Arranged Marriage - Parents Consider Astrology but not Opinions of their Children - 30 Oct 09

In the last days I was talking about marriage in India, about how the parents and the family usually pick a future husband or a future wife. I already told about the castes and sub-castes which have to match and of course the financial situation plays a role for most people, too.

And then there is another question which will come up in the process: do their horoscopes match? Will they have a good future or can you see problems in their stars? I believe that nobody can predict the future and especially not if two people are concerned who never even saw each other. Who knows what influence they will have on each other, what they will feel for each other and what will happen in their life?

The main problem in this is of course, that none of the two has much of a choice. Some parents ask their children for their opinion and some also respect that opinion but not every family. There are still many conservative families whose children see their spouses for the first time on the wedding day during the ceremony.

We also know several cases in which siblings married siblings. A boy and a girl married and after some time the parents saw that they are a good match so they marry the boy’s brother with the girl’s sister. It is easy, they don’t need to search for another girl or boy and the family stays closer together.

I sometimes wonder very much about how different societies developed different traditions and customs which nowadays seem very old-fashioned, unnecessary, not to say stupid, but they are still alive.