Pathways to Marriage

Abstract

In both India and the UK participants are aware of their parents’ preferences for a spouse from the same community or caste, but in the UK the context fosters more independent decision-making on the part of couples. In India, participants value parents’ involvement, both because marriage is viewed as a means to solidify and create new family ties, and because of a view that parents ‘know best’. Notions of family and filial duty shape participants’ constructions of marriage and participants in Baroda and London express a preference for different kinds of marriage. In India, participants feel that a family facilitated arranged marriage is preferable, with fewer ‘problems’, as Tarun states above, and in London, participants prefer ‘love marriage’ as a longer-lasting and more ‘authentic’ basis for a marital relationship.

Love marriage is not a permissible marriage, so if any problem arise you cannot go to your father and mother that ‘I have a problem in affair so what I can do?’. […] Now in our society some people will do, but society will not agree with him. […] Permission is the main thing and if any problem … Main thing is problem; I have seen two three examples that after love marriage so many problems occur. I don’t know why, but problems occur. Tarun (M), Married, India

You know, I am going to — if I am going to marry someone it has to be on my terms and in the sense that you have to love them. Pretak (M), Married, UK