- Anusha Batra
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| Credits: Netflix |
The conversation surrounding marriage in urban, middle-class India comes in many
shades. We grow up hearing that marriages are between families, not
individuals. We also grow up with our home-grown terms such as arranged
marriages and love marriages. A random search of the web offers us many videos[i] and posts[ii] titled arranged vs love
marriage. The two quite clearly are seen as opposites. Arranged marriages
purportedly emphasise the family as primary decision-makers of an 'individual's
marriage. Love marriage accords the individual concerned the choice to marry.
The two are, however, not always mutually exclusive.
There
was a time when Indian matrimonial adverts would be seen as antithetical to
ideas of romantic love. What mattered was caste, class, ethnicity, religion,
language, family background. Today, individuals are increasingly relying upon dating/
matrimonial apps, even roping in services of matchmakers to find similar social
background (caste, class, ethnicity, religion) and thus, 'compatible' partners,
not just for themselves, but also their families.
However,
marriage means very different things to different sections of Indian society
which is both diverse and unequal. There has been a spike in child marriages
with COVID-19. Schools, and mid-day meals,
are shut, and families facing economic distress are keen to offload what they
consider their 'burden'.[iii]
 |
| Credits: Netflix |
The
challenges for an upper-middle-class young woman from a cosmopolitan city like
Delhi is very different. The constraints and compulsions on the girl child from
a poor and marginalised rural community are both overt and violent. The
question I ask, however, is whether a privileged upper-middle-class woman like
me is free to choose whom she wishes to marry, and more importantly, not marry if she wishes not to? Does she
have a say when it comes to her marriage? Does she have a choice? Though it is
unlikely that the recent Netflix series 'Indian Matchmaking' wanted to problematise
marriage as a social institution, its relevant for us here. The people who want
to get married (men and women) in the series are almost all independent, confident,
either Americans of Indian origin or upper-middle-class men and women in India.
'Indian
'Matchmaking' drew a lot of attention to this matter of arranged marriage. Sima
Taparia, from Mumbai, is the matchmaker. She travels to where the clients live
and often meets with the parents and the person looking for a match. This
episode shows some of the requirements the clients are looking for and the
variety of backgrounds that Sima deals with. If one glimpses through the titles
of the episodes, they read: 'trim, slim and ' educated'. 'I'm trying my best'; 'It's
high time'.[iv]
Sima takes her job
seriously, (roping in services of astrologers and face-readers to double-check
if the 'stars are aligned' or not). She weighs the pros and cons. She is clear
that a 'little adjustment' is necessary. For instance, she tells a client,
Rupam, that being a divorcee and single mother, her 'options' are extremely
limited, or another one, Aparna, whom she berates her for not being 'flexible
enough'. Sima describes her as 'negative' and 'stubborn'.
The
question I wish to bring to the foreground is whether "it is essential-
to marry? Do women have a 'choice' not to get married? Is our society ready to
let unmarried women be?" The pressures to marry are many: subtle,
emotional, or even the oft-repeated phrase "everyone gets married, what's there to think about it?" Another argument
in favour of marriage is, "but
who will look after you when you grow old", or "you're thinking only short-term, life gets
extremely lonely after a point of time, especially, when all your friends have
their own family to look after to."
The
fact that parents and elders in the family are concerned stems from dominant
societal norms which are not easy to violate. They are external, coercive,
general and if one 'deviates' there are sanctions. This is good, old Durkheimian
sociology at work. Notwithstanding the grounds for their worry, there appear some
contradictions in the reasoning "who will look after you?
If
the modern, urban middle-class woman is 'expected' to take care of an entire
family and run a household, along with her job, indeed, she can look after
herself. For someone who is expected to shoulder the many responsibilities of
taking 'care' of a household, looking after just oneself is a piece of cake. Indeed,
it works otherwise. A lot of women (like Sima's client, and Akshay's mother
Preeti) want a daughter-in-law so that her son can be taken care of. There are
people who married, just for the happiness of their parents. Or because of the
biological clock.
I
would like to return to that matter about remaining unmarried. The explanation
that one is single because one has not found the 'right' person is not taken
seriously. Many Simas of the world would offer their help matchmaking. There is a stigma attached to single women in
urban middle-class India. Yet, people contend, "of course a woman has that choice. After all, if she can convince her
parents, why bother with what the society thinks". But that's not
how society works. The happy story, however, is that society does not remain
unchanged. There are many more single women today. "It is a demographic that is quietly asserting its
right to be taken seriously, creating its own sub-culture, with books, movies,
web series, even organisations dedicated to it". The National Forum
for Single Women's Rights is a national platform for single women
leaders, while the Ekal Nari Shakti Sangathan, formed in 2000, is an alternative family for single women.[v]
This
matter of 'choice' needs to be problematised. The individual is not a self-propelled
entity. Society often defines our choices. In a market-driven society like
ours, choice is the buzzword. It's like the 'choice' offered by the Television
industry. There is a myriad of channels
but what is played out essentially remains the same. We may have control over
the remote in our hands, but the content between which we choose is set by
someone else. Put plainly it's like the long list of paneer dishes on the menu
card. We are going to get another orange-gravy dish, be it Shahi Paneer, Paneer
Makhni, Paneer Lababdar, Paneer Do Pyaza.
To
marry or not to marry, therefore, is just a personal question. It is a social
issue that is embedded in our economics and culture. This is not unique to
India or to our times. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice offers the most tough-minded and unsentimental analysis,
counselling that Jane Bennet should secure her rich husband first and think
about love only after they are married. 'Happiness in marriage is entirely a
matter of chance'. [vi]
References:
Bhatt,
J. (2020). We Need To Talk About Indian Matchmaking's Mommy Issues, accessed
at https://thehauterfly.com/culture-2/culture-we-need-to-talk-about-indian-matchmakings-mommy-issues-akshays-mom-preeti-was-a-classic-example-of-toxic-femininity/ on 19th October 2020.
Kaur,
N. (2020). Rupam Kaur in Indian Matchmaking, accessed at https://medium.com/@KaurRepublic/rupam-kaur-in-indian-matchmaking-e08ad09b46e2
on 19th October 2020.
Kumar,
P. (2020). Comments about Aparna shows our own biases: Indian Matchmaking
creator Smriti Mundhra, accessed at https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/comments-about-aparna-shows-our-own-biases-indian-matchmaking-creator-smriti-mundhra/article32393199.ece on
19th October 2020.
Ramadurai,
C. (2020). Indian Matchmaking: The Reality Show that's Divided Viewers, accessed
at https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200806-indian-matchmaking-the-reality-show-that-s-divided-viewers on
19th October 2020.
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6b75GyJnz0, accessed on 19th October
2020.
[ii] https://www.groupdiscussionideas.com/love-marriage-vs-arranged-marriage/, accessed on 19th October
2020.
[iii]https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/covid-19-and-the-spike-in-child-marriages/story-aLS6zAq2Beoiyb4wyrfbdM.html, accessed on 19th
October 2020.
[iv] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12580168/, accessed on 19th October
2020.
[v] A new book Single By
Choice: Happily Unmarried Women! edited by Kalpana Sharma, has
a series of such single women chronicling their experiences. https://theprint.in/opinion/no-three-tiered-wedding-cake-no-mangalsutra-single-women-a-growing-tribe-in-india/262608/, accessed on 19th October
2020.
[vi] https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/courtship-love-and-marriage-in-jane-austens-novels, accessed on 19th October
2020.
(A
different version of this article appears on Anusha's blog and can be accessed at - https://anushabatra4.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/to-marry-or-not/.)
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