More Active Posts
Front Page
Arranged marriages go high-tech
 |
 11 Comments |
The practice of arranged marriages in Hindu culture may be old-fashioned, but instead of fizzling out with the advent of new technology, the use of cell phones and the Internet has instead made the practice easier.
The practice originated with the Hindu caste system. Parents historically upheld strict boundaries for matches until about the 1960s or 70s, according to Vikas Kamat, whose personal family Web site provides resources on Indian history and culture. The more rigid system of the past did not allow men or women to marry outside their region or native language group, and couples often met for only a few minutes with their families before they were married. Now Indian couples often meet their prospective mates in advance, and they may marry someone in another region or even country. More and more, parents take the preferences of the bride and groom into account.
A 2006 study by a University of Washington researcher found that young people in Bangalore increasingly use cell phones in order to get to know their selected partner. And while classifieds for available brides in local newspapers has been custom for the past few decades, several Web sites now allow parents to search for their children’s future mates online.
Bharatmatrimony.com hails itself as “India’s number one matrimony service provider,” having served over 1 million registered members in its eleven years of existence. Many but not all of the profiles are set up by parents, and most of those that are not include a section for the parents to comment on their son or daughter’s eligibility. The site allows users to search by the usual matchmaking options: location, occupation, age and hobbies, as well as more traditional Indian requirements for a good match: caste, native language and astrology signs.
 |
Topic: Front Page, The World |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: arranged marriage, hinduism, India |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Soul searching
In Fairfax Co., Va. My wife worked with a woman from India. Her family arranged a marriage for her and she went back to India to be married. She must have been too westernized though, because she rejected him and came back to Virginai without him.
Yeah, and then there’s that problematic 3.5% divorce rate.
Actually Chas, it’s my understanding that, very often, either party can veto the arrangement if they feel their parents’ selection doesn’t suit them.
At the company I worked for in Michigan, one of our salesmen was from India, and we occasionally had requests from him to help with sending or receiving photographs by email, because he was arranging a marriage for his son, and wanted to find him a bride in India. For the rest of us in the company it seemed very strange, a practice we associated with cultures not yet exposed to what we think of as modern life. (I have no idea how things turned out with his son - I was laid off, and by the time I was rehired the salesman had left the company.)
3.5% divorce rate: what are the odds if you get divorced in that culture or in a particular caste that you will be able to remarry, especially if you’re a woman?
Your comments reminded me of a paperback book I read some time ago. It was a reading requirement of my granddaughter at the U. of S. Carolina. Called Nectar in A Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. It’s about a peasant woman in India who was married as a child to an old tennant farmer she had never seen. Seems her family just wanted to get rid of her.
She had a hard life.
Nowadays, depending on the family, and especially for Indians living abroad,a divorced Indian might remarry, but his, or especially her, value will have decreased considerably in the eyes of the potential spouse and family. Therefore, they’re likely to marry way “down.” We know a family where the kids grew up here. The son got his white American girlfriend pregnant shortly after high school. They got married, but after a couple of years, the girl couldn’t take being married to the man’s family anymore, and got out. By then, he decided to go the traditional route and married someone arranged by his family. Because of his history, though, his eligibility went way down and he ended up with a woman who is decidedly unattractive and who, no doubt, would never have been able to find a husband in a professional field who would be a good provider because of her appearance. If he didn’t have that history, he would’ve been considered an extremely eligible candidate and would have been able to find a wife who was both very attractive and well-educated. He’s fairly good-looking himself. It sounds so crass, but this is the truth of it.
In India, except in big cities, divorce is almost unheard of, but brides committing suicide or being killed (usually burned in an “accidental” kitchen fire) is not at all unheard of. Traditionally, a woman comes to live in her husband’s home with his family, and she not only has to submit to her husband, but to his parents, grandparents, and even older siblings and in-laws. There’s a good reason God says that “a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.”
Also, in Hindu/Jain culture, if a woman is widowed, especially at a young age, it’s a result of her bad karma and, in many families, she’s pretty much shunned for the rest of her life. I suppose it beats the days before the British outlawed suttee, though, when she was thrown on the husband’s funeral pyre. But even that still goes on, I hear, in remote villages.
I’m not Indian, but my husband is, and he’s the only one in his family living outside of India and the only one whose marriage wasn’t arranged.
Ree,
Thank you for the very informative background! I knew some of that, but find it revealing, and scary. Those who think Christianity holds down women really do not have a clue!
Ree - I hope that young man finds his unattractive wife turns out to be a wonderful wife to him.
There is a couple in my church, from India, who are in an arranged marriage. (Their families were not Hindu, but are Catholic. The couple is Pentecostal now.)
One day I asked the wife if she grew up with any sense of “romance” or “falling in love” (I forget how I worded it). She said that from the time she was small, her mother would tell her that someday her parents would find a good young man for her to marry. (One thing they look at is how the children were raised.) She was told that she & her husband would grow to love each other.
And yes, they did. They have a happy marriage & happy family life.
I guess it depends on the attitude of the parents - whether they are looking to “get rid of” a girl, or marry her off to the highest bidder, so to speak, or look for a match that would be beneficial for the girl as well.
Cheryl,
Yes, Christianity definitely raised the status of women immeasurably. In Hinduism, the low status of women, untouchables, etc., can be justified, it seems, by the idea of karma. If people improve their karma in this life, they might be reborn in the next life to a higher status. These ideas aren’t necessarily accepted among the more cosmopolitan Hindus and Jains because Indian culture was partially transformed by the presence and rule of the British Raj. Different ideas have been synthesized into the modern Indian consciousness.
Anyway, I’m glad you found it helpful.
Karen,
He’s actually been married to her for a number of years now, but I don’t know them well enough to know whether they’re happily married or not, but I hope so too.
There’s no question in my mind that arranged marriages are often perfectly happy and that when the kids are raised right, they have a better attitude about the permanence and commitment of marriage and the deliberateness of love than most Westerners. Middle class Indians definitely want their daughters to be happy and they do try to find suitable matches. Also, the girls do generally have veto power these days. In many cases nowadays, the “arrangement” is more like just a screening where the parents find a “suitable boy” or a “suitable girl” and allow the kids to spend time getting to know each before deciding. My husband’s family is still a little more traditional than that, though. The kids had a say in who they would marry, but they didn’t spend any time getting to know the person. They just met them during the “interview” process with both families present. When the process was going on looking for a husband for one of my husband’s sisters, “boys” and their families were coming on a regular basis. She was finding it rather humiliating because her skin is a little on the darker side, so she was getting rejected a lot. (That’s a real big issue for most Indians.) When I asked her how she decides if she’s interested in someone or not, she said that she trusts her parents and older siblings to make that decision for her. She’s been married for about 15 years now, and as far as I know, she’s reasonably happily married.
Anyway, I don’t have any problem with the idea of an arranged marriage culture as long as the best interests of the ones getting married is a high priority, but even in the most open-minded cases I’ve seen in Indian arranged marriage, I see a certain crassness that just doesn’t sit right with me. They parents submit a “biodata” which is just a resume with “qualifications” such as education, fairness of skin color, etc. But it’s probably not any different from what we do, they’re just more blatant about it. We too generally tend to have certain qualifications in mind that are no less crass when we look for a spouse. I think that with Westerners, even in regard to the more superficial characteristics, we’re less uniform in what we look for. I don’t know that that makes us necessarily any better, though. It’s just another manifestation of the high priority we place on individualism.
As for the romance part, Indians tend to have a very romantic and passionate mentality. (Have you ever seen a Hindi musical?) When my brother-in-law first got married, it was obvious that his wife was clearly smitten with him (he was quite good looking eighteen years ago) and with the whole idea of the romance of it. But once the initial infatuation wears off, the marriages pretty much flourish or flounder based on the same bases, whether they were arranged or “love marriages” (as they call them.)
Thank you, Ree, for your further input into this topic.
Seems to me, marriage can be a risky business, no matter how we go about it.