My Experience with Arranged Marriage

About three years ago I traveled to Southern India for three months to study yoga during the fall semester of my freshman year in college. In my time there I met and fell in love with an Indian, Pramod, now my fiancé, who opened my eyes to the realities of arranged marriage (which I didn’t even know still existed today). Up until our engagement ceremony this past summer, Pramod’s elders continued to show him pictures of eligible Indian girls in hopes that he would agree to marry one of them. This seems so strange to me. I have grown up in a place where I will get to choose who I will marry and I can date as much as necessary to find the right one. I cannot imagine saying yes to a spouse based only on a picture.

Throughout the last three years I have made friends with more Indians both in India and in the US and I have had many more encounters of the horrors and joys of arranged marriage; including witnessing Pramod’s sister’s marriage to a man she had never met.

I will examine arranged marriage through the experiences I have had in India, interviews with those involved, and stories from those who have experienced it. Through studying arranged marriage and talking to people who have grown up with arranged marriage as a cultural norm, I hope to understand the reasons for them and what makes them work. This practice is strange to me and the thought of marrying and moving away with a man who I have never met before terrifies me. However, this is a practice which has a long history all around the world. I hope that I can begin to understand arranged marriage and maybe it will help me appreciate and get into the mindset of Indians a little bit more.

***The picture above is of the Mysore Palace in the south Indian state of Karnataka where I have spent most of my time in India.