Of Romance and Marriages

Last week we had profiled the writer and journalist, Usha Mahajan’s unique journey in her career of the written word. Here she gives her take on marriages in modern India, drawing from her research on the subject over two decades ago and comparing that to the scenario as it exists today. She argues that love and romance are missing in marriages even among the educated, encouraging introspection into an institution so highly regarded by us Indians.

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While on a K.K. Birla Foundation fellowship over two decades ago, my research centered around the pattern of marriages in urban India. The primary cause of unhappiness in marriages was attributed to insane dowry demands, even leading to dowry deaths. Strangely, there was no mention of love or romance in the marriages in any of the case studies that I conducted in different parts of the country.

Recently, I attended a workshop on ‘The Urban Landscape of Love and Marriage: A study of the middle class in Delhi’ by Parul Bhandari, a post-doctoral Fellow with the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi. Parul completed her PhD in 2014 on the processes of spouse-selection in middle class India and based her study in Delhi.

Parul’s middle class is neither the lower middle class, nor the upper middle class. It’s the middle middle-class and the men and women of her case studies are from IIT, IIM and multinational companies These privileged individuals don’t go to Lodhi Gardens, Haldirams or metro stations for their dalliances. They go to upscale cafés and restaurants and have no qualms about having multiple partners. However, when it comes to marriage, the parents’ consent would be central to their decision.

When asked – “Who has the upper hand in deciding about the marriage?”, she frankly admits it’s the boys’ prerogative. “And what about the ever escalating number of divorce cases pending in the courts of metropolitan India?”

She affirms that when she met the couples after two years, many of them had filed for divorce.

When asked what the reasons could be, underneath these divorces, she answers that in most cases it’s the interference by the spouse’s parents. It seems not much has changed in the dynamics of urban middle class marriages. Parental interference continues to micromanage marriages and subsequently disintegrate them. So where does that leave love and romance? Perhaps at a corner table of a swanky café.

This post was first published on Usha Mahajan’s blog. Click here for the link.