Love marriages vs Arranged marriages


          An old proverb says “marriages are made in heaven”. Each and every family in India, whatever might be their standard of living, consider marriage as a celebration. To make this celebration a memorable one to the bride and the groom, their families invite all their relatives and friends. A typical Indian marriage includes purchase of new clothes and gold ornaments, different varieties of sweets and spicy dishes for feast, different rituals which makes marriage a day long process. Even westerners include such kind of rituals in their marriage where the friends of bride and groom perform different roles like maid of honour, flower girl, best man and ring bearer etc.

But these days many are considering as the one which consumes the savings of the families of both sides and loss of pay for friends and relatives. At the time of distributing invitations the common question that pops up is whether the marriage is an arranged one or love marriage.

Point no.1:
Many parents in India consider love marriage as an offense. Because they consider their as an immature and questions how an immature can decide that the person he/she chose is the best one to share their life.
In the present world, many young people spend almost half of their day with friends and others. Even the half of the remaining half day will be lost for sleep and personal activities. Within the short span of time can parents assess what kind is the real attitude of their children? Can they find a boy/girl with the attitude that suits best for their child?
Point no.2:
Another aspect which is specially meant for Indian love marriages is caste or religion. Many parents would like to marry their son/daughter to the one who belong to their caste/ religion. They think only people of their sect only understand and value their traditions, cultures and preserve the reputation of their families.
Whenever child got admitted into a school, they make children of different castes and religions as their friends. Every Hindu wishes his Christian friend on Christmas and his Muslim friend on ramzan. Similarly they wish their Hindu friend on to celebrate their festivals happily. These indicate every kid treats other religion and their beliefs with respect. Hence religions and castes cannot remain as barriers to two persons to live together.
Point no.3:
Many people consider most of the love marriages end up with divorce or break up. It is true that divorce cases in India are increasing year on year which are used to be very less in the past.  The numbers of cases filed in the year 2011 are nearly 43,000.Psychologists and legal experts consider the following as some reasons for raise in the number of divorce cases in India. They are
1. Work stress
2. Alcoholism
3. Extra marital affairs
4. Domestic violence
5. Lack of adjustment

The statistics are even supporting their judgement. IT sector employees are more in the people who applied for divorces and the cities Mumbai and Bangalore are in top 2 positions in Indian cities where more number of cases are filed.

All these things are happening even to the couples of arranged marriages. These are more predominant in the marriages of the couples who married against the wishes of their parents. Since most of the parents try to distance themselves from their children who married against their wishes, the feeling among their children that their marriage is the sole reason to lose the affection of their parents affect their marital status. Sometimes they even lead to suicides.

Conclusion
Hence in the present scenario, either a love marriage or arranged marriages have their own pros and cons. The young people should control their emotions and try to understand what actually their family is expecting from his/her spouse.  Even Senior citizens embrace the spouse of their child with love and affection. Love marriages sometimes offer a better chance to the youth to identify a right life partner as quote goes “no one knows YOU better than yourself” but one cannot say arranged marriages are completely absurd.