Women in intercaste/faith marriages more likely to face violence from their husbands

What is tragic about the Shraddha case is the fact that she ended up in an abusive relationship by her own choice, unlike many women who do so without any agency. Are own-choice relationships more likely to end up turning abusive? Because there is no systematic data on own-choice and arranged marriages in India, this question cannot be proved or disproved statistically. However, NFHS data does allow us to look at the likelihood of women who face violence from their husbands in marriages that are inter/intra caste/religious. Given the social practice of endogamy in India, it is reasonable to assume that almost all inter religious/caste marriages are own-choice relationships. Sorting out NFHS data on this basis shows that women in inter-religious/caste marriages are more likely to face violence from their husbands.

To be sure, one should be careful in mechanically reading the headline numbers given in the chart below. Because inter-caste and inter-religious marriages are very small in number, they are likely to generate higher error margins in any cross-tabulation on the unit-level data. This is an additional source of higher error in calculating such ratios because only a small share of women in the overall NFHS sample responded to the question of facing violence by their husbands as was discussed in an earlier story. Finally, this could also be an instance where correlation is not causation.