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Surfing For Spouses - Marriage Websites and The 'New' Indian Marriage?
Surfing For Spouses - Marriage Websites and The 'New' Indian Marriage?
Surfing For Spouses - Marriage Websites and The 'New' Indian Marriage?
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Introduction
In India, as in much of South Asia, marriage remains an important rite of
passage in an individual’s life. To the vast majority, it grants social adulthood
and sets the stage for the grihastha (householder) stage of life, across regions
and religions. The marriage ceremony calls upon every possible social obliga
tion, kinship bond, sentiment and economic resource. Almost 90 per cent of
marriages in India remain arranged (Mullatti 1995) and family, particularly
parental, involvement in arranging marriage is a continuing norm.1 Writing
recently, Sharangpani notes, ‘The arranged marriage system is a patriarchal
artefact invested in maintaining caste purity, class privileges and gender hier
archy’ (2010: 270–71). While this description correctly implies that arranged
marriages are endogamous, within class, and retain the superiority of wife-
takers over wife-givers and of husbands over wives, it fails to capture two
other important aspects of marriage in India. First, arranging marriages of
their adult progeny is a peculiarly south Asian ‘inter-generational contract’
entered into by parents, leading to a sense of mutual obligation between the
generations.2 Indeed, children may resent parents who ‘fail in their duty’ to
find them spouses, and the society holds such parents responsible for having
reneged on this important duty. Equally, the obligation of parents to arrange
matches confers on them the opportunity to exercise power and control over
children and provides them with avenues to further personal welfare and family
mobility goals (Bourdieu 1977).3 Hence, parental involvement in arranging
matches remains a tightly protected privilege in India.4 Second, Sharangpani’s
description (2010) does not pay sufficient attention to the deviations from the
norm that are beginning to challenge traditional boundaries of caste, com
munity and family arranged marriages as well as equations within marriages.
It is in the above contexts that an analysis of the contemporary modes and
processes of arranging marriages assumes great importance. Matchmaking
in India has evolved over the decades from being a face-to-face process in
which family and community were intimately involved, to one in which more
anonymous media such as newspaper advertisements (which emerged during
the colonial period), and most recently, technically sophisticated, internet-
enabled matrimonial websites are involved. In addition to the above, marriage
bureaus and marriage fairs of various castes and communities5 provide other
modes of arranging matches. India’s culturally and developmentally varied
landscape ensures that multiple modes of matchmaking continue to survive
side by side.
This essay is about matchmaking through internet websites, a new mode
that is finding rapid and widespread adoption among families and marriage
able youth. From a single matchmaking website, shaadi.com, set up in 1996, the
industry has proliferated rapidly to include about 1500 such websites (Pal 2010).
The most popular are shaadi.com (the pioneer website), bharatmatrimony.
com,6 jeevansaathi.com, simplymarry.com, lifepartner.com, etc. According to
the market research ‘A Web Partner for Life’, the online matrimonial industry
was expected to reach 20.8 million registrations with revenues of $ 63 million
by 2010–2011 (EmPower Research LLC 2008). The IT recession of 2000 which
devastated many industries under its ambit, left the matrimonial website
business untouched. Such websites are also increasingly the most popular
mode of matchmaking among diasporic Indians.
Gender
Our data show that searching for a spouse through an internet portal is
heavily skewed in favour of males, with males representing 73 per cent of
those posting profiles, while females represented a meagre 27 per cent of the
total members.12 This is easily understood in the context of prevailing family,
kinship and gender norms, especially as they shape the social construction of
women’s marriage. The marriageable girl is seen to be much more vulnerable
and there is need to protect her reputation, which has an important bearing
on her marital prospects. Women worry about the misuse of their internet
profiles and providing access to those whose attention is unwelcome. Many
women initially post themselves under a pseudonym. Yet, the fact that 27 per
cent of profiles posted were those of women implies that a sufficiently large
number of parents/women perceive gains from seeking a spouse through the
net as outweighing the risks of tarnishing their reputation. What may further
signal a trend towards change is that a significant 43 per cent of the women
had posted their profiles themselves.13 Interestingly, NRI women replicate the
national trend with fewer posting on matrimonial websites than males. Of the
13 per cent, who had posted on this website between 2005 and 2007 and were
NRIs, only 20 per cent were women.
Some respondents interviewed informally confirmed that marriage
websites were the last resort while looking for a spouse and this was even more
so with women. Chatterjee (2007: 23) also mentions that ‘social stigma’ may
be attached to the use of websites for marriage. Many people shy away from
revealing that they have posted profiles on marriage websites. Yet, our case
studies reveal that women persuaded parents to post their profiles on websites
to look for more suitable grooms.
Caste
Caste remains a crucial variable in finding a match; the websites have space
to specify caste and sub-caste and as many as 248 caste names were available
in a drop-down menu for registrants to choose from, including castes
among Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. Websites derive this data by
researching castes listed by people on various other websites. The greatest
specificity in the data pertains to the Brahmin castes, where around 30 sub-
caste names appear. Although it is difficult to analyse social status from caste
names, it is clear that castes across the spectrum—high and low, and spread all
over India—are represented. Registrants from Dalit castes also appear on the
website. While members from among all castes thus appear to have access to
the net and are keen to use internet technology, the great variety of Brahmins
reiterates the pattern whereby the educated and elite Brahmins have always
been the first to access new channels of education and communication for
upward mobility, while at the same time emphasising and maintaining caste
and class exclusivity. Given the great number of subdivisions and related
status distinctions among Brahmins, they appear to be keen to retain these.
Websites make it easy to practise caste and sub-caste endogamy, as they allow
access to a greater number of individuals of the same caste or sub-caste. Some
profiles make it a point to list the gotras (clan or lineage) to be avoided by a
prospective partner. Contrary to the conclusion one arrives at from a study of
the profiles, in Mathur’s study (2007: 26) of marriages through websites only
23 per cent of the participants married within their caste and just 29 per cent
within the community of the same mother tongue. However, Mathur’s upper-
and middle-class sample from Mumbai may account for the greater deviation
from norms. Contrastingly, a study by Banerjee et al. (2009) of marriages
through newspaper advertisements among the middle-class Bengalis in
Kolkata found that there was a strong preference to marry within caste.
Parents tended to accept a groom or bride with fewer years of education if
the caste was the same. The essay concludes that the ‘cost’ of marrying within
caste is low for families when other social group attributes are homogenous,
explaining the persistence of caste in the marriage market. A study of
newspaper matrimonial advertisements by McCann Erickson’s Consumer
Insights (Sethi 2000) showed that caste remains resilient in matchmaking.
Distribution by Religion
The distribution by religion among the members was highly skewed towards
Hindus. Almost 80 per cent of the registrants were Hindus, followed by 7 per
cent Muslims. The proportion of Muslim users is, however, a little over half of
their presence in the Indian population. It is also possible that Muslims may
be posting exclusively on websites such as MuslimMatrimony.com. Inter
estingly, the data reveals that there are as many Muslim women posting their
profiles as there are Muslim men, pointing to the fact that they face the same
difficulties as educated Hindu women in finding compatible spouses. Posting
on websites also points to a weakening of consanguineous marriages among
educated Muslims, as they look outside the extended family for suitable
partners (see Vatuk, this volume). This is not surprising considering the
income-education profile of registrants. Yet, community remains important;
Muslims also seek spouses from specific denominations such as Shia, Sunni,
Dawood, Bohra, etc.
3%
Hindu
79% Other Buddhist
0% 1%
The percentage of Christians, Jains and Sikhs was higher than their presence
in the Indian population, reflecting higher incomes, education and hence
greater access to internet technology. Religious groups such as Hindus,
Christians, Sikhs, etc. also further differentiate themselves along sectarian
lines, as reflected in specific labels such as Digambar and Shwetambar Jains,
‘Born again’, Catholic, Evangelical, Syrian, Nadar Christians, etc. Despite being
modern enough to post on the net, specification of denomination implies that
people are looking for spouses within narrowly-defined communities.
Self
65%
posted by parents, and 11 per cent by friends and siblings of users underlines
the continuing importance of family in the matchmaking process.
While marriage websites provide standardised formats for uploading
information, the scope for the amount and kinds of information that can be
provided is much greater than in newspaper advertisements. Website profiles
make a significant break from the latter by allowing for more information to
be conveyed. Conventionally, the following information is requested to create
a profile of the user:
General: Age, Date of Birth, City, Profession, Marital Status, Income.
Religion and Ethnicity: Religion, Mother Tongue, City of Birth, Caste, Sub-
caste, Gotra, Time of Birth, Manglik Status.
Lifestyle and Attributes: Diet, Smoking/non-smoking, Drinking/non-
drinking, Complexion, Body Type, Challenged (Physically or Mentally).
Education and Occupation: Education Level, Qualifications, Occupation.
Family Values: Liberal, Conservative, Orthodox, Moderate.
Family Type: Nuclear, Joint
Family Status: Middle-Class, Upper-Middle-Class, Rich/Affluent, family
occupational details and any other details the user wishes to furnish about the
family.
Apart from the above standardised details, the website format provides ample
opportunities for people to describe themselves as individuals and list the
desired characteristics of their partner. Thus hobbies, interests, favourite
cuisines, sports, lifestyle details (diet, drinking/smoking habits) and personal
details can be showcased and shared, allowing the presentation of the self in a
way that newspaper matrimonial advertisements never could. A profile posted
by a girl describes herself as ‘simple girl, faced hard situations, ready to face hard
challenges with patience. Understanding; Respect towards elders.’ She states
that she plans to work after marriage and is open to marrying a person from
any one of several Hindu or Sikh castes. Many websites advertise themselves
as a space where people can find a ‘soul mate’, underlining a new emphasis on
individual compatibility with a new emphasis on conjugal intimacy.
being open to the development of a love relationship that could blossom into
marriage.
While the boy corresponded with several girls (keeping his parents
informed), the girl did not correspond with any one and it was her brother
who approached Ram for a potential match. While Anjali’s brother executed
the search, keeping caste, profession and their native city in mind, Ram’s
only expressed concern was that the girl be a Hindu. For him, ‘looks’ were
important, while for the girl’s family, the groom’s social and economic status
was more important. Ram claimed that he wanted to project ‘who he was as
a person, and convey a true sense of himself ’. Such an opportunity was not
available to the girl, since a conventional, minimal, conservative profile of her
was posted by her brother. However, despite Ram’s desire to display a modern
self and marry on the basis of ‘knowing himself and the other individual’, the
match was fixed without the couple talking on the net.
The meeting took place after complete verification of backgrounds
through a common acquaintance. The families ascertained that they were
closely matched in caste (both being Maithili Brahmins from Bihar), class,
native place, desired levels of education, etc. The couple then developed a
‘liking’ for each other against this secure background, the sealing of the match
being dependent only on ‘the gaze’ or dekhna (seeing or viewing) which the
couple directed at each other in their first and only personal meeting. While
this may sound no different from a traditional matchmaking exercise, what
made it different was the boy’s stated desire to project his ‘self ’ and the girl’s
later claim that ‘basically he was looking for someone like me’. This could be
seen as a post-facto rationalisation but reflects new desires of the matrimonial
project. The couple claimed that they would recommend the same route to
others seeking a match; the girl however emphasised that it was important to
ascertain that the profiles on the net were genuine as the virtual nature of the
net made deceit quite possible. The role of the parents and family loomed large
in the matchmaking. The girl moved to USA after marriage; ironically, the
marriage did not last long; despite the detailed matching of family backgrounds
and of desired spousal characteristics, the couple ultimately found that they
were personally incompatible.
Among the class of people using the net for matchmaking, it is no longer
politically correct to mention dowry expectations in the posting. It does not,
however, mean that dowry is not negotiated in such marriages. It is most
likely relegated to the second phase of matchmaking. The public nature of
the internet and the desire to present a modern front pushes such discussions
behind the scenes. Dowry remains an important consideration in most Indian
marriages and many negotiations break down precisely on the question of
dowry demands.
Despite the modernity of the internet technology and its users, horoscope
matching remains a very important element in the matchmaking process.
Websites enable users to create their horoscopes easily by feeding in the date of
birth, time, city and country of birth. The importance of matching horoscopes
indicates the need to control the uncertainty around the fate of a marriage as
marriage essentially remains a lottery with unknown individuals and families.
As one mother who arranged her daughter’s marriage through a website said,
‘Horoscopes were matched; it narrows down the choice somewhat but we felt
it was important.’ The girl’s parents were both professionals, and the couple
had MBA degrees and were working in the corporate sector.
That marriage remains an important strategy for individual and family
mobility is illustrated by several cases of web-based marriages. In two of three
such cases documented for this essay, mother and daughter decided to post
the latter’s profile on the net; in the first, because they found proposals through
other routes ‘scanty’ and not ‘up to the mark’ and in the second, because the
daughter announced that she had not met anyone she wanted to marry and
was ready for an arranged marriage. In the third case, having tried other
routes, the brother of the girl took the initiative to search for a spouse for
her on the internet. All three couples are well educated, for whom profession
and educational qualifications followed by family background were important
criteria. In a fourth case, the marriage was cross-regional (west and north) even
though the caste was the same; the net thus opening up possibilities of finding
a suitable match across cultural regions though from the same community.
As an example, we look at the case of Lata, whose mother took the initia
tive to post her profile on the net despite opposition from the father. Her
father remained sceptical and didn’t wish to waste money by becoming a
paid subscriber. Lata said, ‘When we started seeing better offers from more
educated people with better profiles, we were encouraged.’ Finally, the mother
and daughter (who was on her way to qualifying as a doctor and hence keen on
finding the right match) prevailed upon him and a paid account was opened.
To make the initial contact, the mother and brother corresponded with the
people whose profiles interested them. They had specified that the groom had
to be a doctor, from an educated family and located in the National Capital
in finding suitable spouses is emboldening many others to take the same route.
As she said, ‘they don’t need to feel guilty about it’.
In another such case, the woman posted herself on the net, initially ‘for fun’,
and was by her own admission not preoccupied with the thought of marriage as
such. She corresponded with many men, some of whom became good friends
even though nothing romantic developed. Although information on caste,
religion, etc. was available, she did not think of it as being of great consequence
because she was more interested in a potential spouse’s personality, his outlook
on life and his achievements. After conducting a courtship on the net and over
the phone (he turned out to be an NRI), they decided to meet and then to
marry. He first met her parents and then they announced the decision to his
parents.
These last two cases represent a process of matchmaking different from
the ones outlined earlier, in that the process is not family-controlled. Rather,
the family occupies a secondary role, entering only to celebrate the marriage.
In the former kinds of cases, internet expanded traditional choices, whereas
in the second type, the internet enabled an expansion of the parameters for
selection and type of choice to include modern ideas of suitability, compatibility,
intimacy and a couple’s life together. In the first set of cases, women denied
ever having been romantically involved with anyone. While men admitted to
posting on several websites simultaneously and pursuing their own searches,
women were generally posted on a single website and rarely conducted the
search independently.
Some other stories we learnt about did not have such happy endings—
individuals seeking each other out, but the match being rejected by the
family—revealing the resistance to both the new mode of finding a spouse and
the new independence demanded by marriageable individuals. In one case,
the girl, an orphaned child brought up by two sisters, put up her own profile
and after corresponding with several men, fell in love with one of them. The
boy’s mother, however, summarily rejected the girl.
In another case, a couple, both of whom entered their second marriages
after conducting a search on the net. Marriages in which couples find each other
independently of family involvement are often across caste and community, as
in another case where the man is a Bengali and the woman a Maharashtrian,
both NRIs. In such cases, the couple is typically older, may have been spouse-
searching for some time, and considers compatibility in terms of education,
profession and personality more important than traditional community-
defined criteria. Among couples interviewed for this essay, most got married
within four to six months of posting their profiles. However, conversations with
several unsuccessful registrants revealed that many were never able to find a
satisfactory match despite being posted on several websites simultaneously.
Notes
1
See Khandelwal (2009) for a discussion on how arranged marriage is positioned
as a symbol of Eastern or Indian/south Asian marriage, implying parental control and
a lack of agency on the part of the marrying individuals. She argues that the contrast
between arranging marriages in the East and love marriages in the West is overdrawn,
with agency being overestimated in the latter.
2
See Kabeer (2000) on inter-generational contracts. The parental contract with
sons is the assumption that they will provide old-age support to them. The gendered
nature of roles in society extends this duty to daughters-in-law, who are seen as being
responsible for domestic tasks, including provision of care to in-laws.
3
A paper by Mathur (2007) highlights that parents tend to choose daughters-in-
law who will look after them rather than have compatibility with the sons.
4
Honour killings in North India are a reaction to the loss of control which families
and communities experience when young adults marry out of caste or repudiate other
community norms (Chowdhry 2007; Kaur 2010).
5
Please see Sharangapani (2010) for marriage bureaus and Pache (1998) for
marriage fairs.
6
Recently, bharatmatrimony.com has overtaken shaadi.com in market share.
bharatmatrimony.com is especially popular among NRIs and in South India.
7
Biao (2005) formulates the concept of ‘ethnic transnational middle class’;
members of this middle class are active users of marriage websites.
8
Uberoi (1998) points to the role of media and the Indian cinema in perpetuating
Indian family values among Indians abroad.
9
‘Operation Match’ was the first dating computer program set up by Harvard
students, which was followed by Project TACT-Technical Automated Compatibility
Testing—New York city’s first computer-dating service (Paumgarten 2011).
10
Among Hindus, there is a belief that a person who is a manglik is born under an
inauspicious astrological configuration with negative consequences for marriage. This
configuration is supposedly one for widowers. Hence, it is believed that the spouse of
a manglik partner will be in danger of prematurely losing her/his life. If two mangliks
marry each other the effect is cancelled out.
11
A recent news report from Gujarat described a marriage mela organised by an
NGO for older individuals, who were looking for partners; such melas may eventually
afford greater legitimacy to live-in partnerships.
12
In 2012, Shaadi.com had 20 million plus users of which 65 per cent were men
and 35 per cent were women (Poonam 2012).
13
In 2012, SimplyMarry.com reported that earlier 80 per cent of girl profiles were
posted by parents, but now it had gone down to 50 per cent (Poonam 2012).
14
A report by the National Council for Applied Economic Research’s (NCAER)
Centre for Macro Consumer Research states that by 2015–16, India will be a country
of 53.3 million middle-class households, translating into 267 million people falling in
the category. As per the study, which uses ‘household income’ as the criterion, a family
with an annual income between INR 3.4 lakh to INR 17 lakh (at 2009–10 price levels)
falls in the middle class category (PTI 2011).
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