From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 91 23:08:15 PDT

Path: leland.Stanford.EDU!stanford.edu!sunrise!rao
>From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Response to Ravikumar's question on Arranged Marriages
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 Jul 91 04:47:05 GMT
References: <[email-masked]>
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Lines: 115

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (C.P.
Ravikumar) writes:
>
>While you are at it, Subbarao, could you explain why you
>think the dichotomy is stupid? In the Indian context, 
>what other points are there in the "spectrum"?
>Hoping to be educated,

Ooops Ravi. Didn't mean to run away without giving some sort of answer
to you! Can't run the risk of losing my berth on the cultural volume
thingie, y'know.
 
The following are the edited excerpts from my answer to this question
(there were several others who said more interesting things :-()
during the last year's discussion.  Further questions, directed to me
will be answered via e-mail.

Rao [hastily trying to tie up a few loosends ;-)]

ps: I would like to request that all those who, during the recent
    threads, have made very many inferences on what Rao's position 
    on arranged marriages is, to do me the favour of glancing at the 
    second part. Think of it as a parting favor, if you will. It doesn't
    contain any panaceas of a panjandrum, *but* at least they are 
    what I said in reality.
     
I. On why the dichotomy is stupid:
------------------------------

   It is considered a strawman because many people use it to justify
all variations (good, bad as well as ugly) of arranged marriage, since
the only other possibility, love marriage, is by definition impossible
in India. But unfortunately, we all know that the equivalence of all
versions of arranged marriages is a myth! There is a definite
difference between someone who goes home for 3 weeks, parades some ten
women, and exploits every ounce of advantage of a chavunist society,
and another person, who does his/her best to avoid sexism to the
extent possible (may be by not parading women, may be by not thinking
of marriage as yet another thing to be ticked off in his todo things,
may be by electing to invest more than the usual 3 weeks). It is
exactly this spectrum of well and ill informed possibilities that many
people, including me, were trying to bring to light. No where in the
discussion were arranged marriages denounced as completely wrong, nor
were any magic solutions proposed.

Now you may say "what is the big deal, I and everyone I know already
do this." That is great sir! But, contrary to the popular supposition
that ill informed arranged marriages take place only in some villages
near Peddapuram, let me assure you that they do take place (in quite
large numbers) even in the midst of the so called creme de la creme.
During some round the table discussion among some personal friends
>from various IIT's, we realized that a staggeringly large number of
people that we know from these places (many of them from cities like
Madras and Bombay--which even the net.sophisticates may not consider
as "rural/crude" as peddapuram!)  have gone through some of the most
ill-informed of the Arranged marriages (a few even had taken dowry!)
All of them could easily have done better, if they didn't close
themselves to all other possibilities.

II. On the other points in the spectrum: "THE POSITION"
------------------------------------------------------

My main point is NOT that stopping arrangedmarriages will magically
make the society better. It is NOT that everyone embracing that
practise is a fulminating fiend in human shape. It is NOT even that
there cannot be any good "arranged marriages" or that the mere
presence of people other than the couple in the decision making
process makes the marriage black and white BAD.

It IS that the prevalent practise leaves a lot to be desired, and that
being a group of people who had been given the most chance to change
and question our conditionings, we should consciously weigh the
ramifications of our endorsement of the prevalent system against any
temporary convenience such a system gives us. This attempt to "think"
consciously about the problem and how your own actions exacerbate or
ameliorate it is really the first step towards change! 

We may not all completely disavow the prevalent system. But I am sure,
all of us will make variations in it that will reduce the sexism
involved in the practise [Mayhaps, some of us might decide NOT to
parade people, NOT to try to complete the Search-and-Consummation in
under a week, to reorder our priorities in life to reduce our
endorsement of malicious practises--and who knows, might even feel
damn thrilled with it all!].

[[The last few sentences above are the beginnings of my answer to the much
advertised question "But what really are the choices of poor NRIs?"
The right question is not whether they have any choices (they do), but
whether they have tried to take a careful look at the choice space. If
we artificially prune the search space with inflexible constraints
such as you HAVE to get married acc. our parent's wishes, HAVE to do so in
under 10 days, and HAVE TO get married right after MS just before
joining JOB so we can maximize visa chances and so on and on and on,
it is no darned surprise that we have no more choices than
doing the least time consuming, if most ill-informed thing.]

The ensuing minor changes in the norm will go a long way in setting
good examples in the prevalent tradition-bound society. If nothing
else, individuals trying to fight the system in India would not have
to worry about the question "So why is arranged marriage which served
Ajay Palvayantheeswaran, that much educated and much traveled
gentahlman from pittsburgh, is particularly distasteful to your royal
highness??".

How do I know people don't do this  consciously right now? I can't go into
peoples minds, of course. But, the astounding uniformity in the
marital practises of the people surrounding me gives me little
rational basis to believe that there is any conscious introspection
involved in their decisions.

--------------
'nuff said.