Marriage should be based on love, not greed

Gulf News reporting on why Saudi men find it hard to marry (six reasons why two million Saudis are not married) seems to draw some parallel to the situation in India, albeit with a reverse order where it is the women who find it difficult to find husbands owing to exorbitant customary dowry demands from the boy’s family. In India, the situation especially in rural areas is worse as even educated girls are forced to agree to marriages with men who are uneducated due to the issue of dowry. But in contrast to the Saudi situation, in India if a situation arises where women continue to stay in their parents’ home after their ‘marriageable age’ then it is considered an ignominy by the conservative society. However, things are changing in large cities now to the extent that live-in relationships are becoming more common. But they do not represent the entire situation of women in India. Largely the tradition of asking dowry from a girl’s family does not represent reality of the whole nation.

In both the situations, the practice is not allowing their youth to enter into healthy relationships based on meaningful criteria such as love, respect and, above all, care. Any relationship that begins with involvement of money as its primary obligation is likely to be doomed. However, we tend to see marital relationships lasting in most cases in spite of such practices just because the senior members make it obligatory on the part of the youth to continue to stay in their marriages whether they are happy or not.

— The reader is an Indian business development coordinator based in Dubai