Patriarchy and Cultural Legitimacy.
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The legal cases of Jawala Singh/Julio Jubala and Don Sing highlight how patriarchal norms and racial biases were deeply rooted in early 20th-century American legal systems. These cases highlight the complexities of how patriarchal structures within Western and South Asian contexts intersected, sometimes working against one another, to determine the legitimacy of marriages and moral standing in court.
In the case of Jawala Singh/Julio Jubala , the core issue revolved around determining the legitimacy of two marriages : Jawala’s earlier "Hindu marriage" to Nami Singh in India, and his subsequent "Christian marriage" to "Soledad Garcia" in the United States. Soledad’s attorneys strategically used the argument that Hindu marriage, with its practices of child marriage and polygamy, was fundamentally at odds with American values of Christian monogamous marriage. They argued that Nami’s marriage to Jawala, which occurred when they were children, was "repugnant to the established public policy" of New Mexico (Shah, p. 124). This argument reflected larger societal beliefs that viewed non-Western cultural practices as inferior or deviant, reinforcing the idea that only Western norms of marriage were legitimate.
The court, swayed by these arguments, ruled in favor of Soledad despite the fact that there was overwhelming testimony supporting the legality of Nami’s marriage to Jawala under Indian law. Judge McGhee, in his 1934 ruling, acknowledged that "the testimony is overwhelming that the claimant, Nami Singh, was lawfully married to the deceased in India" (Shah, p. 123). However, the broader principle of monogamy, as framed within Christian moral frameworks, took precedence. The decision reflected the patriarchal and racial hierarchies of the time, as it discredited Nami’s legitimate claims in favor of a marriage that aligned with Western, Christian values. This demonstrates how patriarchal structures within the legal system worked to uphold the dominance of Western norms over other cultural traditions, positioning Christian marriage as morally superior while discrediting non-Western practices such as Hindu marriage.
In Don Sing’s case, P. L. Verma , serving as his defense attorney, took a different approach. Rather than dismissing Hindu marriage as deviant, Verma used it as a means to construct a defense based on "moral respectability". Don Sing had been accused of sodomy, and Verma argued that as a married man, Sing was unlikely to engage in such behavior. Verma emphasized that sodomy was "a great and unnatural sin among Hindoos" and that "married men do not like things like that" (Shah, p. 127). In this way, Verma used the concept of Hindu marriage to suggest that Sing’s status as a married man, who adhered to moral and religious norms, made him morally right and incapable of committing the crime.
Verma’s defense relied on the greater patriarchal idea that heterosexual marriage reflected respectability and moral standing on a man. By portraying Hindu marriage as a mechanism of sexual restraint and moral responsibility, Verma reinforced the patriarchal belief that marriage, in any cultural context, served to regulate and legitimize male behavior. This argument, in turn, helped to position Don Sing as a morally responsible individual whose marriage reflected his good character, contrasting him with the image of a deviant or criminal. Verma’s use of "expert knowledge" of Hindu morality ultimately played an important role in securing mercy for Don Sing, as it helped to challenge the radicalized suspicions placed on South Asian men at the time. Both cases highlight how "marriage" was used as a central legal and moral tool in determining whose relationships and behavior were considered legitimate or deviant.