This post from Prakash made me think about the changing marriage system in India.

Still there are lots of arranged marriages happening in India. Majority prefer the arranged marriages. But these days, bride and groom are not compelled to marry someone whom they don’t like and the family decides upon. There are rare exceptions though. It happens in the high-class or low-class. And this is mostly because of one reason – Money. Middle-class bride and groom have more freedom compared to the other two classes in the society.

Another trend is arranged love marriages. The guy/gal just doesn’t fall in love blindly. First he/she would see how wealthy the other one is and then would “fall in love”. Such love affairs have the blessings of the family also. And then they get married in the traditional ways with dowry and stuff.

There is inter-religious marriage that is happening these days. In the last two years, 4 of my friends got married this way. 3 Christian friends (I hate to classify them on the basis of religion, but this to give you a better understanding of what I am talking about) married their Hindu lovers. 1 Hindu friend got married to a Christian girl. In these cases the wives had to accept their husbands’ religion. Hindu girls converted to Christianity and Christian girl converted to Hinduism. They say they were happy to do that because they thought it is always the best to follow the hubby’s religion to avoid any issues in the future. (What say, you girls?)

There are love marriages where the guy and gal are of the same religion too. So far all these guys are happy. I had a discussion about this with a friend if mine and we argued on some points. The youngsters have a different way of thinking and we think we are liberal. However, the society is in the same old way, especially the elder ones.

So these were the points:

When an inter-religion marriage is happened in a family, when he/she is married to someone from another caste or religion, and suppose he/she has a younger sister who would be the next bride from the family, this younger one wouldn’t get any good proposals from good families. This happens mostly in the case of women. Men are safer in this male dominated society.

Second, after the inter-married couples have a child, the problems will arise. An example was an Iyengar woman married a Christian and they lived happily after, but until a child was born. The wife was following the Christianity upto that time, but after the baby was born, she wanted to do the “upanayanam” to their child and wanted to take him to the temples. The man agreed for he didn’t want to create it as an issue and now the boy goes with Amma (mother) to temple and with Achan (father) to the church. The boy is a bit confused about which way to follow.

Another problem is created by our law. We have to fill out the columns of religion and caste in any official documents. So when a child needs to get admission in a school, and his parents still keep arguing on which belief their son should follow, what would he fill up in the form?

So now this leads to the talk whether we should demand the law should allow us to live on our own without having to fill the forms mentioning our religion and caste.