SOME THOUGHTS ON ARRANGED MARRIAGES
“The least consulted party in an Indian wedding is the bride.”
– Nayantara Sahagal
I recalled the above quote when I recently came across a spate of books on arranged marriages in India. There followed discussions on the subject in the social media, some cordial, others acrimonious, about the merits and demerits of this ancient custom. In general, many readers seemed to voice their approval of a fast growing trend with girls in India nowadays choosing their own husbands and the enlightened parents suitably supporting them.
We hear of the infinite variety of Man – the inexhaustible source of wonder as Maugham describes – in all great literature. Hamlet, said to be the most representative of humanity, echoes this sentiment:
In fact, even in the ancient times, it was not just the girl’s parents or other family members who always selected the prospective bridegroom. Many girls, at their own volition, selected their cohorts, sometimes even defying their elders. Our epics contain many examples where young women flouted the rules prescribed and handed over in a patriarchic setting and soldiered on.
We read in epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata the girl’s father organizing a Swayamvara where the daughter had the option to choose as her spouse from among the suitors vying for her hand. This was how Sita weds Rama, Damayanti selects Nala, just to cite two examples.
An extreme case is where Sakuntala, the young maiden growing up in an ashram under the care of Sage Kanwa, falls in love with the King Dushyanta during his hunting expedition. Again, this is love at first sight; she weds him in a ritual called Gandharva Vivaham where the gods bless the pair’s marital union2. This takes place during Sakuntala’s foster father’s absence and the marriage is duly consummated; The father, when he comes to know about it, readily endorses it.
This incongruity baffled me until I read a decree in Manu Dharma Shastra: “A father deserves severe punishment if he doesn’t find a suitable bridegroom for his daughter. Should he fail to find a suitable boy within three years of her attaining puberty, the daughter may select a husband on her own.”
In Valmiki Ramayana, Janaka, Sita’s father, calls for a Swayamvara where the suitors vying for Sita’s hand are challenged to break the Siva Bow. Rama alone accomplishes this awesome feat and he duly marries her. Thus, in the original Sanskrit version, we can see it is yet another conventional, arranged, traditional marriage.
Not so, say some Tamil scholars of Kamba Ramayanam, the Tamil adaption of Valmiki’s work. According to them, what Rama and Sita had was indeed a love marriage, and they cite the following lines from the Tamil text:
“AnnaLUM Nokkinan, AvaLUm NokkinaaL . . . ”
“அண்ணலும் நோக்கினான், அவளும் நோக்கினாள் . . . ”
“He looked at her; she too looked at him . . . ”
Some critics called this particular poem “the most romantic lines in literature ever written.”
This, also, is about love at first sight!
1
The 94-year old author is a member of Nehru-Gandhi family. She’s the niece of Jawaharlal Nehru and the daughter of Vijayalakshmi Pandit,
Nehru’s sister. This quote appears in one of her weekly columns she wrote for the Indian Express in the late Sixties.
2
Another example of such union was between Bheema, the Pandava Prince and Hidimbi, the ogress and the mother of Ghatothkacha.
In the Tamil version, Sita’s eyes fall on Rama when he walks majestically on the stately boulevard of the City of Mithila. At the time Sita, the First Daughter of Janaka, the King of Videha, and her friends were playing on a balcony in her home gleefully tossing a ball at one another – when the ball accidentally slips from the balcony and lands on the street below at Rama’s feet. This is when Rama looks up and fixes his gaze on Sita.
Elaborating what goes on in the Tamil poem, the lines convey the following:
“Rama saw her, she too saw him. Both of them were speechless for some time. Rama’s eyes ran into Sita and her eyes into Rama. They were both lost into each other”
However, to me, the more interesting episode worth mentioning here is about the girls Rama’s brothers Lakshmana, Bharata and Satrughna got married to – simultaneously – on the same day!
- Lakshmana marries Urmila;
- Bharata marries Mandavi; and
- Satrughna marries Shrutakriti.
Now, who are these girls? How did they suddenly show up at the right time? - Urmila is Sita’s younger sister;
- Mandavi and Shrutakriti are the daughters of the King Kushadwaja, Janaka’s younger brother.
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