BULLL SHIIIITTTT! Everyone lives their lives for themselves. If
someone makes key decisions like relationships based on what their
family thinks, it's clearly a huge mistake. And marriage is between
just two people, if the families get united by it, good for them,
but if they can't accept it, that's too bad.
Young people would think in this way. But it is not true.
Marriage is about relations between the two families as well. In
other parts of the world, the entire clan, tribe, village are also
involved.
Marriage only brings a woman closer to man, and they
become friends in a special sense, never to be parted either in
this life or in the lives to come.” [1]
Some people are fortunate enough to have found their
soul-mates while others have their soul-mates selected for
them. In South Asia and the Middle East, arranged marriages
are preferred over love marriages, which is the predominant system
in the West. In today’s society, arranged marriages are
looked down upon because, as many argue, not having the right to
choose one’s partner is cruel. People of the West reason that
only the person who is to marry can decide whom s/he wishes to
spend the rest of his/her life with, which leads to a successful
marriage. On the other hand, people of South Asia and the
Middle East claim that the elders of the family have the final say
over the marriage for they have seen the world and know that a
successful marriage is not just a uniting of two people, but of two
families.
What is a marriage? According to the Encarta dictionary a
marriage is,
....a legally
recognized relationship, established by
a civil or religious ceremony, between two people who
intend
to live together as sexual and domestic
partners.” [2]
Encarta’s definition of a marriage does not mention
anything to do with how the partners found one another and who
decided they should marry. According to the definition,
Western marriages are just as legal and proper as South Asian and
Middle Eastern marriages are, for both types of marriages have
either been recognized through a religious or civil
service.
What is an arranged marriage? It is usually
perceived as a marriage that one is being forced into but, in all
truth, it is not. It is a merging of not only two people, but
of two families through the process of agreement. Now, in
today’s modern world, there are two types of arranged
marriages: arranged-love marriages and pure-arranged
marriages.[3] An arranged-love marriage is
where the couple loves one another and wishes to marry, receiving
the permission and advice of their respective parents and family
elders. Here, caste and dowry are not as important as status,
both economic and social, and family reputation.
Sunita and Chila, two of
the three protagonists of Life
Isn’t All Haha Heehee,
had arranged-love marriages with their boyfriends, Akash and
Deepak. Chila and Deepak had courted for quite some time
before marriage, even though their parents were not aware of their
relationship, and decided to marry. They were both Indian
Hindus which is why their parents agreed to the marriage.
Sunita and Akash met at law school and started dating with their
parents’ knowledge.
Sunita and Akash were both
Punjabi Hindus which is why their parents did not disapprove of the
relationship...
http://www.aller-stead.com/martin/pages/FirstComesMarriage.htm