myth of the passive woman by highlighting forms of subtle resistance, resilience, and self-expression embedded in oral tradition. The presence of metaphor, allegory, and emotional cadence in these songs indicates a sophisticated understanding of power, kinship, and displacement.

Moreover, these songs function as feminist archives that document the everyday negotiations of gender roles and social expectations. They preserve cultural memory, not in a static or essentialist manner, but through dynamic and affective storytelling. Each performance becomes an act of remembrance, not just of personal sorrow but of collective histories of movement, adaptation, and endurance. In this way, Bhojpuri folk songs are not just artistic expressions but epistemological resources or repositories of knowledge about gendered life-worlds shaped by marriage, migration and patriarchy.

It is interesting to note that how folk traditions, far from being regressive or parochial, are fertile grounds for feminist critique and cultural insight. These songs allow us to reimagine oral traditions as spaces where women not only document their suffering but also actively engage with and sometimes subvert the structures that oppress them. From this point of view, Bhojpuri folk songs become not just cultural artefacts but living, breathing texts that encode the complexities of gender, migration, and memory in their very performance.

Ultimately, these songs challenge us to rethink the boundaries between the personal and the political, the local and the universal, and the oral and the textual. They invite us to see in women’s voices not silence, but a spectrum of affective, ethical, and intellectual engagements with the world.

 

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Jassal, Smita Tewari. Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India. Duke University Press, 2012.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Duke University Press, 2003.

Palriwala, Rajni, and Patricia Uberoi. “Exploring the Links: Gender Issues in Marriage and Migration.” Marriage, Migration and Gender, edited by Rajni Palriwala and Patricia Uberoi, vol. 5, SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2008, pp. 23–62. Women and Migration in Asia. Sage Knowledge, https://doi.org/10.4135/9788132100324.n1.

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---. “Bhojpuri Work Songs: Gender, Genre and Work Spaces Through Embodiment Performances.” Journal of Language, Literature, Social and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, 2024.