The Arranged Marriage – Salvation or Undeserved Shackles? The British Indian Viewpoint

An arranged marriage…the very thought used to have me shuddering in fear and caused my brain to threaten to escape from my body to hide somewhere safe, Afghanistan for example.

I say used to because through simple life experience and greater knowledge and understanding, my views have changed I am surprised to tell you.

Briefly outlining who I am, parents are from India, married in London in the swinging sixties (arranged marriage by the way), and some time in the early eighties I had emerged in this world some three years after my brother. First generation British Indian, in a nutshell. The confused generation as many have called us in the past.

Our Indian culture and tradition brought across here by our parents had us confined to a future of marriage that was entirely arranged and out of our hands. Maybe the old ‘see a picture of your bride before you get married’ rule was being relaxed more and more, but the essence of the whole thing was still there.

But as time went on and our generation lived the life of the westerner, free choice and independence, the rebellion started. Girlfriends came on the scene, confrontations with parents about who to marry and when to marry, in some cases even upping and leaving with True Loves in hand. The tide had began to change.

I was one person who viewed this change and wholeheartedly agreed. Marrying someone you barely knew? Preposterous, isn’t it? What was the point? Just let us find our own life partners so we can be happy, not living an existence of regret. I am not going to be forced into something that I didn’t want to do, after all, I am British!

A strange thing happened not soon after my teens however, my older brother, very much the more headstrong and rebellious of the pair of us, took a trip to India and within a few months there with my grandparents, called home to announce his engagement. To say I was shocked is like calling the Iraq escapade ‘a bit of a mistake’. Nevertheless, after some time his new wife entered our home in London and my front seat observing an arranged marriage showed me just how closed minded I had been my entire life. I had always viewed Indians as backward minded and not up to speed with much in London. But my sister-in-law showed me that they are every bit as modern as we are, just that they choose family values to follow more than the media driven hype that we are brainwashed to follow here.