:: Rants of a .. blah blah blah ::

:: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 ::

:: The Arranged Marriage Rant ::
A few months ago, my aunt was visiting from India. One of the first things she asked me when she came was whether I was ready for marriage. It caught me off guard and I blurted some bullshit which didn’t fly too well. After giving it some more thought, I managed to revisit the question and made a somewhat convincing argument about why I didn’t feel comfortable with the arranged marriage process. The gist of my argument went as follows..
The procedure as I understand it is that my parents and family would use their social networks to find a girl as a possible match for me. The first level of screening, is to comply with family preferences. The girl has to be of the same caste and culture, ie. A Tamilian, Iyengar/Iyer (whichever one I am), who has a college degree in some money making field. That’s screening phase one. Once a phase 1 compliant candidate has been found, the phase 2 screening takes place, still just to comply with family preferences. In my family, I’ve heard people mention “fair skin” more than once. The hypocrisy of such a statement really pisses me off. The same goes for the whole caste thing. Actually, I think the “fair skin” thing is also part of phase one. Phase two mainly involves looking at our horoscopes to see if according to the Vedic placement of our birth stars, we are compatible. This would be equated to Linda Goodman’s Love signs in the western world.
Once the candidate (or victim) has passed phase 1 and 2, the bride and groom to be are notified. Its just frightening to me that my family has already *researched* the girl to such a degree before I even know of her existence. There’s obviously several things wrong with this picture.
Firstly, no matter how exact the science of astrology is, I refuse to believe you can match two people up and expect a happy marriage based solely on horoscopes.

Secondly, {and I can’t generalize this one, but I think it applies to me and probably anybody who grew up outside India}, it is absolutely ridiculous that my family gets to screen ANYBODY before I even meet them. That too screening on the basis of such superficial things and the idiocies of society.
One can argue that I would probably screen candidates too, were I to take matters into my own hands. This is true, but since its my life, shouldn’t the screening criteria be decided by me??? My family could say they’re just trying to help in my choices.. I guess if you participate in this process the choices are by default limited to the social network involved. That’s fine with me, in concept. The problem is that I know how my family works in these matters. They are quite traditional and if they are given the opportunity, they will screen out people based on the most insignificant (to me) things.

Thirdly, it is very uncomfortable to communicate with someone under the scrutiny of family. My family is in this for no other purpose other than to see a marriage take place. I don’t treat marriage like a systematic process. I believe it is something that should evolve naturally out of a friendship. It is not something that is planned, and I certainly don’t think you can put any sort of time limit on how long the friendship can go on before marriage is expected.

Fourthly, {this too can’t be generalized}, my personal preference doesn’t discriminate against non-brahmans or non-tamilians or even non-indians! I think it would bother me that I’m condoning this discrimination if I go along with my family’s choice. We live in world that is getting more and more integrated (physically) and I feel that one of the reasons why we have so much conflict everywhere is because we have all these man-made barriers which people are so obsessed with that they are willing to kill one another to maintain them. Cultural and religious barriers are probably the most devastating. “A Hindu cannot marry a muslim!” “A black person cannot be involved with a white persion” “A Brahman should not marry a Kshathriya”. “I cant let my Tamilian son marry a Punjabi!” All of these are just creations that evolved out of Man’s greed and weakness and His obsession with power. These disabilities of mankind are in every culture.
I feel it is somehow the duty of the new generation to make people comfortable with the idea of “world citizens” (as cheesy as that sounds), and to start breaking down all the social barriers. Conflicts all over the world involve one group of people that doesn’t agree with another group of people over the most childish of issues. And these groups are usually several generations down from those who were involved in the original conflict. Why should I continue an idiotic argument which my great grandfather was involved in?? Society needs to understand that *revenge* is a positive-feedback system. It only gets worse and worse. If no-one is willing to just forget the past at some point, the system will just become more and more unstable and eventually explode.
My point here is basically that I want to be able to marry a Jewish Ethiopian tribal girl if I want.

So, why the hell did I let myself get into this in the first place? Well, I wanted to give it benefit of the doubt. What I told myself is that, in concept, it is just another way to meet people. I’ve managed to break my preconceptions of internet dating with the same argument. Internet dating is much better because it gives you more choices and doesn’t really rely on special circumstances to meet people. I still go about my life as normal. If I meet someone of interest in my social life, that’s great. But what if I don’t? I’ve tried different things. I don’t usually go up to strangers and just start talking to them. I wish I had the self-confidence and charm to do that, but I don’t. Until I can acquire those talents, the internet is the most logical choice.
My family would definitely have a problem with this. All this doesn’t mean I don’t respect my family. I do! If I were involved with a girl who I felt I wanted to marry, my screening process would definitely involve making sure she too respected my family and their culture. But my family is of the impression that a non-Indian could not possibly integrate well into the family. I say the only thing preventing such an integration is the stubborn insistence on sticking with *tradition*. I understand that it’s not easy to change something that is in-grained into generations of people. But it has to happen eventually. We cant keep making excuses for society’s errors! I might sound naïve and unrealistic, but if we don’t acknowledge the problems and atleast put an effort to change them, how are we to progress?

What does all this mean as far as my situation is concerned? I haven’t completely figured out how I can contribute to the change. In the end, I am aware that this is a delicate issue in which the wrong approach could hurt a lot of feelings. But now that I’ve clarified my thoughts a little, I feel like I’m on the right track.

:: Related Links ::
Inlaws and Outlaws: The Perils and Perks of Arranged Marriages by Chitra Raman on Sulekha.com
:: hummusfreak 12:15 AM [+] :: Your two cents? - ::
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