India in Love

by Ira Trivedi

  That weekend, Anand’s seventy-five-year-old aunt and uncle have come to visit. They are celebrating their sixty-first marriage anniversary. They live amicably with three generations in one home—each one raised in the same country but in different worlds. The septuagenarian aunt and uncle peacefully accept the world as it changes. They have seen so much change in their lifetimes that nothing surprises them anymore. My cousin Ritu, in her forties, stands on the cusp, grappling with both worlds expertly—the India that buys her fashionable slinky dresses and also the world of arranged marriage. Tanisha goes to an international school in Bangalore and has Korean, Irish, German kids in her class—all of whom live here because their parents work in IT. Tanisha is exposed to world-views of love, dating and romance. When she grows up, arranged marriage will seem bizarre to her, a primitive thing, a vestigial organ of the past. As for me, I am probably the most confused of the lot. Ritu escaped the madness; she came of age before many of the influences that my generation has seen arrived. That said, many women her age have been influenced by this cultural shift, and are getting divorced or having affairs. As for me, I belong to une génération perdue—a generation lost. My generation does not have the choice to look back and reclaim the past because we have moved too far ahead. The only thing that we can do is to prepare ourselves for the battle ahead with the sparse resources that we have. I don’t know what the future will bring and like Dr Bhatt and Partha, I too am wary of how things will turn out. All I can do is wonder: how long will it take us to find ourselves again?

  MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER

  THE MARRIAGE BROKER

  At the South Extension, New Delhi, offices of A to Z Matchmaking Management it is an unusually busy day. A set of parents who have arrived on the morning train from Lucknow wait their turn to register their daughter for marriage. Another anxious pair is scouring biodatas on the A to Z database. Three weddings that the company has brokered are taking place and as part of the service agreement, representatives of the company have to be present at all of them. The auspicious wedding period has begun and there are thousands of weddings taking place every day. There is nothing like a wedding to make people feel anxious about marriage, so clients are pouring in.

  Gopal Suri, the founder and man in charge of the most popular marriage bureau in South Delhi, is a small but aggressive man, abrasive in a way that at first is off-putting, but over time becomes endearing. He always wears tight shirts and black jeans, combining his standard outfit with shiny, black, pointed shoes in the summer and a pair of cowboy boots in the winter. He has weaselly eyes and reading glasses dangling from a long golden chain around his thick neck. He is bald, the gleam of his cranium matching that of his shoes. He works out daily, and his chest stretches his shirt impressively. He has a staccato manner of speaking, and his hooded gaze is direct, almost fierce. He is an unlikely marriage broker. I could easily imagine him as a gangster or the operator of a rather shady import-export business. The first time I called, asking if I could interview him, he became extremely defensive, inquiring if I was a private detective, and if his wife had sent me. A year-and-a-half later, I am a regular at the firm. I know most of the cases on file, I have edited biodatas, I have posed as Gopal Suri’s assistant in over fifty meetings, I have been set up on dates with prospective husbands, I have even taken charge when Gopalji (as I call him) was indisposed, matched prospective candidates and made marriages happen.

  Gopal Suri entered the marriage business by sheer luck. He began his career working with his father in the property business. He then started a guesthouse, Swisston Palace in Karol Bagh—a congested residential area in Delhi. In 2000, a guest from the US stayed at Swisston Palace for over a month, an inordinately long time even at the low rates offered by Gopalji. At this time, there was a rash of terrorist attacks taking place in the country and Gopalji grew suspicious about his foreign guest, Mr Singh. When he eventually confronted him about the unnatural length of his stay, and asked him what he did in his room all day, Mr Singh looked sheepish and said he had been trying to arrange the marriage of his daughter, without any luck. She was thirty and her time was running out; he could not go back to Chicago until he had found her a groom. His last hope was to find a match through the matrimonial ads he had placed in several newspapers. Gopal commiserated with Mr Singh because of his own experience looking for brides through matrimonial columns. He had met eighty girls before he found his wife, the eighty-first.

  After a cursory glance at Mr Singh’s elegant advertisement for his daughter, Gopal spotted the problem—the trouble was with the wording of his ad, there was nothing wrong with the girl. Mr Singh was simply doing a poor job advertising his daughter. Gopal was an excellent scribe, and the advertisement he drafted for Mr Singh’s daughter attracted an unprecedented number of prospective grooms. The boys queued up to meet the ‘fair, homely, conservative yet modern US citizen’. In yet another creative stroke, Gopal opened up what he liked to think of as the presidential suite of his guesthouse as a venue for Mr Singh to meet aspiring suitors for his daughter. An ecstatic Mr Singh found the son-in-law of his dreams and decided to book all the rooms at Swisston Palace for the ensuing ten-day-long wedding. In the weeks following Mr Singh’s daughter’s wedding engagement, Gopalji found many aggrieved parents at his doorstep. They begged him to draft matrimonial ads for their own unwed progeny. Gopalji was only too happy to oblige and had only one condition for anyone who wanted to use his service as a matchmaker—the wedding would have to take place at his guesthouse. Due to burgeoning demand and his enormous success, Gopalji decided that it was time to commercialize his largesse, and he set up A to Z Matchmaking. Today, the annual income from his matrimonial business is 1 crore.

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  Before matrimonial advertisements began appearing in newspapers and periodicals in large numbers from the early years of the twentieth century, the task of finding and negotiating marriages primarily belonged to the traditional matchmakers, the ghatak (male) and the ghataki (female) as they were called in Bengal.170 The main functions of the ghataks were to select appropriate matches, keep registers and records of marriage and important social events and also to decide the social status of the kulas (families).171

  George Johnson remarked in a travelogue published in 1843 that ghataks were ‘men of a fawning and flattering disposition’ who in the ‘assemblies of the Hindoos’ would ‘often panegyrize some individual as much for his giving them a few rupees, as they would satirize him for not listening to their adulation’. He goes on to say: ‘They sometimes involved parties in difficulties by getting up matches of a disreputable character; yet nuisances as they are, their services cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of Hindoo marriage continues, which does not admit of an interview between the bride and bridegroom before the wedding night.’172

  The occupation of matchmaking by ghataks was compared to horse breeders in an article published in 1886 in the popular Calcutta-based journal, Prachar. ‘If you go to breeders in these countries,’ wrote the author, ‘they can trace the lineage of a particular horse. We need professionals who can supply the same information about human beings.’173 These pandits of yesteryears were trumped first by newspaper matrimonial ads, and later by online matrimonial portals. Today, the pandit has emerged in a new form. Marriage brokers are no dhoti-clad pandits, they are shrewd businessmen (and women) taking advantage of the global 25 billion-marriage market of Indian weddings.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARRIAGE

  Though the love match is gaining popularity in much of urban India, in many parts, arranged marriages are still the norm. It was not always this way. To get a broad view of how the system of arranged marriage evolved into its present form within the Hindu community (this is followed with some cosmetic variations in the Sikh and Jain communities and to a surprisingly recognizable degree in many sections of the Christian community; the Islamic community, the Jewish community and the Zoroastrian community have different methods of arranging marriages), let�
�s take a look at the main texts written during important historical periods to paint a picture of the popular ideologies that existed then.

  The Rig Veda composed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE tells us that the status of women was equal to that of men; they received an equal education and were taught to recite the Vedas. Even more liberating were the Rig Veda’s views on marriage. Women were allowed to marry at a mature age and were free to select their husband.174

  In the Vedic age, the life of a girl was described to be easy, gay and free.175 The Rig Veda and Atharva Veda both mention the Samana festival, during which men and women could meet and choose their partners. It was not uncommon for women to engage in premarital sex or to remain unmarried.176

  There were eight types of marriage during the Vedic age including the Gandharva and Swayamvara marriages, based on mutual love and attraction. The story of Shakuntala and Dushyanta in the Rig Veda is an example of the Gandharva form of marriage—Shakuntala, the beautiful adopted daughter of the sage, marries the handsome king Dushyanta when they fall in love. In the Swayamvara tradition, girls of royal families chose their husbands from among eligible bachelors invited to their houses.

  The next stage in the history of marriage is described in the Mahabharata, the earliest portions of which date to about 900 BC.177 It appears that marriage in the age of the Mahabharata generally took place within the caste, though marriage outside the caste was not rare. Polygamy or marriage to two or more women by a man was widely practiced and even polyandry, where a woman had multiple husbands was accepted as we see in the case of Draupadi. Premarital and extramarital relationships occurred too, and there are numerous direct and indirect examples in the Mahabharata.178

  According to scholar George Monger, the Mahabharata explains the origin of stricter marriage norms by stating that women were once independent and could go astray from husbands, until Svetaketu, the son of Rishi Uddalaka, ruled that husbands and wives should be faithful to each other.

  Around 100 CE, the authority of the Smritis and the Puranas replaced that of the Vedic scriptures. Sex and marriage as depicted in the age of the Mahabharata came to be inhibited by further taboos and restrictions. The Smritis or Dharmashastras were written by multiple authors, of which the best known was the Manusmriti,179 which we have already run into in the course of this book.

  The Laws of Manu declared that four of the eight forms of marriage described in the Vedas were invalid. In all four that were considered blessed, fathers found grooms for their daughters; it was said that only these marriages would result in sons who would understand the Vedas. The four others were called ‘blameable unions’, and included the Gandharva marriage which was a voluntary union in which the daughter chose her own spouse.180

  There was a distinct shift in attitudes in society as the liberal marital traditions of the Vedic period were dismissed and arranged marriage placed women under male control through a hierarchical and strict system. Society became patriarchal and caste-based, and the union of a man and a woman became intertwined with maintaining social, political and economic status within society. Members of the upper castes arranged marriages between themselves to prevent defilement of their castes.

  Chapter 1 of the Manusmriti explains the caste system in terms of the birth of each caste from a different body part of Lord Brahma—the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishnavas and Shudras.

  The Laws of Manu dictated that marriage should take place within the caste, and also set out the consequences for breaking the law. For example: ‘A Brahmana who takes a Shudra wife to his bed, will (after death) sink into hell; if he begets a child by her, he will lose the rank of a Brahmana.’ (V.3.17)

  In the Smritis, extramarital affairs were treated as adultery. According to Apastambha, ‘in adultery a man’s penis and testicles are to be cut off, in evil-doing with a maiden his property shall be seized, and he be banished from the land’.181

  Child marriage too became the norm rather than the exception.

  The rules below constituted the now orthodox marital practices of the Hindus.182

  1. Marriage must be completed by the recitation of mantras, performance of yagna, and pacing of the seven steps.

  2. Marriage must be within the caste and the daughter must be married before puberty.

  3. In marriage one is to avoid strictly one’s gotra, pravara and sapinda.

  4. A married woman must observe the strictest rules of chastity and remain a pativrata.

  Among the many strange laws that were framed in ancient times was one that set out the strict order in which siblings were to marry. It was unlawful for the younger sister to marry before the elder one. Further, in the case of such a marriage, ‘the husband of the younger but first married sister, and the husband of the later married elder sister must be expelled from the caste and not to be invited to the shrad ceremony’.183

  I wonder what my younger sister and her husband, who married before I did, would make of these laws!

  The third chapter of Kautilya’s important text, the Arthashastra gives us a very detailed account of the state of marriage during the time of its composition. (200 CE, though this year varies across texts. The Arthashastra was important roughly during the age of the Smritis.) In the Arthashastra, women were granted considerable independence and they had the right to own property. Both women and men were allowed to remarry, a form of restricted polygamy prevailed and inter-caste marriages and divorce (in some circumstances) too was permitted.184

  THE ARTHASHASTRA SAYS:

  If the woman engaged herself in amorous intrigues, or drinking in spite of the order of her husband, she was punished with three pana. If she went out to see another man, she was fined twelve panas. If she committed the same offences during nighttime she was fined double.

  For more serious punishment, like holding a conversation with a man in a suspicious way, whipping was prescribed.

  With The Laws of Manu began a gradual decline of the social status of women; marital practices grew steadily illiberal, and this worsened under colonial rule.

  The British often interfered with the social customs of their subjects as a means of strengthening their rule. By creating divisive personal laws, and politicizing marriage and community laws, they were able to control and keep communities apart, and ostensibly provide better administration and law and order. Under the British, there were separate marriage laws for Hindus and Muslims. Colonial laws defined property as belonging to the joint family, and individual shares were calculated on marriage and death, escalating the importance of marriage. Colonial law outlined different forms of ownership for women, including the times when women could receive gifts from their families. For example, women could only receive inheritances from their family during marriage, which made it critical that women marry with the approval of their family, or risk losing everything.

  British rule played a crucial role in strengthening arranged marriage amongst their subjects at a time when love matches were becoming common in many parts of the world. Marriage and the family at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were a hybrid product of Indian society’s encounter with colonial rule, as well as struggles internal to that society.185

  Despite colonial repression, some social changes helped improve the status of women. Raja Rammohan Roy led the movement to eradicate sati, which led to the Bengal Sati Regulation Act in 1829, and then the Widow Remarriage Act in 1856. Other significant legislation to be enacted at the time was the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, which stipulated that the minimum age of marriage be fourteen, when the mean age at marriage for females at the time was just thirteen as calculated from the 1901-1931 census data.186 Ironically, it was the same Raja Rammohan Roy who made marriage more liberal who held on to retrograde views on sex.

  Post-independence, there has been a progress in marriage legislation which has weakened the caste system, democratized marriage, and given women more rights, justice and freedom. There has also b
een a slow but steady rise in the age of marriage, though child marriages continue to take place in many parts of the country. It was only in 2006 that a new law banning child marriage was passed.

  The most important legislation on marriage has been the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, which allowed for divorce. The Special Marriage Act (reformed 1954) allowed for inter-caste marriage, and was followed by the Foreign Marriage Act, 1969, where Indians could marry other nationalities. The Hindu Married Women’s Right to Separate Residence and Maintenance Act of 1946 declared that a Hindu married woman would be entitled to a separate residence and maintenance under certain circumstances.

  LONELY HEARTS

  British rule not only brought with it an oppressive view of marriage, but also a modern way of partner hunting. Personal ads have been a popular way of finding partners for over 300 years in this country. Marriage advertisements came to India with the British. British Civil Service officers posted in remote places in the subcontinent had little hope of meeting young English women, so ads were placed in newspapers to reach the eyes of single ladies and their families.

  Indians quickly adopted this practice, and in India in the second half of the nineteenth century the methods of spouse selection through matrimonial advertisements gave a fillip to the marriage market and escalated practices such as dowry.187

  As traditional social networks weaken, the matrimonial ad is once again in vogue. It is estimated that about 2,450 crores is spent annually on newspaper matrimonial ads, and an astounding 7.5 million Indians use the internet to find partners.188

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