BlogHer - It's Arranged, Just Tie the Knot - Part 1 - Comments

Due diligence...

snigdhasen — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:55:59 -0500

Hi ngh!
I meant that you should do as much background checks about the guy as possible. I say that because I hear stories of people lying about themselves in matrimonial columns and websites.
Somebody I know got into some serious trouble this way. Of course, I feel in her case the situation could've been avoided if she had allowed her parents to run a few background checks. But she found the guy via a matrimonial website and decided to go ahead. It was a disaster.
On the other hand, I have a friend who also found her husband online and they are a happy couple now.

In short, better safe than sorry :)

Good luck, ngh!
Snigdhasen

thanks for your help :) Bong Sis :D

ngh — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:22:19 -0500

Hi snigdhasen
thanks for your help - Oh, I wish I had a bong sis!
yes, after I posted my message, I surfed around and realised there were more posts - and read them :) and im glad to hear your suggestion.
Yes, I am involved in the process, but not sure what you mean by "due diligence" before green signal? Its being done through Matrimonials in the paper.
Please do tell more about due diligence - sounds legal!
/ngh

hi ngh

Denise — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:10:25 -0500

Snigdha wrote this great post in June, so it's a little old, and she did publish the second part so go and check that out.

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High & Flamingo House Happenings

im waiting for more posts...

ngh — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:09:23 -0500

hi Snigdha, i am an indian girl myself, but have been out of india for a decade now, and as you put it, going past the age with no suitable match, so am thinking of arrange marriage. as im in far away land, havent heard many first hand accounts of arrange marriages, and want to hear your expressions - mum n dad will always have 'parent opinions', so would be good to hear yours. pls keep the post going.
i do have a question though - how do arrange marriages go with the past? ie me being an independent girl, i did try to find a guy myself first before going with the due process. I found one, but after 5-6 yrs of trying to work it out, it didnt work. Besides being heart-broken and trying to move on, i also need to find out what to say to the arrange marriage guys i have been propositioned by - do i leave it till the last minute? do i never tell him - these things always come out somehow... or am i all open and tell the guy right away? pls comment - i honestly need a good bengali friend who can advise.
i dont know how this post thing works! hope you reply Snigdha!
Thanks

If I had to guess

Mata H — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:22:32 -0500

I would imagine that India's divorce rate would be lower than ours for all kinds of reasons. That seems right as I read your response. This is so fascinating to me, and I am quite thankful for your detailed response. We all have a lot to learn from each other.

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool

Looking for a good source on divorce rates

snigdhasen — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:30:09 -0500

Thank you all for commenting and asking these questions. This discussion is also helping me think clearly on this issue.

First, Noell, about why the friend I mention in this post decided to go the arranged way: because she didn't find a guy on her own by the time she wanted to get married. So her family helped. I do talk about this in my next posts.

Mata, about divorce rates: The statistics are flaky and not directly comparable. I haven't found a single reliable (official) source for Indian divorce rates. I will ping my journalist friends in India to see if they have any, but one figure doing the rounds is 11.1 per 1,000 people. This figure was also quoted in a Time Asia magazine article, but the story doesn't explain the figure clearly.

A CNN article says the divorce rate in the U.S. has fallen to 3.6 divorces per 1,000 people for various reasons, including fewer marriages. But it isn't clear what this 1000 indicates: Married people? (Can anyone help, please?)

There are other sources that claim that compared to India's 11.1 per 1,000 or 1.1 percent, the U.S. figure is closer to 50 percent. I am NOT standing by these figures because I haven't been able to establish their authenticity yet or if they are comparable.

However, anecdotally, it appears that divorce rates in India are lower than the U.S., but are certainly on the rise now. As I see it, that is inevitable. Women are getting educated and financially independent. They don't feel compelled to stay in a marriage that is hurtful to them -- emotionally, physically or professionally. The stigma attached with divorce is also waning.

Also, divorce rates remain low (despite the increase) probably because of tradition – the idea that marriages should last. It is not necessarily because a marriage has been arranged.

Suzanne,you've visited India so I needn't tell you how complex the situation is. There's a saying about the country: For any truism about India, the opposite must also be true.

I want to mention here that I am neutral to the system, as long as I have a choice. Arranged marriage doesn't feel alien even to many of us who haven't played by its rules. If I hadn't found my husband when I did, I may have agreed to go through the process, as long as I had a say in it.

It's similar to choosing the clothes I wear. I love wearing saris and other Indian dresses. I don't think wearing jeans is liberating simply because that's what my sisters in the West wear. But the sari will start feeling oppressive if I don't have the freedom to wear jeans. The clothes in themselves don't define what's modern or what is not. It's what they symbolize to the people who wear them that counts.

Same for arranged marriage. If it does not serve my purpose or is forced upon me, then I have a problem with it.

fascinating

Suzanne Reisman — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:12:13 -0500

I just got back from my first trip to India, and I have been nagging various Indian friends of mine to explain all sorts of things to me since my trip, so this is great. One of the big discussions I have been having with my friends is arranged marriage. Even before I went, I knew a few people who grew up in the US and entered into "arranged" marriages. A high school friend of my husband's went to India for a week, met several women through his family, then came back to the US and corresponded with them via email. After a while, he married one of them, but when she came here, the marriage did not last for more than a year. ("She lied about a lot of things," my husband's friend said bitterly.)

What really surprised me most is how easily the families seemed to accept the divorce, but I think that is because they are from wealthy, educated families. My husband's friend went back to India, spent more time there with prospective wives, and returned with a more suitable match.
Another friend's father (this family is Christian) recently interfered with his relationship with a Christian Indian woman because he thought her family was not good enough. Instead, he set up dates for my friend with family friends' daughters who are lawyers and doctors. (This seems to happen in every upper middle class culture, though.)

A third friend of mine is a very spiritual Hindu, and she rails against what she sees as the hypocrisies of arranged marriages. Her parents were married through an arranged marriage, and have been very happy together for decades. On the other hand, her dad's family looks down on her mom because she came from a small village. My friend is fiercely independent, and yet extremely loyal and devoted to her family, and I think the slights that her mom tolerated have very strongly shaped her views on this. She just wishes that families would butt out.

Anyway, from my (mostly uninformed) observations in India, most women do not live in such enlightened circumstances where they have choices. If they are divorced, there is no started over for them. They are tainted. So I am eager to read part II of your post. There is also some lively discussion about marriage and divorce in India going on this week at www.desicritics.org.

Suzanne, BlogHer Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

thank you so much!

Mata H — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:34:55 -0500

This is a fascinating topic - and I so welcome the chance to learn from you. I look forward to the next installments. It makes me wonder -- is the divorce rate in India very different from here?

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool

This is such an interesting

Noell — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:51:03 -0500

This is such an interesting topic. I look forward to reading more about it. I'd be very curious to know what your friend gave as her reasons (if she gave them) for choosing an arranged marriage.

It's Arranged, Just Tie the Knot - Part 1

snigdhasen — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 02:57:08 -0500

In her welcome note to my first post , contributing editor Mata asked me to help explain the concept of arranged marriages, how prevalent it is and what feminists in India think about it.

There is no one way of answering this question. It is a complex social tradition that has evolved in many ways and has remained rigid in others.

Much has been written about the merits and demerits of the system. This post is by no means a complete thesis on the subject, but an effort to help those of you who do not have a cultural context for it to view this tradition the way we do. This is my personal way of looking at it, shaped by what I have experienced, seen, heard and read.

I have divided the discussion into four parts to make it an easy read.

Where I come from: I was raised in the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) by middle-class parents, both engineers. My mother is a Christian and my father a Hindu. They were raised speaking different languages and my mother's family was against the “match”. I chose my husband (we don't share the same mother tongue either), and so did my sister. Basically, no one in my immediate family had an arranged marriage. But several of my cousins, friends, and acquaintances did, so I am looking at this tradition as an insider who hasn't gone through the experience herself. I have a better understanding of the majority Hindu community, but having seen my mother's (Christian) side of things too, the concept seems similar.

I will focus on India, since I know it best. For starters, it might be useful to know that India has 28 states (and seven federally controlled regions) and 22 official languages. Almost every state has its unique cuisine, its unique way of tying the sari and its own movie industry. It's the birthplace of four religions and home to several more. Besides language, caste, dowry and even diet inform our judgment about several issues, including marriage. And no matter which religion is followed, wedding styles and rituals are likely to differ from state to state.

Scope of this post: About three years back, a childhood girlfriend of mine got married to an Indian boy in the U.S. The entire process took less than a week: she met the boy (recommended by a member of her extended family), the wedding was arranged, and she was here!

I was thrilled to have her here but was also surprised that she had agreed to such a marriage. My friend, as I knew her, was a fiercely independent city-bred girl. She was raised in a fairly wealthy family, had lots of rich guy friends and partied hard. She was professionally ambitious. Instead of asking a willing father to help set up a textile and fashion designing business, she decided to get her hands dirty and joined a small-sized Indian company. She was a modern girl in every way.

In less than two years, her marriage ran into trouble. I will not get into details. Suffice to say that several factors, including family members, had a role to play. My friend flew back to India. I thought her marriage was over. A year later, the couple are back together and planning a family.

There are a few things I'd like to note here:

My friend is a modern, urban Indian girl, with professional aspirations.
She had a typical urban Indian arranged marriage despite the fact that she was free to choose her partner.
She says she was under no pressure from her parents to make this marriage work once trouble started brewing and she moved back to India. She dealt with it her own way.

According to my friend: “Once you are married, its success depends on how you make it work and how badly you want to make it work. Whether the marriage was for love or was arranged doesn't make a difference.”

That is the premise of my discussion here: Once you are married, it's a different ballgame. Marriages fail or succeed for a variety of reasons and not all of them have their genesis on how the couple got together. So, I will restrict these posts to talking about the concept of arranging marriages and the thought and process behind it. However, I will make a point here: Every situation is unique. Mata mentioned in her post that her friend, who had an arranged marriage, believed that such a marriage was likely to last longer because both sets of parents were invested in it. It is clear from my friend's case that this in not true universally. My friend says it's likely parents would be interested in keeping the couple together if there's a child in the mix. I am not sure that is always true either.

(Tomorrow) Part 2: Arranged marriages past and present