3. The Modern Family

A version of this argument appears in my chapter ‘Makings of Modern Marriage: Choice, Family, and the Matchmaker’ (2018).

This by no means is an exhaustive discussion on the interactions between the family and matchmaking or a comprehensive account into the importance of the family in contemporary society. Other works that have discussed family in India include Majumdar’s (2009) historical account on matchmaking, where she explains that marriage is always about the family, Radhakrishnan’s (2011) commentary on the good ‘Indian’ family; and Uberoi’s classic essay, ‘The Family in India’ (2006).

In the previous chapter, I have noted works that explain the role of peer groups in shaping romantic experiences. There is now emerging scholarship such as Viresh Patel’s work (2017) on young women in Rajasthan, which delineates the influence of family in shaping these women’s future. In a similar vein, in this chapter, I bring exclusive attention to how the family influences their romantic relationships.

The stress, anxiety, and humour of this ritual has been widely captured by Bollywood movies, television dramas, and written about in books and magazines. This ‘event’ is also important in other cultures, and recent works on South East Asia and East Asian societies too has commented on this, such as Kendell’s (2014) work on the importance of ‘first introductions’. Hollywood movies too have brought exclusive attention to this ritual, as it were, for example, in the movie ‘Meet the Parents’ (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).

Matrimonial agencies tend to use more impersonal terms as ‘parties’ or ‘clients’ for families looking for a suitable spouse. I explain the use of these professional terms and its impact on the professionalisation of matchmaking in Chap. 4.

Works including by Dube (1988, 2001), Patel (2007b), and Sagar (2007) have explained the social causes and particular mindsets causing discrimination against young girls, leading to sex-selective abortion or different socialisation practices than for boys. For a comprehensive account on this issue, see Patel (2007a). Oldenburg (2002) provides an additional perspective on dowry and critically analyses citation of dowry cases in courts as foolproof way of mapping increase in the practice of dowry. She argues that often the dowry prohibition law was the only legal recourse to express a marriage grievance. As a result, women filed for a dowry harassment case as a means to get out of the marriage, for the legal system, had no other way in which she could assert her unhappiness in her marital life (such as emotional trauma or incompatibility). In that regard, simply analysing dowry-related legal cases (in the twentieth century that is) may not provide a realistic picture of the practice of dowry. Of course, this situation has now changed with amendments to divorce law by which wives can demand a separation on the basis of sexual and emotional incompatibility, for example.

The sex ratio in South Delhi was 862 per 1000 males in 2011, whilst the national average was 940 per 1000 males (Census of India 2011). Data from round 55 of NSSO 1999–2000 (see Appendix F) reveals that female sex ratio is favourable to women in poorer families (1004/1000 FMR) and unfavourable for the richest of households (836/1000 FMR) both in urban and rural areas (Agnihotri 2003; Sagar 2007).

Whilst recent scholarship has not undertaken a sociological investigation of modern Indian weddings as such, in my other works (Bhandari 2017, 2019), I have discussed certain salient features of weddings amongst the elites of Delhi.

There is limited scholarship on the role of photography in weddings, except for Uberoi’s study on Taiwanese wedding photo shoots (2008), and Abraham’s (2010) analysis of wedding photography and videography in Thiyya weddings. International media, though, has captured Indian couples’ increasing obsession with couple photoshoots as evident in a recent (July 2019) short BBC video news clipping https://​www.​bbc.​com/​news/​av/​world-asia-india-49071912/​the-rise-of-india-s-viral-wedding-photoshoots.

Kaur and Dhanda (2014) in their study of matrimonial websites, too refer to this role of the family, wherein they are mainly concerned with ensuring that the marrying individuals do not make a ‘wrong choice’ in spouse-selection.