Marching backwards

It was not too long ago that Indian weddings lasted for over 5-10 days with hordes of friends and family descending on the hapless parents as they prepared to give their daughters hand away in marriage. Not only were the festivities long drawn and expensive, the parents of the bride also had to find adequate resources for the dowry that was then, explicitly and now implicitly, demanded by the bridegrooms family.That was then but now these wasteful ways are making an unfortunate comeback..

There have always been many many rituals in an Indian wedding. There were the ones before the marriage: the engagement, Barni Bandhwana, Mamara, Sangeet Sandhya, Tilak ceremony and Mehendi Lagwana. During the marriage festivities, there were the Barat Nikase, VarMala,Aart,Baasi Jawari, Kanya daan, Panigrahana Hathlewa,Gathabandhan,Laja Homa, Saptapadi and Vidaai. At the new home , there was the darshan, Dwar Rokai, Grihas Pravesh, Mook Dikhai and Pheri. All these rituals had one thing in common- they all required the expenditure of considerable sums of money by the bride’s parents. A daughter’s wedding was thus a crushing burden and many a parent had to go deep in debt to pay for these traditions

Of course defenders of these expensive traditions, and there were many, argued that the Indian shastras demanded these rituals, that this was once in a lifetime occurrence, that it provided the far flung family an occasion to meet—and they could hardly stay for a day after having travelled thousands of miles—that it was a marriage to two families not of two people etc. These arguments held sway for many years till dowry deaths in rural areas and the increasing debt burdens became a national disgrace

It was the national independence movement- and Pandit Nehru in particular—who took up the cause of reforming the Hindu marriage practices against considerable opposition form within his own party. The Hindu Code Bill, which intended to provide a civil code in place of the body of Hindu personal law, was presented to the Constituent Assembly on 9 April 1948. But it caused such a great deal of controversy that it was subsequently broke down to three more specialized bills: the Hindu Marriage Bill which outlawed polygamy and contained provisions dealing with inter caste marriages and divorce procedures; the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Bill had as its main thrust the adoption of girls, which till then had been little practiced; and the Hindu Succession Bill which placed daughters on the same footing as widows and sons where the inheritance of family property was concerned.


Dowry was and remains a social evil but continues to be a common practice in almost every part of India. Women at the time of marriage are expected to bring with them jewellery, cash and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws and they are subsequently ill-treated, often violently, if they fail to do so. Anti-dowry laws in India, enacted in 1961, prohibit the request, payment or acceptance of a dowry, "as consideration for the marriage". where "dowry" is defined as a gift demanded or given as a precondition for a marriage. Gifts given without a precondition are not considered dowry, and are legal. Asking or giving of dowry can be punished by an imprisonment of up to six months, or a fine of up to Rs. 5000. But the laws themselves have done nothing to halt dowry transactions. Many of the victims are burnt to death - they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident. According to data complied by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 2,276 female suicides due to dowry disputes were reported in 2006, that is six a day on an average. A total of 7,618 cases were registered under Dowry Death in 2006, while 6,787 cases were registered in 2005, showing a gradual increase in this sad statistic

The original concept of streedhan was based on providing a newly wed girl with some things that she could cherish and call her own. Today this concept has been vulgarized to symbolize all the things that not even the bridegroom, but his family wants to have as their own. India’s burgeoning middle class - now 300 million strong - are turning weddings into showcases of their growing disposable incomes and newfound appetites for the goodies of the global marketplace. The largesse has spawned an $11 billion wedding industry, growing at 25 percent annually and beginning to rival the US industry valued at $50 billion. It is estimated that the average budget for a middle class wedding ceremony in India today is $34,000 while the upper-middle and rich classes are known to spend upward of $2 million. This doesn’t include cash and valuables given as part of a dowry. Thus on average people earning a total of $6,000 / yr spend about $34,000 on a wedding. In contrast, the average wedding costs in the US are around $27,000, with a range of $25,000 to $30,000 generally accepted as accurate.

What has changed from the 1970s is the kind of demands being made on the bride's parents. Apart from "gifts" that are nothing short of extortion, the demands now involve the kind of wedding that will take place. There is a kind of pan-Indian wedding that is emerging that is dominated by the north Indian Punjabi style of celebration. Thus sangeet and mehndi are now a must at every wedding. Ostentation is in, regardless of what you can afford. You don't have to be a Mittal or a Chatwal to imagine that you are a prince or princess for that one day. Wedding organizers have everything ready from faux palaces to exotic locations. And ostensibly sensible young people are agreeing to these tamashas in the belief that there is nothing wrong with "living it up" for that one day. Gaudy displays of wealth and going one better than the neighbors seems to be the main motivation of these noveau- riche. Some few get dragged into these displays- their original intent of a simple wedding is soon expanded as family and friends suggest additions and rituals till it becomes a “tamasha” with the poor parents footing the bill and often going deep into debt. If it was only them, one could dismiss their antics as being driven by the lunatic fringe of show offs, but unfortunately these practices are slowly creeping back into rest of the country as well. Dowry demands are rising even though they are illegal and ostentatious displays of wealth in weddings are making a comeback with paid dancers and performers. In one case, the parents even organized rehearsals to imitate a wedding in a bollywood movie.

Customs like dowry can end only when the people involved, the young men and women, decide to go against the tide, demand simpler weddings and say a firm "no" to the vulgar demands that constitute a dowry. But today all these reforms seem to have fallen by the wayside and the reformers everywhere are in retreat. And worse, the charge to go backwards to the past is being led by the more educated and the better off. It is the NRIs around the world who are reverting back to these old rituals and customs- many times without understanding them at all. The modern Indian at home too is not a reformer. If anything he is a retrograde traditionalist.

But the real tragedy of the increasingly consumerist culture in which we live today is that young people, who one would expect are capable of thinking outside the box, who should have the courage to assert what they want, are either going on unquestioningly with wasteful traditions, or are even endorsing them. As a result, any desire to curb expenditure that existed in a generation that came out of the National Movement is now so thoroughly buried that one wonders whether it will ever surface again.

Marriages may not be made in heaven, but they should not end up sending people into the hellhole of lifelong debt and misery. Perhaps it is time for another reform movement starting with ones refusal to participate in these ostentatious displays.