It has been, and would be said that “Marriages are decided and performed in heaven”. Does this statement hold true in present days’ context? Nobody can ever answer precisely to this question. However, pondering on our own experiences, we have unique answers and views based on individual personalities.
Coming to the point; we as individuals would have undergone certain issues in relations. Those relations may have popped up suddenly, after much interaction or through arranged ways in familial channels. How far those relations stand up to the expectations in us, and for the society at large?
If we consider the Indian context, earlier we used to have arranged marriages through familial channels that were considered the only way to seek a marriage relation. Moreover, it was considered pure. Again, nobody used to go out of their caste or religion to seek a relation. Since India has been a mixture of cultures that includes various castes, creed, and religion, each one used to have their own way of performing a marriage.
In this age of Information Technology, due to the globalization around the world, there is huge immigration and emigration of people to various places, where they become part of those places and culture; eventually, leading to exchange of ideas, information, cultural etiquettes and beliefs. Apparently, this has led to the push in acquiring and adopting new ideas of liberalism that speaks more about freedom and expression. Moreover, this has given rise to inter-religion and inter-caste marriages, which is a wonderful development.
Again, the idea of liberalism varies from culture-to-culture. Earlier days, few societies in Kerala and Meghalaya, used to practice strong Matriarchal form of society, where the bridegroom used to migrate to his bride’s home. However, in most of the other parts of India, it is strong Patriarchal form of society, where the bride migrates to groom’s place. Observing these two cases, the ideas of people do differ based on regions along with marriage. These societies still do practice, however prospective generations are slowly drifting towards changing the idea of marriage in their respective societies. We can see that women have high hand in Matriarchal society, while gents have in Patriarchal society. So, if any change is sought in respective societies contrary to what has been followed, leads to liberal ideas and transformation. This gives rise to liberalism, which is eventually seeking relation out of their societies or communities.
In this cosmopolitan culture, people go for love marriages which pop out of their liberalistic thoughts. However, to know each other better, they would be in live-in relations before they step in for permanent relation i.e., Marriage. This is not the case of Arranged Marriages, where brides and grooms would interact only for few minutes to hours, ultimately leading to fixing of the marriage.
In whatever way, the marriage is performed, it has to be fruitful. This is the relation that comes in the middle of our life and lasts till the end of our life. As both of them are of different views and ideas, they have to respect each other’s ideas, feelings and adjust accordingly. One must not seek for privacy or individual freedom when one is in a relation like Marriage. We need to subsidize our egoistic attitude to keep up the relation. Because, if the marriage relation is fruitful, it would directly affect the society in positive manner since it is the unit of society.
