Love vs Arranged marriage - One of the most popular topics for debate among the current bloggers, mostly dominated by the ones who are pissed off by the age old tradition of parents deciding the spouse of their children. Few of these blogs really got me into some serious contemplation, and one of those blogs is:
http://www.unusualpointsonlove.blogspot.comThe one common thing that I always found in such blogs is that the author in favor of love marriage always fail to capture the parent's point of view and (un)knowingly tend to showcase them as those mindless, insensitive brute who have no feelings at all for their children. I have a slightly different opinion regarding this.
When the parents hold their new born child in their hand for the first time, their feelings is just inexplicable. Marveling this miracle of nature, they decide to give the best to their child. Right from then till the child grows up and gets ready to live his/her life by self, the parents live for them fulfilling their demands and necessities whatever way they can. Now once the child grows up, is it really too much on their part if they expect a say in what spouse their child should get?
When the child comes to them saying that they "have decided" to marry that particular person, they have suddenly taken away this right from their parents. Yes, the child has to spend the entire life with that spouse, but they are not the only one who will be impacted by this decision. I see marriage as not something that's between two individuals, but between two families and hence, the decision should be taken considering the opinion of all the stake holders.
Having a look at the current day's scenarios that I have come across, parents have not just outrightly rejected the choice as long as the child is not of the same caste/religion. I agree that love doesn't care about these factors but yes the parents do. As I was thinking about the reasons for this, the only one that I could find was to ensure that when two families tie this wedding knot, they try to ensure that each of the couple does not feel that they landed into a different world when they visit their in-laws and thus adapt to the new life easily. Sounds reasonable though not correct always in all of the cases.
More the parents are "social" in the so called societies for the upliftment of their own caste/religion, the more difficult it is for them to agree to go out of it. It's no more a question of trusting the judgment of the child whom they themselves have taught and brought up, but its about giving up the beliefs that they themselves have lived with for their entire life.
I don't blame the parents for it but the society in which they live in. Yes, the society is formed coz of such individuals but the amount of courage it needs for people to pioneer such change is too much as there is a lot of pressure from the already formed "society" by their ancestors. Its not easy for each and everyone of them to become "the black sheep".
The change is happening and reforms don't happen in a single day. Gone are the days when parents used to choose whom their child would marry, and the couple used to meet for the first time only after marriage. Today, the process for arranged marriage is much different than what it used to be a century back and the discretion of individual getting married is considerably taken. The casteism is diluted a lot since what it was about that time and as the time comes, as the current people debating for the love marriage/inter-caste marriage become parents of marriageable children, the society is going to change further.
Marriage is nothing but compromise and it takes two mature people to make it a success and two immature to make it a failure doesn't matter if its a love or arranged one. Whoever finds the would be spouse first, whether parents or child, it should be positively taken by the other and the decision should be considered well by both of them.
