Marriage, Divorce and living together in Desi-land
Marriage, Divorce and living together in Desi-land Print
Politics
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

By Zachary Latif

 

Divorce and living together pre-marriage still seem fairly uncommon in India (let's not even touch on the rest of the subcontinet) though Omar Abdullah seems to be ending his marriage to marry a divorcee journalist, who’s had two live-in relationships (that should be a huge step forward for this sort of thing in India I guess).

 

Since the hit film “Mere Brother Ki Dulhan” is a very very clever play on the need to “save face” and marital expectations in modern India; I thought I would share a few thoughts on it.

 

As I’ve said before that Pakistanis really need the Indian economy (Ali Zafar, Atif Aslam following Adnan Sami’s footsteps) otherwise they’ll come off as hopelessly insular; Karachi after all is a poor man’s Bombay (I think pre-partition Lahore was the “bigger city” than Delhi but with the intellectual and economic flight of Punjabi Hindu & Sikhs to New Delhi that may no longer be the case).

 

Anyway I think India has reached a tipping point in its economic wealth (and oligarchic wealth) that the level of sophistication is building quite dramatically; for instance the Nehru centre in London has artistic and cultural events on constantly.

 

Muslims are too encumbered by their traditions (or if they lose their religion they go entirely the other way, by becoming super super-decadent; annoyingly so in fact) whereas I think Indians have a good balance. Though of course there are some very retrograde features about the Indian community particularly regarding inter-marriage (but that’s breaking down); it seems its very difficult for Indian girls to “marry out”.

 

This is all observational of course but I have noticed the pressure to “marry within” is the worst affliction affecting the Brown community because the optimal pairing is Western man – Desi Woman. Desi woman, who are outspoken and opinionated, make a mistake trying to go for Desi men, who are too mother-coddled, to appreciate such strong women (agreed I’m generalising but aging 30-something spinsters isn’t only localised to the Muslim community; there are many good Hindu girls who can’t find husbands).

 

I may have said this story before but my desi ex-colleague was North American and his mother used to always harp on about him marrying a desi girl. But he retorted that his sister was allowed to marry a white man at which his mother shot back “ahh but your brother-in-law was smart he picked a desi girl”.

 

Basically the idea is that desi girls, who are hard-working, ambitious and career oriented make a mistake of nothing broadening out their horizons and dating beyond their narrow cultural-religious frame. Chinese and Japanese girls have been able to really bootstrap themselves because by freely dating and marrying, beyond boundaries, they have been able to make their own men realise that they're going to have to do alot more to keep them (the divorce rate in China is beginning to sky-rocket).

 

Traditions are meant to be kept only if they make sense and the tradition of sticking to one's community to marry within, or that somehow arranged marriages are best must be amenable to change and adaptation. If more Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi girls, particularly in Britain, made a concerted effort to integrate in society and not worry about who to marry and why to marry; alot would change in the community. The traditional patriarchal stranglehold would begin to give up and it would dramatically help the larger community integrate with the next generation of interracial white-Asian kids.