As a kid I used to hear my neighbourhood aunties and my folks discussing about intercaste/inter-religion marriages and only thing I could make out from it was that it is something bad. "Some didi or brother has eloped with a lover and she is from this caste or he is from that caste". I grew up hearing that it is a sin to marry out of your community and caste.
So far so good, it didn't matter to me until few years back when I finished my education and started working and when few of my best friends in the group were ready to take the plunge and got married to their love... they were lucky to get their parents consent. It surely was a happy marriage and looked straight out from a fairy tale story. But then there were few who were not so lucky, they had to elope with their partners as their parents were against the marriage. I couldn't understand why on earth parents had issues with two mature people deciding their future and their life partners. Some got swayed away by the emotional turmoil created by their parents and gave up, some couldn't handle the pressure from the society and decided to marry as per their parents wish....(Pause) My confusion - is the society made up of similar caste or similar financial status?
Two people have to spend the rest of their lives under one roof and what happens in there is nobody's business..Will the Society help the woman/man if their respective spouse is having an extra marital affair or suffering from a deadly disease? or is it their immediate family members or friends who will be by their side?
And isn't the current society consists of people who belong to similar financial background...do we really see a normal office peon sitting/sharing stuff with a highly qualified worker, though they belong to the same caste.
In India it is so difficult to define a society because everything is being defined as per one's own convenience. A celebrity is never judged by his/her caste; a celebrity's caste is not so discussed as much as a common person's is...a celebrity is only looked upon as a celebrity and the whole world will watch their love marriage news in much anticipation.
The ratio of conservative family to a liberal family is higher ... maybe 90:10. To add on the already exisiting racism/casteism woes we have spiritual angle to everthing. We blame it on our gods and say our gods won't be happy if we move out of the community. Aren't we good at blaming rather than standing and owning something. And no I am not talking about rural India or not so educated families, this is the actual scenario in most of the households from urban India too.
Parents fear the society more than the future of their kids. I would say it is all about the comfort zone. Parents might be just comfortable in their own community and amongst their own people and so their kids have to go ahead within the same community and some obvious reasons cited are: "We have to protect our community and not let it diminish". "We have to ensure that we have our own people in the community and increase our community population". (Pause again) - What are we going to do by increasing this population??? Do we have to fight a war? Are we going to fight for India for the Indians? Are we even thinking about the big picture? We already are divided by states/castes/and gods and now further more with these micro level problems.
What is the deal in losing our origin (al) identities? Why do we always forget that we are human beings first and humanity should be the biggest religion and caste. All these must have started from a scratch and for some kind of easiness a society must have been created. May be it was created so that there is some order in the system and distribution of things could be easy or we do not know if it was created just to create more problems....so that the powerful can become more powerful and poorer become the poorest. The identity must have been conferred upon the job that our ancestors did and they might have taken up a job depending upon their skill set and geographic location. I can write much more on this but would like to seriously pause.
Wouldn't it be ideal if we share love and create less problems for people and let them live their lives rather than we dictating and dominating our thoughts.
Do leave your comments and thoughts about this controversial topic.
So far so good, it didn't matter to me until few years back when I finished my education and started working and when few of my best friends in the group were ready to take the plunge and got married to their love... they were lucky to get their parents consent. It surely was a happy marriage and looked straight out from a fairy tale story. But then there were few who were not so lucky, they had to elope with their partners as their parents were against the marriage. I couldn't understand why on earth parents had issues with two mature people deciding their future and their life partners. Some got swayed away by the emotional turmoil created by their parents and gave up, some couldn't handle the pressure from the society and decided to marry as per their parents wish....(Pause) My confusion - is the society made up of similar caste or similar financial status?
Two people have to spend the rest of their lives under one roof and what happens in there is nobody's business..Will the Society help the woman/man if their respective spouse is having an extra marital affair or suffering from a deadly disease? or is it their immediate family members or friends who will be by their side?
And isn't the current society consists of people who belong to similar financial background...do we really see a normal office peon sitting/sharing stuff with a highly qualified worker, though they belong to the same caste.
In India it is so difficult to define a society because everything is being defined as per one's own convenience. A celebrity is never judged by his/her caste; a celebrity's caste is not so discussed as much as a common person's is...a celebrity is only looked upon as a celebrity and the whole world will watch their love marriage news in much anticipation.
The ratio of conservative family to a liberal family is higher ... maybe 90:10. To add on the already exisiting racism/casteism woes we have spiritual angle to everthing. We blame it on our gods and say our gods won't be happy if we move out of the community. Aren't we good at blaming rather than standing and owning something. And no I am not talking about rural India or not so educated families, this is the actual scenario in most of the households from urban India too.
Parents fear the society more than the future of their kids. I would say it is all about the comfort zone. Parents might be just comfortable in their own community and amongst their own people and so their kids have to go ahead within the same community and some obvious reasons cited are: "We have to protect our community and not let it diminish". "We have to ensure that we have our own people in the community and increase our community population". (Pause again) - What are we going to do by increasing this population??? Do we have to fight a war? Are we going to fight for India for the Indians? Are we even thinking about the big picture? We already are divided by states/castes/and gods and now further more with these micro level problems.
What is the deal in losing our origin (al) identities? Why do we always forget that we are human beings first and humanity should be the biggest religion and caste. All these must have started from a scratch and for some kind of easiness a society must have been created. May be it was created so that there is some order in the system and distribution of things could be easy or we do not know if it was created just to create more problems....so that the powerful can become more powerful and poorer become the poorest. The identity must have been conferred upon the job that our ancestors did and they might have taken up a job depending upon their skill set and geographic location. I can write much more on this but would like to seriously pause.
Wouldn't it be ideal if we share love and create less problems for people and let them live their lives rather than we dictating and dominating our thoughts.
Do leave your comments and thoughts about this controversial topic.
