Ms
Sunetra Choudhury’s article on ‘Let love, not parents, arrange marriage[1]’ set me thinking about a
couple of things. First, we must compliment her for her opinion on the khap
panchayats that seem to have taken law into their own hands by dealing death
blows to love birds – literally. For the ‘crime’ of crossing the diktats of
their society and foraying into the territory of someone else’s heart, young
lives seem to be sacrificed at the altar of ‘biradari ka izzat’. Even foreign terrorists
crossing into national borders do not get such ‘justice’ swiftly! Reprehensible
in an age when we must be renouncing the superstitious ways of yester years so
as to be able to apply reason to our actions.
The
gong of rebellion that Ms Sunetra sounded on the parents’ aspiration to have
their wards married as per parents’ choice is interesting. Only, it appears
that the gong is being sounded on a surreal issue, leaving the woods for the
tree as they say. The author feels strongly that ‘every time one of us, educated,
supposedly independent, individuals agrees to marry someone not of our own
choosing, someone we don’t love, we are silently condoning those who kill to
oppose the concept of love marriage’.
I
am confident that she is familiar with the concept of ‘honor killing’ that
takes place in Pakistan; the practices in Africa (mostly, but other places on
Earth are no more holy) where the reproductive and mammary organs of women are mutilated;
trafficking on women and girl children; Malala Yusufzai and other such
issues/stories. Every such issue has at its heart a social malaise – in our
case the caste system – call it by whatever name, which prompts crude reactions
from society. The villain of the story is not parents per se. It is our meek
acceptance of the diktats of the so-called-society which cries foul in the name
of blood thirst and vengeance garbed as they are in the name of ‘biradari’ and
‘izzat’. Far from being secular and tolerant, we as a country have always
devised ever-new methods to uphold and validate caste. We just need to look
around to find that we have caste in our education, employment, career, grants
from government, political parties, vote bank alignments, etc, etc. Such an all
pervading phenomena that is whole-heartedly accepted and exploited is bound to
have its incarnations in the form of khap panchayats. The fact is all these
khaps are on caste-lines.
The
parents of the boy or girl are just pawns in the game of caste. A low caste
girl running away with high caste boy or vice versa is just another platform on
which the malaise called caste is epitomized. A poor agricultural labor kind of
the runaway boy or girl is always crucified (surprisingly not the rich and
powerful, irrespective of their caste) to demonstrate the power of ‘jaath’. The
parents of the victims have two choices – be silenced or sacrificed on the same
altar. In most cases, they remain silenced perhaps for the sake of other living
siblings or for fear of ostracization.
Second,
any average parent in our context spends his or her entire productive life
bringing up and looking after their children. The kind of trials and
tribulations that a middle class parent undertakes in ‘parenting’ is to be seen
in this country to be believed. It appears therefore too insensitive to trash
them and say ‘what do you know about love?’. If they had thought similarly,
perhaps most of us wouldn’t be the children of whom we are! It is also
insensitive to think that by not agreeing to our newly discovered ‘love of
life/soul mate’, they are showing any less love or understanding towards the
aspirations of the children.
Love
marriages and even the so called ‘live in’ marriages are not new phenomena of
this era. There are thousands of love marriages that have lasted decades.
Similarly, there are ‘arranged’ marriages that are decades old and going
strong. Marriage is an institution that grows strong with time. What nurtures a
marriage is not the ‘love’ that we discover during the course of few months of courting.
It is nurtured by the acceptance of the differences that we see in each other
through understanding. Please do not forget that a boy or a girl in love always
project the best in them during their courtship (that too only during the
sporadic meetings that they indulge in). But once they are married, it is not
feasible to keep up the charade of good and romantic behavior always. They both
will see each other as they are. They also will see the families on either side
as they are. This reality that they see is not what they saw during courtship. It
is at this juncture that many of the marriages that we see breaking around us
break. Not because the parents had ‘withheld their blessing’ but because of
their inherent incompatibility. Successful marriage therefore has, at least in
my opinion, nothing to do with being arranged or by love. Incidentally, falling
in love with an ‘arranged’ husband is not any more difficult than in discerning
the ‘real husband’ from the ‘lover boy’!
In
nutshell, learning to love what is arranged, whether by parents or on our own,
is the key to a ‘lovely’ married life!
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