Whilst in India I had a brief chat with one of my nieces, a girl of 18 with a great deal of self-possession. I asked her if she had a boyfriend and she replied that she didn’t and that she is a “one man woman”. I was a little surprised to find this phrase still around but what she meant was that she had no intention of “fooling around” before she got married. As she wanted this marriage to be a happy occasion, she expected to have an arranged marriage. The happiness of this occasion I found could be marred by many things, most of all her father’s old-fashioned attitude to marriage. Girls who were “fooling around” however did not appear to contemplate a future different to hers, most appeared to be like the 20 something I met on a flight to Kolkata who had plenty of boyfriends with whom she engaged in varying degrees of intimacy but was eventually planning on an arranged marriage.
If the statistics are right, at least 95% of marriages in India are still arranged. It persists even amongst the middle classes, where education and employment for women is now common. It is not that Indians are immune to romance; the arranged marriage for example comes with its own romantic mythology. But in “real life”, as Indians are wont to say, tradition often trumps love. In some cases people expect to bypass entanglements and segue straight into adulthood by way of the family approved marriage. In others, a failed love affair is often followed by a retreat into the familiar world of the arranged marriage. And sometimes, the desires of early youth and a liberal upbringing where the ideal of romance is more commonly found in a French movie than a Bollywood flick, give way to the somewhat dispiriting landscape of relationships in India as one grows older. People are left on the cusp, hoping for a romance around the corner and unwillingly submitting to the process of having a marriage arranged. Whichever way it is arrived at, the hold of the institution over the Indian imagination seems far too firm to be dislodged by any of the changes that sweep the country from time to time. One may depart from a traditional upbringing and sometimes move to foreign climes and habits but many return like homing pigeons to the traditional marriage.
Even those of us opposed to the notion of arranged marriages thus grow accepting of it. You cannot after all force a revolution in mating mores.
And yet I couldn’t help thinking that far-fetched as it may seem, the arranged marriage is a continuum of attitudes that prevent people from entering a temple. For the persistence of the arranged marriage is also the persistence of caste. As an example, it appears likely that caste considerations will dictate the arranging of a marriage for the 18 year old niece. Change occurs within castes but intermingling and introducing new modes of living into the family still seems to spark off tension. Last month, for e.g., Chetan Bhagat released a book that is a fictionalised account of his own marriage and the parental opposition that preceded it. In one of his interviews, he touched on its potential to kill the tenderness and sweetness of a love affair. Even accounting for deeply held beliefs it can at times seem that something dark and fearful lies at the heart of the psychological violence (and often physical) directed towards falling in love in India. And whilst other forms of caste discrimination are not as visible these days, with the arranged marriage it is upfront and we are presented with the notion that it is purely parental love and duty directing us to our predetermined futures.
And of course there is the great adventure of love itself. Cristina Nehring bemoaning the anodyne love of our modern age in her book, The Vindication of Love, writes of being “derailed by love, hospitalized by love, flung around five continents, shaken, overjoyed, inspired and unsettled by love”. Her book takes its title from Wollstonecraft who combined her intellectualism with the messiest of love lives. Indeed Nehring’s book is partly a defence of Wollstonecraft’s feminist reputation. And of course the idealization of romantic love, nay passionate, unheeding love of the kind Nehring describes, has a long history in the West. Perhaps Nehring is taking the argument to its extreme and most people’s romantic lives fall between the two poles. Yet - admitting for appearances being deceptive - it’s hard to see the young people I met in India committing themselves to any such passion. And more importantly approaching it with the truth it deserves.
If the statistics are right, at least 95% of marriages in India are still arranged. It persists even amongst the middle classes, where education and employment for women is now common. It is not that Indians are immune to romance; the arranged marriage for example comes with its own romantic mythology. But in “real life”, as Indians are wont to say, tradition often trumps love. In some cases people expect to bypass entanglements and segue straight into adulthood by way of the family approved marriage. In others, a failed love affair is often followed by a retreat into the familiar world of the arranged marriage. And sometimes, the desires of early youth and a liberal upbringing where the ideal of romance is more commonly found in a French movie than a Bollywood flick, give way to the somewhat dispiriting landscape of relationships in India as one grows older. People are left on the cusp, hoping for a romance around the corner and unwillingly submitting to the process of having a marriage arranged. Whichever way it is arrived at, the hold of the institution over the Indian imagination seems far too firm to be dislodged by any of the changes that sweep the country from time to time. One may depart from a traditional upbringing and sometimes move to foreign climes and habits but many return like homing pigeons to the traditional marriage.
Even those of us opposed to the notion of arranged marriages thus grow accepting of it. You cannot after all force a revolution in mating mores.
And yet I couldn’t help thinking that far-fetched as it may seem, the arranged marriage is a continuum of attitudes that prevent people from entering a temple. For the persistence of the arranged marriage is also the persistence of caste. As an example, it appears likely that caste considerations will dictate the arranging of a marriage for the 18 year old niece. Change occurs within castes but intermingling and introducing new modes of living into the family still seems to spark off tension. Last month, for e.g., Chetan Bhagat released a book that is a fictionalised account of his own marriage and the parental opposition that preceded it. In one of his interviews, he touched on its potential to kill the tenderness and sweetness of a love affair. Even accounting for deeply held beliefs it can at times seem that something dark and fearful lies at the heart of the psychological violence (and often physical) directed towards falling in love in India. And whilst other forms of caste discrimination are not as visible these days, with the arranged marriage it is upfront and we are presented with the notion that it is purely parental love and duty directing us to our predetermined futures.
And of course there is the great adventure of love itself. Cristina Nehring bemoaning the anodyne love of our modern age in her book, The Vindication of Love, writes of being “derailed by love, hospitalized by love, flung around five continents, shaken, overjoyed, inspired and unsettled by love”. Her book takes its title from Wollstonecraft who combined her intellectualism with the messiest of love lives. Indeed Nehring’s book is partly a defence of Wollstonecraft’s feminist reputation. And of course the idealization of romantic love, nay passionate, unheeding love of the kind Nehring describes, has a long history in the West. Perhaps Nehring is taking the argument to its extreme and most people’s romantic lives fall between the two poles. Yet - admitting for appearances being deceptive - it’s hard to see the young people I met in India committing themselves to any such passion. And more importantly approaching it with the truth it deserves.
Nice piece
ReplyDeletevery well written anu.
ReplyDelete