Month: July 2020

Arranged or otherwise, marriage in modern India continues to be bound by rigid social-economic-caste structures

While marriage remains an inevitable goal in most societies and certainly in our own, a new generation of Indian women is changing the rules(Shutterstock)

One critic calls it “this year’s scariest horror show about arranged marriages”. And on social media, there is a raging storm over sexism, casteism, colourism and other isms.

As Netflix’s eight-episode reality show, Indian Matchmaking (IM) kicks off, the conversation about the business of arranged marriages has gathered pace.

IM doesn’t claim a reformist cloak. Executive producer Smriti Mundhra calls it an “unscripted, fun, crazy, light look on the surface of the Indian marriage industrial complex.” It’s an industry that places a premium on women who are fair, tall, “slim-trim”, and, above all, “flexible”. Families must be “respectable”. After all, alliances are not between individuals, but families. One eager mum tells her son she’s looking for “someone to take care of you”. The son, no surprise, is looking for someone like mummy.

And yet, IM underplays the seedier underbelly of the marriage market. Dowry, for instance, is excised from the show. And non-conforming clients include a single mom as well as a Catholic man who says he’s open to meeting women from other religions. In one case, the match-maker introduces a woman who is seven years older than her prospective groom.

Reality is far grimmer. Arranged or otherwise, marriage in modern India continues to be bound by rigid social-economic-caste structures. The National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 found less than 13% of respondents had inter-caste marriages (just 2.6% for inter-religious). When young people exercise agency and rebel against family, caste and religion, the result can be a so-called honour killing — 251 in 2015. As caste-based societies modernise, there is greater wealth dispersion and this leads to dowries going up, finds another 2003 study. Ergo, the pull-no-stops big fat Indian wedding.

But while marriage remains an inevitable goal in most societies and certainly in our own, a new generation of Indian women is changing the rules.

An online survey of 10,005 respondents across 184 cities and towns by YouGuv-Mint-CPR found that a majority of women (68%) want to marry, but nearly two of three want love marriages. Some 61% said the ideal marriage age is between 26 and 30 and only nine per cent wanted three or more children. The study ties in with India’s largest survey of teenage girls. In 2018, 74,000 teenage girls across 600 districts were asked about their aspirations: 70% wished to pursue higher studies and 73% wanted to marry after 21, after they got jobs, found Naandi Foundation which conducted the survey.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence then that IM’s strongest characters are women: The 34-year-old lawyer from Houston unafraid of voicing her strong opinions, the self-made Delhi-based entrepreneur, and the sunny Guyanese wedding planner. IM is regressive, but not more than the patriarchy that governs the rules of marriage. “Spending time with myself is what I enjoy the most,” realises the Delhi entrepreneur. There is a happily ever after, even if it’s not the way society, or match-makers, might imagine.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal

Gendered language is not just an annoyance. It can harm

Facebook’s 71 gender options, including the two-spirit person, are a stretch. But “they”, used by singular non-binary gender identity people, was Merriam-Webster’s word of 2019 and India has recognised “other” as an official gender since 2014(Shutterstock)

Last week, my friend Kanta Singh took issue with a retired bureaucrat for his tweet on how civil servants must “evolve in a manner that those who want to corrupt him aren’t able to muster the courage to do so. His conscience must be his firewall”.

Kanta’s objection wasn’t the content. “Will request you to write a more inclusive language,” she tweeted. The objection is not irrelevant. Of the 700 officers working in the central government at the joint secretary level and above as of June 2019, 134 (19.14%) were women.

The use of the male pronoun to describe a group ends up invisibilising women. God is a solid, upper case He. And he/him/his are default settings for all manner of truisms: “A man is the sum of his actions,” (Mahatma Gandhi) or, “Technology is the nature of modern man,” (Octavio Paz) — but “mankind” excludes half of humanity.

Facebook’s 71 gender options, including the two-spirit person, are a stretch. But “they”, used by singular non-binary gender identity people, was Merriam-Webster’s word of 2019 and India has recognised “other” as an official gender since 2014. Yet, we instinctively veer towards gendered language.

Even newer words reinforce bias: Mompreneurs (ever heard of dadpreneurs?) and career women, never career men. Girl boss infantilises women and reminds us that bosses are male unless otherwise stated. Stay-home dads are hailed as exceptional unlike stay-home moms who seem to follow an inbuilt biological code.

Those who fight for equal rights are feminazis, a word that belittles not us but the victims of the Holocaust. If you object, of course, you’re a humourless feminist, or worse, a rabid one.

And, yet, women have their own words too. Manel should shame event organisers who can’t find equally qualified women to invite. I prefer “unpaid care work” to the homier “housework” to describe the endless labour of cooking, cleaning and caring done predominantly by women.

Gendered language is not just an annoyance. It can harm. In his book, Discretion, Discrimination and the Rule of Law, Mrinal Satish studied 100 Supreme Court and 700 high court rape cases to find judgments peppered with words like “concubine”, “shocking liar”, “honour” and even “deathless shame” to describe rape survivors.

A Karnataka High Court judge’s comments on the behaviour of a rape survivor — it was “unbecoming” of an Indian woman to fall asleep after being “ravished” — while hearing a bail matter merely followed a long tradition of sexist language in court judgments. But the uproar was new and led to the welcome expunging of his remarks.

Meanwhile, Hindustan Unilever has been mulling over words, too. In an apparent nod to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as sustained agitation against a product that exploits gendered norms of beauty, the makers of Fair & Lovely cream, declared that it was dropping the word “fair”. The renamed product: Glow & Lovely. The change in nomenclature isn’t fooling anyone. Fair by any other name still remains “fair”.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal