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This discussion question relates to the essay Arranging a Marriage in India by Serena Nanda. Read the article about arranged marriages and then answer the following questions:
Would you like to have your marriage arranged? Why or why not?
What are the benefits of arranged marriages as described in the article?
Why do you think that most Americans would not want to have their marriages arranged? Are those reasons good ones?
In India, almost all marriages are arranged. Even among the educated middle classes in modern, urban India, marriage is as much a concern of the families as it is of the individuals. So customary is the practice of arranged marriage that there is a special name for a marriage which is not arranged: “love match.”
On first trip to India, I met many young men and women whose parents were in the process of “getting them married.” In many cases, the bride and groom would not meet each other before the marriage. At most they might meet for a brief conversation, and this meeting would take place only after their parents had decided that the match was suitable. Parents do not compel their children to marry a person who either marriage partner finds objectionable. But only after one match is refused will another be sought.
As a young American women in India for the first time, I found this custom of arranged marriage oppressive. How could any intelligent young person agree to a marriage without great reluctance? It was contrary to what I believed about the importance of romantic love as the only basis of a happy marriage. It also clashed with my strongly held notions that the choice of such an intimate and permanent relationship could be made only by the individuals involved. Had anyone tried to arrange my marriage, I would have been defiant and rebellious!
The basic rule seems to be that a family’s reputation is most important. Matches would be arranged only within the same caste and general social class, although some crossing of subcastes is permissible if the class positions of the families are similar. Although dowry is now prohibited by law in India, extensive gift exchanges took place with all marriages. Every girl’s family feels obligated to give traditional gifts to the girl, the boy, and the boy’s family. Particularly when the couple would be living in the joint family – with the boy’s parents, married brothers and their families, as well as with the unmarried siblings – which is still very common even among the urban, upper middle class in India, the girls’ parents are anxious to establish smooth relations between their family and that of the boy. Offering the proper gifts, even when not called ‘dowry,” is often an important factor in influencing the relationship between the bride’s and groom’s families and perhaps, also, the treatment of the bride in her new home.
In a society where divorce is still a scandal and where the divorce rate is exceedingly low, an arranged marriage is the beginning of a lifetime relationship not just between the bride and groom but between their families as well. Thus, while a girl’s looks are important, her character is even more so, for she is being judged as a prospective daughter-in-law as much as a prospective bride. Where she would be living in a joint family, the girl’s ability to get along in a family is perhaps the single most important quality in assessing her suitability.
At the first opportunity, I began to question the young people I met on how they felt about this practice. Sita, one of my young informants, was a college graduate with a degree in political science. She had been waiting for over a year while her parents arranged a match. I found it difficult to accept the manner in which this well- educated young woman awaited the outcome of the process that would result in her spending the rest of her life with a man she hardly knew, a virtual stranger, picked out by her parents.
“How can you go along with this?” I asked her, in frustration and distress. “Don’t you care who you marry?”
“Of course I care,” she answered. “This is why I must let my parents choose a boy for me. My marriage is too important to be arranged by such an inexperienced person as myself. In such matters, it is better to have my parents’ guidance.”
I had learned that young men and women in India do not date and have very little social life involving members of the opposite sex. Although I could not disagree with Sita’s reasoning, I continued to pursue the subject.
“But how can you marry the first man you have ever met? Not only have you missed the fun of meeting a lot of different people, but you have not given yourself the chance to know who is the right man for you.”
“Meeting with a lot of different people doesn’t sound like any fun at all,” Sita answered. “One hears that in America the girls are spending all their time worrying about whether they will meet a man and get married. Here we have the chance to enjoy our life and let our parents do this work and worrying for us.”
She had me there. The high anxiety of the competition to “be popular” with the opposite sex certainly was the most prominent feature of life as an American teenager. The endless worrying about the rules that governed our behavior and about our popularity ratings sapped both our self-esteem and our enjoyment of adolescence. I reflected that absence of this competition in India most certainly may have contributed to the self-confidence and natural charm of so many of the young women I met.
And yet, the idea of marrying a perfect stranger, whom one did not know and did not “love,” so offended my American ideas of individualism and romanticism, that I persisted with my objections.
“I still can’t imagine it,” I said. “How can you agree to marry a man you hardly know?”
“But of course he will be known. My parents would never arrange a marriage for me without knowing all about the boy’s family background. Naturally we will not rely only on what the family tells us. We will check the particulars out ourselves. No one will want their daughter to marry into a family that is not good. All these things we will know beforehand.”
Impatiently, I responded, “Sita, I don’t mean know the family, I mean, know the man. How can you marry someone you don’t know personally and don’t love? How can you think of spending your life with someone you may not even like?”
“If he is a good man, why should I not like him?” she said. “With you people, you know the boy so well before you marry, where will be the fun to get married? There will be no mystery and no romance. Here we have the whole of our married life to get to know and love our husband. This way is better, is it not?”
Her response made further sense, and I began to have second thoughts on the matter. Indeed, during months of meeting many intelligent young Indian people, both male and female, who had the same ideas as Sita, I saw arranged marriages in a different light. I also saw the importance of the family in Indian life and realized that a couple who took their marriage into their own hands was taking a big risk, particularly if their families were irreconcilably opposed to the match. In a country were every important resource in life – a job, a house, a social circle – is gained through family connections, it seemed foolhardy to cut oneself off from a supportive social network and depend solely on one person for happiness and success.
