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Notes Towards a (Re)arrangement of Love

By Balmurli Natrajan

This piece originally appeared in Samar 8: Winter/Spring, 1997

Ever since Vikram Seth's grandiose novel detailing the process by which "traditional" Indian marriages take place was published, expatriate Indians have become fresh targets for even more ludicrous questioning than before. Of course, long before Seth's novel appeared on the scene, the East-West divide was mythologized and firmly in place in non-Indian minds (and duly internalized by many Indian minds), especially with regard to the manner in which marriages are made. Not in heaven of course, went the myth, but within the rigidly structured fabric unique to places like India - the family grid.

Duly deified and ossified, this monstrosity had an honored place in the "elements" that went into the making of Indian culture. Indian marriages were ontologically different from "Western" marriages not only in the way in which they were "planned," but also the manner in which they were "experienced" by the participants through their married life. And now, A Suitable Boy, by virtue of its aura of authenticity, unintentionally lends greater credence to this "ne'er the twain shall meet" worldview. Young Indian couples are at the center of this fresh interest in "Indian" marriages, and "educated" and "well-read" folks are the interrogators.

Take a typical setting such as a university gathering. Initially, things appear to be just fine. The topics circulating seem to be the "right" ones (read: non-controversial and appropriately abstract). Politics and culture are avoided and jokes keep everyone in light spirits. Until..

Well-meaning Woman (WW): So, I heard that you two got married recently?

Wife (W): Yeah, only last July.

Husband (H): Although we knew each other for about a year before that.

WW (smiling): So, was yours a love or an arranged marriage?

Trrrring! The alarm goes off in the ears of H and W. They have to face another genuinely concerned,superficially informed, and arrogantly complacent inquisitor. And they have to decide quickly whether they need to seriously engage her, or take the easy way out and plant themselves firmly on the side of "love," since in such cases the inquisitor hounds the "arranged" folks, not the "love" folks. Finally..

W (with a mischievous glint): Well, what do we look like? The "arranged" or "love" types?

WW (with blank uncomprehending look): Well, what I meant..

H (philosophically): What is love? What is arranged? Aren't all marriages arranged by someone or the other? Do you mean pre-arranged?

WW: Well, what I really meant...

W: What was yours.. I mean was your marriage "love" or "arranged?"

WW (almost indignantly): Of course, "love." I wouldn't ever be able to agree to an "arranged" one. Although I have always been fascinated by people who do it that way.

H: A-ha! So we would not fascinate you if we said that ours was a "love" marriage. Well-meaning Woman smiles nervously.

W: This may sound naive, but what is a "love" marriage?

WW: Well, it is one in which two individuals meet, fall in "love" and then get married.

H: And so what is an "arranged" marriage?

WW: That is one which you should know better. I hear it happens all the time in India. (Triumphantly) You see, I read some of your "matrimonial columns" in the Indian newspapers.

H: So, is an arranged marriage one in which two individuals don't meet, don't fall in "love" and then get married?

WW: I guess. (Hurriedly trying to veer the conversation back to its beginnings) And so what about you two?

W: (Pretending not to hear WW) What if they don't meet, but fall in "love" anyway and then get married?

WW: How ridiculous. How can one fall in "love" without meeting?

W: Well, one could have one's friends and relatives talk about the person, build up some "data" regarding his/her characteristics, process that data into information, reflect upon it, transform the information to knowledge, feel this knowledge produce goose pimples and then know that one has been smitten by "love" and is ready for marriage. In such a scenario, one's friends constantly discover that one has this faraway look in one's eyes and is prone to daydreaming - ostensibly revelling in this newfound "love."

WW: You must be joking.

W: Not at all. Isn't "data collection" what folks who meet in order to fall in "love" and then marry, do? There is even a term for it - "getting to know him/her." Right? Of course, in your scenario the couple first fall in "love" and then collect data, whereas in our scenario the couple collect data through their sources and then fall in "love." The end result in both is the much desired state of marriage.

H (helpfully): "The basis of love is knowledge" according to Erich Fromm.

WW: But it is all second-hand knowledge in the scenario you are talking about. It could be completely wrong.

H: Or it could be judged critically. It's all a matter of methodology. Sociologists and psychologists use a lot of secondary data, collected probably by someone they never knew, not their parents, relatives or friends. Yet they seem to accept it, critically of course. Then again, anthropologists collect their own data (mostly for the reason that they can't get themselves to trust others) unlike the sociologists. In the end, all of these scientists make expert pronouncements about human beings and societies and it is at this level that one gets to evaluate whether they are right or wrong.

W: Right, the proof of the data is in its eating. And that, as we all know, is marriage.

WW: (Not to be outdone) But what if the couple find out after their marriage that they are incompatible?

W (jokes) : You mean there are eating disorders. Oh, those happen all the time. Don't they happen in your scenario? What happens then?

WW (cautiously): Well, you're right. They happen all the time in my scenario. I guess, the right thing to do is to work things out, however painful they may be. But sometimes they are just impossible to work out

W: So, what I hear you saying is that despite gathering first-hand data, the couple could find themselves "incompatible" to the extent that they have to break up? Then what happens to all the "love?" And more importantly, how did the data fail them?

WW: I see your point. All that "love" is not enough to sustain a marriage. Then what is?

W: Well, it is not my point that "love" does not sustain a marriage. Instead, we must question what this "love" is in the first place. If one falls in "love," is it also possible to fall out of "love?" If so, since one marries because one falls in "love," then should not one separate because one falls out of it?

WW: Hmm..

H: Marriage should have more of a basis than the fact of being in "love." This does not mean that one need not be in "love" (and let's not split hairs about being in "love" and loving). It just means that the "arranged" part of our discussion needs to be properly understood too.

WW (thanking her good fortune at this opportunity): So what does "arranged" marriage mean?

H (unforgivingly): Remember that these were your terms in the first place. Actually, I nowadays hear another set of terms being employed-"arranged" and "free-choice" marriages. I guess folks finally caught up with the insidious nature of the opposition, "arranged" and "love" marriages, namely, that such an opposition excludes "love" within arranged marriages by definition, not after empirical observation. Contrasting "arranged" marriages with "free-choice" marriages admittedly allows, in the imagination of the fascinated observer, for the possibility of "love" creeping into an "arranged" marriage at some point at least. But the shoe has merely been switched to the other foot.

WW: What do you mean?

H: If "love" is grudgingly allowed to be a possibility within "arranged" marriages, then the same consideration is not given to "arrangements" being a possibility within "love" marriages. I mean, by redefining "love" marriages as "free-choice" marriages, the element of "arrangement" which arguably also pervades "love/free-choice" marriages, remains repressed.

WW (shocked): You mean, that in your view, my marriage could also be seen as an "arranged" marriage?

W (jumping in): Why not? An old aunt of mine used to say, "Beware of people using the word "free" to define something or someone. It always seeks to hide the unfreedom within." And so I believe that "free-choice" is only as "free" as "free-trade," or "free labor." If the marriages in this country were really "free-choice" and "love-untainted-by-arrangement," then shouldn't we see a much higher rate of inter-class, inter-race, inter-religious, even inter-regional marriages? "Falling in love" does not happen in a vacuum.

If one of the criteria for "falling in love" is that the two people meet, and if we assume that workplace romances are not the rule, then what situations are left in which the couple may fall in love? Obviously, the folks one gets to hang out with, or gets introduced to through some mutual friend or relative, or better still through the ubiquitous "dating services" (some of which appear on TV!). And all these situations are already "arranged" at least within race and class limits.

WW (incredulously): But who "arranges" "love" marriages?

H: Well. If it seems to be the "family" in Indian marriages, then it could also be the "family" in American marriages. But since with the latter there is so much more mobility and possibly more insistence on "independence" from parents, etc., one must look for more subtle "arrangers" in "love" marriages. Social institutions for example. Schools, churches, social clubs, the media.

From the 1960s film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to the 1990s film Jungle Fever, we all understand that society does not allow strictly random matchmaking! One is "free" to fall in "love," but usually with the provision that that someone is from a similar background as oneself. And this is in a country where English as one's first language still acts as some kind of a homogenizer of the population (not to speak of McDonalds and the credit card culture).

How much more provisional must "love" be in countries such as India where there are numerous first languages? I guess we're not that different after all..

Just at this point when the husband-wife duo seem to be taking the bull by the horns, the party starts breaking up and someone comes to rescue the well-meaning woman from her discomfiture. Pleasantries are exchanged, and people go their ways.

H and W are left with a feeling that they had to defend their position once again and smile knowing that they are getting better at it.

Balmurli Natrajan is presently writing up his dissertation on the workings of power in the "development" of artisans in central India based on his fieldwork. He is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Iowa.

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