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arranged marriage
February 2008 
Arranging Marriage
Barbara Raisbeck
Arranged marriage is an intrinsic part of India’s culture. Families choose their children’s spouse for them, matching compatibility criteria with horoscopes and family status. For the family of the groom, how much dowry the bride brings tops the list of priorities. The more educated the groom, the bigger the dowry demand. Doctors and engineers, and grooms living in America with their increased earning power, are costly commodities.
Most westerners cannot conceive the idea of their parents choosing their marriage partner for them. Making a lifelong commitment with someone that they do not know. But in India, the general thinking is, who better to do the choosing then one’s parents, the ones who know you the best? Loveless nuptials is not considered, love is said to grow after marriage. Love marriages are often felt to be frivolous and fleeting, so are still relatively rare in India, though there are couples that are defying the system and following their heart instead of tradition.
The first time I went to India, in 2000, strangers would come and ask me where I was from, immediately followed by the statement, “Oh, America, where half of all of your marriages end in divorce.” They seemed to derive great satisfaction in highlighting our marriage failures.
While the divorce rate is stirring in India today, many still don’t dare speak of it even if the love after marriage never materialized. Being coerced into the partnership does not offer the freedom to simply leave an abusive or unsatisfying marriage.
Marriage is a monumental step in life, one that asks that we, with certainty, are committed to devote our life to another person in a 'day in, day out', existence. The recommended period of engagement that allows for a slow cultivation offers no guarantee. Many marriages topple under the pressure of expectation, unfulfilled promises, and the faces that emerge after the ‘I do’s’ are said.
It’s in this knowledge that some feel arranged marriages may offer something more substantial than love marriages. While there can be merit in an arranged marriage - some of them work out famously – the issue is one of choice. The freedom to choose, firstly, if one wants to marry, and if so, whom they want to marry.
In a February 2006 issue of National Geographic on the topic of Love, Renu Dinakaran - who thinks that many arranged marriages are acts of “state sanctioned rape” - was interviewed for a segment of the story. She tells how, at the age of 17, she was forced to marry her cousin. She says that she wanted to learn to love her husband, but the more years that passed, the less love she felt for him. It was the movie “Love Story” that convinced Renu that there was more to marriage. This knowing gave rise to bitterness, but it also helped her to move out of a loveless marriage, a courageous step for an Indian wife with two children. Liberating herself of that arrangement allowed love in when she met Anil, who she is happily married to today.
more to follow on arranged marriages…
Access: Public
Thanks for this Barbara.
Yes there are merits in a marriage made with more than “love” in mind because marriage is more than the heat of the first few years of blissful love and when children are introduced it takes on a new shape and keeps transforming throughout a person's life.
But there are ways for people to “scan” for potential mates themselves. There are many matching techiques now such as VortexDNA which allow people to compare alignment of purpose, values and life focus. There are many more looking at personality compatability.
People can make those choices themselves. We have moved on from the time where women were considered mere chattels to be passed on to the highest bidder or family with the best prospects.
Yes western marriage is imperfect because we are imperfect. But i would rather choose and be responsible for my own mistakes than have someone do it for me. Especially my mother!
So i'm entirely in agreement with you on the fact that choice is paramount.
Thanks again for raising awareness of this.
Raf, you are welcome.
Yes, marriage takes on many forms throughout it's incarnation, and is largely shaped by the beliefs and behaviors of the two people in it. It is certainly a spiritual practice to live with someone on a daily basis, to learn how to be in truth and vulnerable.
On the issue of responsibility in choice making, I've posted my next installment that speaks to that issue.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and for your insightful comments Raf. They are much appreciated.
Yes, this is same Ember from Wordpress, I noticed this page and this Zaadz thing looked like one of those platforms (MySpace,facebook etc.) where I am forced to ”Sign Up” in order to leave a comment. Well… anyhow I will get to your post.
I wanted to add my opinion to this arranged marriage thing. In most western societies it is looked upon with great concern and the slogan is ”you gotta marry for love”, not because your mom told you to.
The truth is always deeper than that, especially in the Indian case. Most marriages are arranged because of economic reasons. The marriage does not take place only between boy and girl but two families as well. In India people get married, buy property together, have kids and safely pass on the assets to kids and so on. Also, because people want to marry within their own caste, religion, community etc, so families have the best intelligence for the, let’s say, hottest matches. Mostly, single men and women have the choice to reject the offers and keep rifling through the assortment of possible spouses before them.
When I came to New Zealand to study in University for one year, I got to be friends with quite a few young Indian boys who were about 21. They all loved their new freedom, beers, dates, Western girls etc and enjoyed as much as they could while they were ”studying”. You would think this may have turned them off to the idea of ”arranged marriage” ? No! Couple of them went to India for visit and happily asked their family to ”find them a girl”. Recently two of my Indian acquaintances happily accepted the chosen girls, married them. Both are happily married, and well settled. In fact one of them moved with his wife to Texas!
You see, it’s not really a coercion or a conspiracy, if everyone is in it! As for me, I personally don’t let others make any choice for me, let alone the wife thing. ;-) But still I wrote this comment to give you (and other readers) a perspective of something I observed and learned.