EXPLOITING AN UNJUST ADVANTAGE Arranged Marriages: What indeed is wrong with them? (In Response to the June 1990 [vol. 4, No. 3] India Currents editorial) A US-educated, professional son of one of our family friends was back in India, on a short trip, to get married. His parents have lined up an array of choices, and he made a "selection." The place was abuzz with veiled praise for him--how "nice", "dutiful" and "untainted" he was by the foregin influence that he was coming back to respect the marital norms of his culture! The strong underlying consensus was that there cannot be much wrong with a system that is endorsed by such a well-educated and well-traveled person as he. It set me thinking. Is this person really making a conscious choice? Or is he just taking an easy way out? Is his decison purely personal? Or does it strongly endorse and perpetuate an unjust system of sex-inequality? What, if anything, is wrong with arranged marriages? It is indeed naive to blame them or any single isolated social practice as the root of all evil in Indian society. And yes, it is the skewed and sexist value system that lies at the root of inhuman atrocities such as bride burnings. However, is there any doubt that arranged marriages, as practised by the multitude around me--from a village clerk to a Silicon Valley professional--clearly endorse and perpetuate the existing sex-inequalities in the Indian society? In defense of arranged marriage, I often hear the argument that there is nothing wrong with a non-coercive arranged marriage. Indeed! However, such an argument implicitly paints a picture of two well-informed adults voluntarily entering a marital contract that just happens to have been "arranged." How many of the vast majority of arranged marriages that take place in our midst here or in India really fit into this picture? We have all been witness to the specter of "3-way ticket" marriage where a single professional man on an impromptu three week visit to India, manages to return back with a bride a-stride. How is such a superhuman feat of finding a life partner??, under pressure and time deadlines, accomplished with such unnerving regularity? Is it really because of their personality and inter-personal skills? Or is it their biased worth in a sexist society which enables them to parade 10-20 women in front of their houses at their mere whim, and gives them a clear upper hand in the ensuing decisions? Do such marriages work really because of the much touted maturity of mutual compromises and reduced expectations? Or is it the manifest marginalization of an entire gender that fuels them? Where indeed is the equality or non-coercive consensuality in such a system? When pressed for reasons, my friends who opted for this system of marriage always talk about the "convenience". Whose convenience are they really talking about? Let us not forget for a moment that the convenience of having potential suitors line up in droves as soon as one shows conjugal tendencies is limited mostly to males. Arranged marriage was never "convenient" for women (unless one considers being paraded in front of leering strangers, being asked inane questions, and if selected being uprooted and whisked off like so much of personal-luggage, very convenient). And guess what, it will not be any more inconvenient for them when a more equal system takes its place. About the only people who will be affected are the stupendously busy professionals of this world who will actually have to spend some real time trying to find a partner, and forego the "luxury" of the three-week trip marriages. Finding a partner was never meant to be a cake-walk in an equal society. It is a child's play for Indian males only because they are exploiting an advantage given to them by an unjust and unequal society. Is one not perpetuating the unjust societal norms of sexism and inequality by ones eager exploitation of such advantages? I am persuaded that the practise of arranged marriages continues unabated even among the educated and well-informed Indians, not really because of conscious choice, but largely because men know that marriage is really an easy trade in which they have ALL the options, and choose to exploit those options. Equally importantly, it continues because WE, the bystanders, choose to endorse the practice, or turn the other way, when it is practised in our own midst. Many of my friends remonstrate, saying that while they are all for a more equal society, they believe that the atrocious facets of sexism such as "bride burning" are a result, not of the arranged marriage system per se, but of the skewed societal values. True. But should that not in fact impel us all to energetically discourage and withhold endorsement to the very practices such as arranged marriage that so manifestly perpetuate that skewed social policy? In what other way, pray tell, does the social policy change? Lest the whole argument be trivialized as yet another attempt to demarcate the "arranged" and "love" marriage systems, let me try to make my position clear. The issue that should concern us is not necessarily the "arrangedness" of a marriage, but how well-informed and consensual is the decision of the participants? How far is it perpetuating or endorsing the unjust societal norms? How far is it exploiting the boons of a biased societal structure? The issue facing us is not about how to choose between two sharply divided systems of marriage, but about the need for a conscious, rather than tradition-bound, choice among a continuum of possibilities. While it is naive to expect an immediate and large scale change in the centuries old marital practises of a society as large and diverse as India, is it too much to expect the "educated" populace to be better informed? We reexamine our accents and dress codes after coming face to face with a new culture; should we not do the same for our actions? When we endorse a social practice that requires a man to spend significantly less time for getting married than for buying an automobile; a practise, which in its most popular form, thrives on the marginalization of an entire gender, it is over-sanguine to expect that the deep-rooted inequalities between the sexes will disappear as a matter of course. Let not our indifference take us to a stage where the abhorrent atrocity of a burning bride is the only injustice that can enrage our sense of equality... --------------------- Subbarao Kambhampati is a research associate with CDR and Computer Science Department at Stanford University.