The Curse of India’s Marriage Culture
‘As a girl is born, it is understood that she has to get married one day or the other. She has to leave her parents. She has to go to her in-laws’ place. That is fixed’
- A Suitable Girl
This, in essence, is the culture of marriages in our country.
Not the celebration of the union of two people, but India’s marriage culture is dominated by how women must leave their homes, must leave their families behind one day, and must move to another home.
Since childhood, girls are raised and honed in a way that will one day, help them run their own households after they get married, and that to not get married by a certain age is life’s biggest failure. Emphasis on education, career, and self-worth are concepts most of India’s society still struggles with, in the context of women.
‘Why must you work after marriage?’
‘I want to continue with my job if my in-laws allow’
‘Will you even need a job after you get married? Your husband will earn enough. Who will look after the children?’
Girls are taught that the day of their wedding is supposed to be, and will be, the most important day of their lives. Nothing they do before that day holds, because they will discontinue it anyway after marriage. A job, a career, a hobby- these things naturally come to an end after marriage, we are told.
In India, people cry at weddings- these people are mostly family members of the bride who weep not out of happiness, but due to the tradition that forces women to ‘leave’ her own family to go live with the husband’s family. The ‘vidaai’ ceremony, is nothing but that. Family members line up to bid goodbye to the newly-married woman because she is not only joining her husband in matrimonial bliss, but instead moving on to adjust to another family’s lifestyle and customs. She now ‘belongs’ to someone else.
India’s culture over the centuries has normalized these customs for women- a life of adjustment, sacrifice, compromise, duty towards family, and household.
Tradition dictates that first, we belong to our fathers, then to our husbands. How might we live a life on our own terms? This toxic culture is designed to have a woman ‘owned’ in every phase of her life, to seek permission from an authority for anything she might want to do.
These traditions cut across the rural-urban divide; rich families in urban cities, like their counterparts in small towns and villages, are also looking for fair, thin girls who can cook- basically a domestic help in the guise of a daughter-in-law.
This society wants me to believe that my parents are not my first priority after my marriage. Women must look after families they married into because now they belong there. Priorities change after marriage, but only for women.
And then they ask me, what do you have against Indian culture?
Oh, well.
