Recently I read the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray. This book is a must read for every man and woman, who are or planning to be, in a relationship. This book highlights how poor our understanding is of opposite sex. Now this book is written by an American and as we know America is a very open society as compared to us when it comes to communication between men and women. Still American people have less understanding of opposite sex, you can imagine in what great abyss we Indian people are.
So , continuing from my last article, how arrange marriage promotes lack of interaction. We all want to interact with opposite sex but still we follow the restrictions of our society and elders. Why we do not revolt against this ? Its simple, because arrange marriage is easy way out. If we have to look for a good girl for ourselves it is hard work. Where you can't even interact with a women it is almost impossible. So we take the lollipop(arrange marriage) from our elders, simple. You may be the most unattractive man with most deriding opinion about women , still you can get the brightest and the prettiest woman for you if you are powerful, or have money or good job, by arrange marriage. For the women it is like sleeping with the enemy. Arranged marriage is highly tilted towards men, power and money(dowry). It is highly undemocratic because it kills our freedom to choose.
Arranged marriage is tool in the hands of our society to control younger people. Yes younger people should be controlled but by moral principles, and not at the cost of freedom. Parents want arranged marriage so that they have better control of the lives of their kids. But this controlling comes at the cost of happiness. Neither husband wife are happy with each other nor their parents are happy with them. It is not that parents want to do this for the welfare of their kids. If that is the case why they disown or even ready to kill their own kids when kids marry by their own choice. Sometimes people say I am doing arrange marriage by my own choice, but saying this is illogical. It is something like a women wearing Burqa saying that it is my choice, or Sachin Tendualkar saying that I wear helmet by my choice to face fast bowlers. Sunil Gavaskar made his choice and wore a cap and faced the most lethal pace attack of West-Indies bowlers. A choice means you have other options also.
There are other social issues promoted and protected by arranged marriage like dowry, castism, racism, regionalism, women discrimination, child abuse etc. We can not outrightly reject this institution because at present for most of the people this is the only way to get married. The first step towards removing this very bad institution is to stop men, women segregation. There should be no non co-education school. Men and women should be segregated only at places of extreme difficulties like local bus or Mumbai local train, otherwise not. I don't see these things happenning in near future. I finish this article by just saying one thing that I am sure, I'll not impose my rule over my child or any other child.
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You are incredibly naive to believe that the US is an open society. It is the most conservative, closed, Christian fundamentalist, stupid and retrograde society in the world and relations between men and women are worse than those in India. I would also be careful using words like "moral principles." These are usually propagated by the Hindu Right and are sick. Also, your examples of "choice" are poor. A burqa can be worn out of choice as also a helmet and as also arranged marriage. The argument is not to say that this is a form of false consciousness but to say that choices are limited by historical circumstances and choices have reprecussions for oneself as for others.
ReplyDeleteYes I am naive but I still don't believe I am wrong. My experience about US may not be first hand but I have no reason yet, to doubt my second hand experiences. And I have made only one comment that there is more open communication between man and woman than here in India.
ReplyDeleteBy "moral principles" I don't mean any heavy stuff but simple things like truth and honesty. You think Hindu right is sick but I do not think so. As I am fan of your writings I am also fan of writings of Francois Gautier, Rajeeve Srinivasn (both from rediff.com) and Arun Shauri. They are far more reasonable than those leftists and communists.
Let me elaborate on my example. One can hit his head on the wall by choice but when he is forced to do so, will it be a choice ?
My argument is, a choice no longer remains a choice when it is enforced. I give you an example. Today in Tamilnadu and all over south India kids in school learn Hindi by choice. And we know what happened when Indira Gandhi made it compulsory. There was huge opposition in Tamilnadu. Similarly a helmet worn is by Sachin is for security reasons, and 'Burqa' also is forced upon Musilm women around the world, including India by religious groups.
You can recall the Jamiat-e- Ulema Hind, conference where "Vande Mataram" controversy happened and where Chidambaram and Baba Ramdev also went. They(the Jamiat) declared that Muslim women are bringing lot of indignity to our houses, so they must wear 'Burqa'. In troubled areas like Kashmir where terrorists take the religious authority, they have even thrown acid on faces of women for not wearing burqa. My point is 'Burqa' ceases to be a choice because it is being forced and so is arranged marriage. It would be 'naive' to believe that women wear burqa by choice. They are all hypocrites who say that.
“Make-up”, a predominantly women activity. They spend lot of time and energy on this and you say that after hours in front of mirror they “wear burqa by choice”. Oh, come on!