Okay. This one is for you dozen tipsters who are jonesing for our take on this article about “”love-cum-arranged,” marriages that appears in today’s NYTimes.
Yawn. Haven’t I read this article like a dozen times before? It’s always half of an article where they drum up the angle that they wanted to write in the first place instead of doing any real reporting.
These young people may have come of age in an America of “Moonstruck” and “Dawson’s Creek,” but in many cases they have not completely accepted the Western model of romantic attachment. Indeed, some of the impetus for assisted marriage is coming from young people themselves – men and women who have delayed marriage into their late 20’s and early 30’s, said Ayesha Hakki, the editor of Bibi, a South Asian bridal and fashion magazine based in New Jersey.
“That has been the most remarkable trend,” Ms. Hakki said, citing the example of a male acquaintance, who, after dating on his own, turned to his parents for guidance.
As Madhulika Khandelwal, a historian who has studied Indians here, said, “Young people don’t want to make individual decisions alone.”
[cough]-bullshit-[cough]. It’s not that young people don’t want to make “individual decisions alone” and have decided that their parent’s “guidance” is best. No. It’s that they are giving up and no longer want to fight “the system.” Ladies in their late twenties can only pursue self-absorbed or commitment-phobic guys (and there is nothing wrong with being commitment phobic 
) for so long before they throw in the towel and opt for “traditional,” by default. Likewise, guys are forced to deal with women who are too neurotic to date mostly because their parents are breathing down their necks to get married. We (Indians raised in this country) turn to our families for the exact same reason as someone of another culture would turn to their’s, except for the fact that there is more pressure to turn to them. This article and others like it always seem to dodge the truth in order to accentuate the exotic “embrace” of our culture. What the article describes is more than just being set up on a “blind date,” which it compares it to. Lots of cultures practice the art of the blind date, whether through family or friends, and it isn’t particularly newsworthy. When journalists single out Indians they do so with the implication that the family’s fingerprints are all over the entire courtship process. If that is the case then explaining it away as a willing “return to tradition” makes my eyes roll. Here is some more bullshit:
The embrace of more traditional habits is apparent in other ways. Weddings are often elaborate and last three or four days. Families of the betrothed often still consult a Hindu astrologer who schedules wedding ceremonies according to the stars. When Anamika Tavathia, 24, was engaged to a young Indian she met in college, his family visited hers to propose on his behalf and the priest determined they should marry on June 26 of this year between 10:30 and 11 a.m.This fall is expected to be an unusually busy wedding season in Indian communities, because many couples postponed weddings last year when many days were deemed inauspicious.
Are you f*cking kidding me? I guess the Times decided that the article could use a bit more masala when they added that last sentence. As a quick aside though, I made up a drinking game for when I go to Indian weddings. Any time someone uses the word “auspicious” you take a shot at the reception.
Despite its groundings in pragmatism, assisted marriage is spoken about among some young Indians in highly romanticized terms – implicit in it is the cinematic idea that immediate attraction should result in an eternity spent together.
Damn. I hope that’s not true because that would mean that a lot of my close friends are totally abnormal.
Kesha Petal’s sister married a man to whom she was introduced through her aunts. She decided to marry him the day after they met. “A lot of my friends,” Kesha Petal said, her eyes gleaming, “tell me you know in an instant.”
Oh, oh. I just vomited all over myself. Speaking of weddings though, did you guys see this long-overdue article in the Guardian?
The wedding beast, I fear, is swallowing us all, and Liz Savage, the editor of Brides Magazine (circulation 68,000), confirms it. The British bridal industry is worth £5bn a year and growing, and Savage cites a faintly nauseating buffet of factors. First, people are increasingly paying for their own weddings, thus unleashing a torrent of Personal Romances-style fantasies on us all. “Fathers of the bride are no longer automatically footing the bill,” she says. “Couples have more money to spend and they want the wedding to be an expression of their personal style.”The key driver, it becomes clear, in the excess of the modern wedding is pseudo-sophistication and grisly one-upmanship. “Our tastes have become much more sophisticated and glamorous,” says Savage. “I got married nine years ago and there was none of this fuss over the menu and what we were drinking. Then you wouldn’t have dreamed of turning your nose up at the wine but today we are putting ourselves under far more pressure … Our readers spend more time thinking about the reception than anything else. The attention to detail is amazing – the choice of napkin ring, how they are going to tie the napkins and how are the place settings going to look. It doesn’t matter if they are traditional or getting married in winter or abroad, our readers want to surprise and delight their guests. People are much more creative and imaginative today. They want their wedding to be talked about and to give their guests the best they can. They really want the wow factor.”
[begin rant] It’s true. It’s far worse for Indian weddings though. One of my closest friends and his fiance were in town a couple weeks ago to do some wedding shopping. They both advised me never to get married because the actual wedding will suck all the life (and money) out of you. Everything has to be perfect and you have to invite guests that you will never talk to again in your life. I for one will never buy a diamond engagement ring. I’d rather spend the $14,000 on a 4 week 5 country honeymoon, and I won’t have to worry about some kid in Sierra-Leone getting his limb chopped off for a rock that in reality is worthless. I also can’t stand the way that women shake hands when they are newly engaged. Also, please, please, please save your money and do not make a “wedding music CD” for your guests. Nobody wants to listen to the music you guys do the dirty to. [end rant]
Come on, folks, Google turns up hundreds of variations of this letter. It’s a fake.
just read the article, the sikh guy in the times article set our cause back by admiting he was a mommy’s boy.
we’re not all mommy’s boys.
wait. yes we are.
Eventually the whole world will be brown or some undistinguishable color. If some white girl wants an Indian boy she can have him! God knows she going to get hell when she meets his mummy!
NNNNOOOO!!!! sorry, but this is a common stereotype, but it isn’t true. skin color is polygenic, a lot of genes control it. if you admixed the whole world the various independent loci would increase variation in color. instead of multimodal distribution it would probably be more normal, but the variation would remain.
to be precise, imagine a black and white population where the color is controlled by 10 genes. in the black population all ten genes are “on” and in the white population all are “off.” assume you select 100 black females and 100 white males and have them go at it. the first generation will be brown because they will have 1 copy “on” and 1 copy “off” at all loci. but in subsequent generations a binomial distribution will reemerge even though the expectation on average (neglect drift) would be half “on” and half “off” alleles.
btw, i don’t know about browns, but the empirical data on mixed jews from 19th century germany and 20th-21st century from the USA suggests strongly that they are step #1 to assimilation. among american mixed jewish marriages 30% of the kids are raised jewish, 40% christian and 30% with no religion. the great jewish philosopher moses mendelsshon’s last jewish descendent died 100 years after his life. his descendents almost totally converted to christianity over time (or became “confessionless”).
and plus a lot of jewish women are hot
Raju, I was in the middle of mentally composing a heated retort to your misreading of my last post when I scrolled down to this, and suddenly, what with all the choking laughter, I don’t remember what I meant to say… damn you 😉
It’s fine with me. More hotness for the rest of us 😉
dude(ette) i’m glad, i don’t mean ill….
I’d still like to hear your reply at some point
my reply is that I wasn’t looking down on people who choose to date desi at all. I was ranting against the self-congratulatory tone in some of the “vestern vays are soo bad, just like amma always says” comments. Good things and bad things in both east and west, blah blah, is my perspective on this.
I’m going to a wedding this weekend of an amazing desi couple. He’s a full-time musician and she’s a doctor 😉 Finding a great person to be with is always possible as long as you ignore generalizations about any ‘scene,’ or who you’re ‘supposed’ to be with, or which way is ‘better.’
See, listen up cuz it’s free now. When the “Healing Cicatrices” foundation (800 phone line, all- day workshops, book deals, music compilations, sensual spa (TM) candles and yoga mats are also in the works) is finally launched, y’all be paying top dollar to hear me. word.
and plus a lot of jewish women are hot
and cue ….
this is the perfect moment for folks from different regions of Bharat Mata to step forward and declare “We’re the Jews of India”
Seriously, how many groups can you count who’ve stated this? (Never mind that there are actual Jews in India…)
I’v heard Marwaris, Tams and Bongs say it.
Too funny…
ps truth be told it pisses me off a bit that in order to have the freedom to marry a non-desi/whatever the case may be, people have to down people who do choose to date desi.
I think the point is that a nontrivial set is “choosing” to date desi in much the same way a Chicago matriculant “chose” to go there over Harvard.
That is, there was no choice in the first place as many of these individuals were incapable of operating in the general pool rather than a restricted subset…whether because they had accents, nerdiness issues, height issues, or what have you.
This is particularly true for the people who are 2nd gen Indian Americans who have their parents set up arranged marriages for them. They failed, and want to rationalize their consolation prize as a choice. FOBs get more leniency in this regard…but “loser” is the only appropriate term for an Indian American male who asks their parents to choose who they’re sleeping with for the next 30 years. It’s like the white guys who frequent Russian bride sites…they’re scrubs.
\
really? I’ve heard “we’re the ners of blumpityblup” more often….but come to think of it, not said by desis…more in the Yoko Ono “Woman is the Ner of the World” overbearingly hyperbolic sense..
Perhaps they mean, ‘We’re the juice of India’. It is funny indeed, I thought Indians in the US were the new jews or was it the chinese. Everybody and their mother is the new jew.
I want to be a new jew! I can’t think of anything more antithetical to being a born-again 😉
(except for the Jews for Jesus. they shatter all my carefully constructed paradigms)
That is, there was no choice in the first place as many of these individuals were incapable of operating in the general pool rather than a restricted subset…whether because they had accents, nerdiness issues, height issues, or what have you.
I am not sure if an ‘accent’ is much of a detriment from getting non desi women. Nerdiness of course is common in all races. Height issue is probably a more relevant one.
i can’t speak for manish’s reasons, but i don’t have an accent, i’m tall for a malayalee girl and so it must be the “or what have you”. or the “nerdiness issues”.
some of us…perhaps…many of us are perfectly capable of succeeding in the general pool. we’re just attracted to dark hair, skin that doesn’t look sickly and eyes that can really brood. you know, the same way razib digs dresden dolls.
in fact i brood well
But vait, Papa says ‘premed padho beta’
i can’t speak for manish’s reasons, but i don’t have an accent, i’m tall for a malayalee girl and so it must be the “or what have you”. or the “nerdiness issues”.
Well, don’t get me wrong. With respect to dating desi, I did use the word “many”, not “all” or even “most”.
With respect to having an arranged marriage set up by your parents after living most of your life in the US, that’s a different story. There I think “most” would probably be appropriate — as in “most of those people couldn’t get a date” in the general population.
Probably should have been clearer on the distinction between the two.
You better believe it, bubbelah. Especially us “confessionless” ones.
I’ve never encountered an ethnicity that didn’t produce its share of succulent gorgeous beautiful specimens of human form. I’m an equal-opportunity objectifier.
Really I’m just rooting for this thread to break the 200-comments mark.
I second it, 10,000%. I think the whole discussion is kinda retarded ………..Look for some you find beautiful. Who cares about the rest?
I have found beautiful women in Southern India, Southern Spain, Southern Louisiana………you name it.
With respect to having an arranged marriage set up by your parents after living most of your life in the US, that’s a different story.
this is my attitude. people date who they want to for whatever reason. people have preferences, for whatever reason. how you narrow your pool is your business (i know that i wouldn’t be able to marry and have kids with the 95% of americans who believe in god for example). i don’t think i’ve pointed fingers at manish or abhi or anna for their preferences, i see that as a difference of degree (they like that, i like this, etc.), the arranged marriage thing, that is a difference of kind. the standard caveat of spectrum of “free choice” and “didn’t see until wedding” of course.
i simply happen to think that there are a host of world wide modal traditions, like gender segregation, sexual double standards for men and women, arranged marriages, etc. etc. that we shouldn’t encourage in a liberal democratic republic where individualism is a central value. stuff like sexual double standards are rife in this society, but we at least (hopefully) work against it in the ideal, and understand that it is not right (we are a culture of individual guilt, not communal honor and shame). as for gender segregation and stuff like hijab, i think if men and women must see themselves as peers and cocitizens they need to know each other on intimate, but not necessarily carnal, terms (that is possible, contra what some muslims and other conservative groups would say!). with the arranged marriages, i think that that practice is indicative of a lack of personal choice and a bias toward familialism rather than individualism.
i don’t view my antipathy toward arranged marriages in isolation. i think in post-neolithic dense societies they are normal. the modern dating world is abnormal. i think it sucks in a lot of ways (easy to say now that i’m not single), but i also think it dovetails well with a liberal democratic individualism. i like liberal democratic individualism, its atomism, stress and abnormalities all. from that norm, all else follows….
also, let me add that i view distaste for interreligious and interracial relations very differently. the problems i have with the latter is that this country (america) has a long history where the dominant white imputed upon blacks (especially males) an essence of racial contagion. “the blood must be pure” was a sentiment that was normative in this nation until recently (remember, we have a senator from west virgina who railed against mongrelization earlier in this life). i don’t like it when minorities express similar attitudes. i have seen little of that here on these boards, but have heard it at hillel and asian student union events. as minorities it is considered innocuous, but i don’t view it that way at all. our society to some extent operates on equality before the law, and i think that can be easily undermined by cultural double-standards.
and of course, there is a difference between expressing vocally attitudes of disgust and attempting to shame, and personal preferences. we all have personal preferences, to each his own. but there was a time in this country where a group of motivated individuals suppressed free choice in the interests of racial purity throughout most of this country.
I feel like certain people are using this thread as therapy to address their pyschological issues that stem from dating “out”
Hari thats what’s making it so much fun !
I’m still stuck on this whole Jews of India business. Now I’m a Bong, and I haven’t said it nor heard any Bongs say it – BUT I think I would make a good case. With Indian and Scottish blood, I couldn’t possibly get any more tight-fisted and stingy (with the possible exception of if I had a Gujju grandparent) so I’m halfway there.
Yours sincerely, the Jewel of India.
Mazel tov!
Scottish blood, Bongo-man? One of my favorite quotes ever was told to me by these Brit Asian musicians, who’d been hanging out with a particularly willfully ignorant girl in Bombay. (she informed them that all the London Gujaratis lived in Mayfair, near the Queen) After one guy explained that he was half-gypsy, and that gypsies originally came from India (she’d never heard of such a thing and didn’t believe him), the next guy said he was half-Scottish. “Who told you you were Scottish?” she shrieked, as if he were a total idiot for thinking such a thing. “Um…my DAD. He’s from SCOTLAND.” 😉
As for dating out and in and sideways and upside down, I think everyone just needs to admit that relationships of all kinds are fraught with difficulties and you shouldn’t discount ANY potential lover based on something like skin color. There are a million other, better reasons to reject someone! 😉 Recently I was watching Badmash’s Sanjay on desivision.tv, running around asking desi women at Artwallah if they would marry a starving artist, and, true to stereotype, they all said no way. I was thinking “I know half a dozen white women who’d want to date your cute, creative little ass” but maybe he only wants brown. It’s hard enough to find someone who gets you and loves you, no reason to make it harder by only using shaadi.com rather than nerve.com. 😉
The minefield of arranged vs love marriages, along with the complications of marrying “out”, both occur a hell of a lot amongst Indians here in the UK too. I’m obviously preaching to the converted, but (basing this just on my own observation and life-experiences) I think this is to do with:
Notions of Indian racial and cultural superiority, especially amongst the older generation — many of whom seem to think that Indians are a separate species from the rest of mankind. There is also often a tendency to exaggerate the positive aspects of Indian culture whilst ignoring the negative — so the misguided or misinformed Indian attitudes aren’t addressed, and people embrace the negative traits along with the positive all in the name of “culture”, even if these traditions, mindsets etc are morally wrong or inappropriate.
Traditional Indian society has an entrenched “Us vs. Them” Feudal mentality, which people bring with them when they migrate overseas. The feudal mindset also of course includes issues regarding the wishes of the group/family overriding the wishes & happiness of the individual, an inflated obsession with what “samaaj” thinks and thereby maintaining one’s “good name” within that society, and so on. It’s basically very ego-driven. Coupled with point number 1, this means that Indians can be much more stubborn about refusing to adapt to foreign circumstances and indeed about changing their minds when it comes to outmoded or misguided ideas. Especially when it comes to areas (dating, Western culture/society, for example) where they have relatively little direct experience themselves. Ego and ignorance can be a very dangerous combination.
The Indian concept of marriage being a merger between 2 families, not just the 2 individuals, means that everyone else – at least the parents – has an exaggerated say in who their children should and should not marry, because they feel that they have a huge stake in the whole thing too. Another feudal mindset.
The fact that many Indian parents have an attitude where they wish to control their children right until the very end — which can obviously heavily impact both the choice of spouse and the method by which the man/woman conducts the relationship leading up to marriage. There’s a lot of social politics involved here, with people pushing their own selfish agendas; even if the potential son/daughter-in-law is perfectly matched to the daughter/son in terms of compatibility, chemistry, mutual respect & affection etc, the relationship may still be sabotaged for various reasons.
Sometimes some Western-born Indian men and women may deliberately or subconsciously rebel against parental/societal pressure by choosing wildly inappropriate partners — the wrong person for all the wrong reasons. Peer pressure can also be a factor here. Lack of positive parental role models and/or advice can also contribute; as we all know, there are quite a few 2nd-generation desis out there who obviously don’t know what the hell they’re doing with regards to choice of partner and the way to conduct a healthy romantic relationship, because their parents may have dysfunctional relationships, they’re either unable or unwilling to offer constructive advice, and the younger crowd receive confused and mixed messages from both Western and Indian culture. Some people will also opt for the arranged-marriage route because, basically, they don’t have the skills or the experience to successfully “date” in the Western sense.
Guys may have unrealistically conservative – and perhaps hypocritical – expectations of Western-born Indian women, and conversely (at least here in the UK) many young desi women can be extremely demanding in their expectations; they want the whole Sex & The City “champagne lifestyle”, often simultaneously not wanting to deal with any in-laws or any of the usual family obligations on the guy’s side.
I strongly believe that everyone — Indian or not — has the right to decide for themselves who to marry and the way in which the relationship is conducted (either arranged or dating — different methods are suitable for different people). However, regardless of whether they’re going to go the traditional route (in any aspect) or be a little more unconventional, the most important thing is that one marries the right person for the right reasons. And, especially if you date and choose your partner for yourself, you live with the consequences of your actions and take responsibility for the subsequent success or failure of the marriage.
On a lighter note, I’d also like to thank BongBreaker for post #95 (“skeleton boy” etc) — I haven’t laughed so hard for a long time, my stomach was hurting and tears were streaming out of my eyes. laughing Outrageous !!!
True dat. and by sheer probability, they all have their share of mingers, fatties and… what did you say BB? 😉
that was really well put Jai Singh. I couldn’t agree more.
you’re not focusing on the other partner here on your list. its all well and good to analzye yourself. do you think its all about how desis think of themselves? in a relationship there’s a whole other person and they are not blank canvases. once you’ve decided its cool to test the waters, you actually have to get into the water and see what its like. its not always peaches and cream
So true, alas.
Funny, most people react in the same way when I talk to them. Especially women.
Jai Singh,
Nice post. I’m curious whether a phenomenon I’ve perceived happening in Canada is occuring likewise in the U.K. I’ve noticed through various “South Asian” circles, namely Pakistani, Indian, and Tamil, that a significantly more number of Western raised men marry girls “back home” than Western raised girls. Which has led to a sizable pool of females that are finding it increasingly difficult to find marriage within their culture, due to the stereotypes that afflict Western raised females. Which in turn has led to more Western raised females marrying out of culture and sometimes religion. Just curious to see whether something similar was happening in the UK?
Interesting, Jai Singh. I just wanted to say thanks– you’ve raised some interesting questions, I must go get more coffee and ponder them heavily…
needed to write more….
Jai, there’s little inkling on your list that there are any issues, around dating non-desis that stem from the other partner. there is a huge elephant in the room here. its much easier to focus on our penny ante trends. it can actually be dis-orienting, because we live in such a comfortable navle-gazing world. We’re the cream of the crop in our community, we’re experts on everything. many of us have been used to feeling more comfortable in our home country than all of our parents. say what you want about over-bearing parents, but on some level, there are times we have told them what is what.
so go from that, that level of security where we have it all figured out basically, and go into the real world where a partner is half of the equation and the list of why or why not to date desi becomes more complex and naunced, and not such a slam-bang, “yes, thats the right mindset” kind of thing.
I’ve talked to quite a few desis who are not bumbling morons, who are in their 30’s and above, who have dated quite a lot, and their reasons for dating desi have little to do with your list. this conversation continoully gets stuck on the level you’ve put it when there is a whole other level of complexity. lets get past the obvious here. its kindergarten to say in the real world that a person should consider someone from another ethnicity while here in the US.
Responding to some of Jaisingh’s points 1: This kind of “superiority” may be there in a number of people not necessarily just for desi dudes. I wonder if a practicing Hindu in-law would be welcomed with open hearts in a Christian family. Negative positive are all in the present. In India we demanded that children stay “within” the sub-caste. Now we ask that they marry other Indians. Wrong or right who knows? Time will tell. 2. Dating is now common practice even in India.Ofcourse one should not compare the upper-middle class of one country with the poor of another… Arranged marriages are now a thing of the past. Everybody is “introduced”. Everybody has the right of refusal. Log kya kahenge is a thing of the past. 3.Feudal Mindset. Not sure. But it is true. If you cannot even go and visit your grandkids is it right? Irrespective of culture all parents want the best for their children. We want you to succeed even more than we have 🙂 4.Sabotage. Sure it is there in all cultures. Not just ours. But controlling our children when our parents had no control on ours…? Is that feasible? We may ask you to reconsider. We after all are a generation older than you 🙂 5. Very common in India now with lots of middle class people making in a month what their middleclass parents made in a year. Nothing special about Western born children I think. 6.Not sure how true that is. Even in India now the guys are helping out in the house and with children. Yes there are many families with problems but that cuts across all cultures. 7.But you see that is where the crux of the question lies. You are still our children and when a marriage falls apart we cannot say that it is your fault or ours. We will try and help you and will cry in silence in our homes when the marriage fails. This is where we as interfering parents step in. We ask you questions about the compatibility. Your peers may not and you may not want to. I have lived in smaller town with plenty of Indians, mostly doctors and professors. We are all concerned about the next generation marrying well, not necessarily monetarily but happily.
Well, just an aunty who will be in the marriage market for her sons in some time :-))(I thought that would get your goat up ;-))
This article was tailormade for the mainstream community, conforming to their worldview and the odd alterna-desi who deems hisself/herself transgressive because of a trivial variant like career choice or skin color of their life partner. Was there anything particular newsworthy in that some people use their family and friends assistance in finding a mate? Maybe next they’ll reveal Deep Throat’s identity. Cuz I’m dying to know.
This chick once asked my Lebanese friend in college, “how come you hang with ALL thse Indian guys?”. He had two Indian friends, me and his roommate. I don’t think she ever asked herself why all her friends were dyed blonde yentas from Long Island. No disrespect to my niccas on Strong Isle. Or dyed blondes. Much love. Point is people see what they want to see. The confirmation bias is always on full blast.
It would be interesting to see the NYT do a story on some of the brownfolk that I know: the chik who told her visiting mother from India that her boyfriend was just her gay roommate (her mum said she could marry anyone she wants but don’t ever try to take her for a fool and lie to her), the cokewhores, the dude who kicked his abusive stepfather out in highschool and had to be the breadwinner out of the gate, the felon with a heart of gold who couldn’t get a greencard and had to get his cousin to marry a woman for him so she could get her papers, numerous girls who got into Prestigious U. but went to school Z (with a full ride) to be close to home and take care of family business/ailing parent, the chick who’s had more partners after marriage than before, the guy who uses matrimonial sites to troll for f-buddies, the guy who without fail every Thursday/Friday/Sat nite round 3AM decides to take his pent-up frustration by coldcocking/decimating a white drunk fratboy while never being arrested and keeping his $150,000/per year job despite being a functioning alcoholic, the chick who who spends 40 plus hours a week doing essentialy pro-bono work legal immigration work in Queens when she could work anywhere, the guy who changed his name and hiding out in Austin after a rape conviction (he told us when he was drunk…In Vino Veritas), the guy who supports his immediate family in NY and his widowed aunt’s four children in India. And the gorgeous Bangolrean who’s turned down a consultancy gig, tru to her word is going back and is going to try her dardest to revamp municipal education in urban India. Yet she still won’t give me any affection. Waaaaah.
43 seconds,
indian women in india are a lot different than you think. there’s not such a big gap anymore in terms of expectations.
i don’t know a guy out there who seriously thinks he would not marry an indian woman in the US because of stereotypes. its more a function of dating in the west is hard for anyone, desi or not
Relatively few Tamils in the UK — they’re around, but certainly not on the same scale as Indians and Pakistanis, so I can’t comment on what goes on within that particular community. With regards to Sri Lankan Tamils in the UK (as opposed to South Indians), all I know is that they’re relatively more conservative and “Indian” in their mentality than their Sinhalese cousins (including w.r.t their older generation).
Pakistanis: It’s certainly more common for the men than the women to marry “back home”, but it does happen with the women too — much, much more than it does with Indian women. There’s a lot of “marrying within the family” (esp. cousins) within the more traditional sections of the Muslim community – hence the import of brides and, less commonly, grooms from Pakistan — but I think the reasons have more to do with maintaining traditonally conservative Islamic/Pakistani values and so on. A British Pakistani would be the best person to really respond to your question here. Pakistanis on the whole tend to be a lot more conservative than Indians (at least here in the UK) so, although there is an overlap between the 2 communities and their respective cultures and behaviours, in many situations the dynamics can be quite different.
Indians: I have to disagree here. Importing a bride from India does happen for various reasons — parental pressure, the guy wants a girl who’s not “too westernised” as he may perceive the average UK Indian woman to be, and so on — but as far as I know the frequency of all this is decreasing rapidly, especially as the British Indian population is steadily becoming larger and there are plenty of “local” potential partners around. With regards to British Indian women marrying men from India — it probably happens here and there for various reasons although I’ve hardly ever met anyone who has specifically gone back there to find a husband. The exception, however, is when a guy from India may be working in the UK on a temporary work visa and — either by accident or by design — he ends up marrying a British Indian woman and thereby gains permanent residency here. Whether the guy is marrying her for the “right” reasons or if he’s just using her to a) gain a wife and b) obtain British citizenship, is of course a different argument wink.
I can’t quote any statistics but based on the people I’ve met during my life here, it does appear to be more common for British Indian women to marry people from different backgrounds than it is for the guys. The specific reasons, as with most things in life, are obviously going to depend on the particular individual, but here are some suggestions — the motivations may be one or more of the following:
i) She doesn’t know very many Indian guys.
ii) There may be some aspect(s) of the personalities of the Indian guys she meets that she doesn’t like.
iii) She doesn’t differentiate between Indian guys and men from other ethnic/religious groups, so the fact that she fell in love with someone from a different background is purely/predominantly because of his qualities as an individual, regardless of his background. (The specific reasons she likes the guy can be either positive or negative, depending on her own personality).
iv) She finds Indian culture and society restrictive in some way, and therefore specifically avoids getting romantically involved with men from the same background.
v) She doesn’t want to have to deal with the whole “Indian mother-in-law” issue.
vi) She simply didn’t meet an Indian guy who she liked enough/was attracted enough to/had enough “chemistry” with/had enough in common with for her to want to marry him. (Or the feelings weren’t reciprocated by any Indian guy she met who she did like sufficiently to potentially want to marry him).
vi) Any men from the same background she met who were viable “marriage material” from her perspective were either already married or in steady, long-term relationships with someone else. (This can certainly happen as one gets older, for both men and women).
another reason a guy marries someone in India;
he values that relationship on its own merits
Raju — My “list” was not supposed to be exhaustive and was speaking generally; it applies to the issues regarding marriage amongst Indians here in the West and wasn’t specifically referring to just non-Indian romantic partners.
If you’re talking about the matter of romantic involvements with non-Indian partners, I do actually have a little personal experience in that area 😉
Anyway, as I said before, the list was not meant to be definitive and, as most of us are of Indian origin here, it was therefore from an Indian point of view. At least within the realms of my own 30+ years of experience as an Indian born and brought up in the UK.
I’m sure we’d all be interested to hear your views on the issues concerned here.
I quite strongly disagree with you here — although possibly the dynamics within the US may be different to those in the UK — but, again, please expand on the specific reasons behind your assertion.
Quick addendum to my previous message:
Of course there are, both it’s all going to depend on the personalities and expectations of the specific two individuals concerned. Some people are more “Indian” (and I use that term in its broadest sense) than others in terms of their characters, interests, and cultural viewpoints. As with any relationship, to make it work (especially for the long-term) there needs to be a fundamental compatibility between the personalities of the two people involved. Otherwise the “cultural differences” will be the very factors that will tear the relationship apart.
Apologies, that should say but not “both”
Ooh, ooh, almost 200 comments! Perhaps this will be lucky #200?
YESSS! I win! 200 comments!
Aaarghhhh… I waited all day for this. Damn you Nina 😉