I have recently been writing a lot about arranged marriages, about the many problems such marriages cause, about the dowry, the broken dreams and hearts and the fights among husband and wife as well as each other’s families. After reading all of this I wouldn’t wonder if you had a logical question: why is it still so common that marriages are arranged? Why do people still find it so important to marry their children to someone they don’t know? Simply because of the way how society works.
I will try to explain this to you with an example. Let’s say there is an Indian family and their son is already above thirty years old. He was refusing to get married in a very Indian fashion, telling his parents that he had no interest in women and would never marry. His parents know however that this is just something he says and doesn’t really mean, that inside he also has the wish to get married. That is how they search and whenever they will have found a possible candidate, he will say ‘Okay, if you insist…’
They are of course looking within their own caste and sub-caste, which limits the number of women who can be considered. It can get quite difficult to find someone whom they really like. One girl is too dark-skinned, another one is too fat, a third one would be taller than their son and another one lisps. There may be some factors why the girls’ parents don’t want to marry their daughters to this boy either, like a lower income than their expectations for example or just not such a handsome facial expression, a slight overweight or that he is limping.
More frequently however it is the girl that gets rejected. The parents of both families keep on rejecting possible spouses and after seeing ‘what’s on the market’ and realizing that they just cannot get the completely right one, both sides start lowering their expectations a bit. Okay, now the girl doesn’t have to be very fair and if the boy isn’t fully thin, it might also work. The girl’s family is however still much more likely to accept even below their expectations. Why? Because it is so important to get a daughter married – without that, what will become of her?
It is very clear: the big majority of women nowadays still don’t work. If they do, they don’t get the same salary as men do and it is much more difficult for them to find a job that they can actually well live off. Again, I am not talking about the metro cities but of the common population in smaller towns and villages. The parents of a woman support her until she is married. If she doesn’t marry and one day the parents die, what is she going to live from? Be a burden for her brother’s family? Parents obviously don’t want this to happen and so they desperately try to find a husband for their daughter – so that she is taken care of, even if the man is finally not living up to their expectations.
Men have some more possibilities. Even if a man doesn’t seem to find a woman that he or his parents like, he won’t need to marry just anyone – even if he doesn’t marry, he has a job and will survive. There is only one problem in that case: the lineage would not be continued without children! It is getting late for men, too, so after a long time and many attempts, the parents of the boy, too, just take the best option: a girl who may be quite dark in complexion, could be a little bit overweight, is not as educated as their boy and comes from a not that reputed family as hoped for.
This case is not a product of my imagination! I have met mothers who have seen candidates and although they did not really like them, they say ‘Well, she is not very pretty, let’s see, if we don’t find a better girl, we will take this one.’ So from the start you don’t like her, imagine what will be this woman’s situation in your family! If she just has one small bad character trait, everybody will say ‘Oh, I knew it, we should not have chosen her!”
If you put it very clear this means that in the end, when everyone is desperate enough, nobody cares that much who is getting married, it has to be a man who can afford a woman and a woman who can bear and rear children. What is the woman supposed to do anyway? Cook, clean and have children.
Isn’t it a nice picture that the society shows here? How much value is given to a woman who is first again and again refused and then in the end married just for the children she may have in future because there was no other option! What a beautiful concept arranged marriage is, don’t you think?
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