Marriage
During his years in Adyar, Arundale came into contact with the family of Nilakanta Sriram, a fellow Theosophist, and fell in love with his sister, Rukmini. This was considered scandalous: Rukmini belonged to a Hindu Brahmin family orthodox enough to disapprove of Sriram's involvement with the Theosophists, whom they regarded as a bizarre quasi-Christian sect; there were considerations of race, religion and cultural background; and Rukmini was young enough to be Arundale's daughter, being twenty-six years younger than he was.
Notwithstanding these considerations and the uproar raised by Rukmini's family, they were married in 1920, when Rukmini turned sixteen and he was forty-two. Although their marriage was childless, it was a happy one; Arundale mentored Rukmini and encouraged her to develop her interest in classical dance, something that presumably she could have never done as the daughter and wife of socially respectable Brahmins. Rukmini went on to become the first Indian lady of so-called decent birth to dance in public, and was instrumental in rejuvenating the Bharatanatyam style of classical dance by emancipating it from the brothels and the Devadasi community to which it had been confined for many centuries. Accordingly, it is as the husband of Rukmini Devi Arundale that George Arundale is best known in India today.
Read more about this topic: George Arundale
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Why don’t you go home to your wife? I’ll tell you what. I’ll go home to your wife and outside of the improvements, you’ll never know the difference. Pull over to the side of the road there and let me see your marriage license.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, a wisecrack made to Huxley College’s outgoing president (1932)
“Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.”
—Peter De Vries (20th century)
“We lov’d, and we lov’d, as long as we could,
Till our love was lov’d out in us both;
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)