Desi expats in Europe still seeking arranged marriages

SHABNAM SURITA

CHENNAI: The idea of having a marriage set up by a third party — by family, friends or neighbours — has been the norm in India and South Asia for centuries. However, arranged marriage is becoming less popular as dating without parental involvement becomes more socially acceptable and inter-cultural marriages are less of a taboo. To address this change, many matrimony professionals are opting for new methods and offering alternative approaches to matchmaking, allowing people to have comparatively more control of their choice of relationship, than their family or society.

Matchmaking in India has undergone an image makeover in the last two decades and pop culture has contributed to legitimizing it as a profession. One such example is the recent Netflix series “Indian Matchmaking.” Here, matchmaker “Seema Aunty” is shown matching affluent Indians living and working in the US.

Originally from Mumbai and today living in Europe, Malaika Neri works as a relationship consultant, helping ambitious professionals, from India, the US, UK and Europe, find love, and hopefully marriage. Rather than tight deadlines, Neri prefers to deal with committed individuals looking for matching lifestyles and values in their partners.

Indian clients from Europe are different from those from the US, she says, and that leads to different relationship needs. Many of the people Neri works with are from smaller Indian cities, often “the first in their family to go to university, and [they] come from middle class backgrounds. They come from families where arranged marriage has been the norm for centuries,” she told DW. “Dating is taboo, and often they do not necessarily have any experience of meeting and dating the European way. So suddenly they find that finding a partner in cities like Stockholm or London is incredibly overwhelming, because they have little to no experience dating.” To understand how Indian expats perceive arranged marriages in Germany, one of the European countries with the largest Indian diaspora populations, DW reached out to groups on social media. A number of people responded.

However most Indian expats DW spoke to said they found their partners online, on matrimonial websites meant for Indians. One such website, which has regional offshoots to cater to customers with a specific mother tongue, religion or caste. Preethi met her husband on one such website, where most members create their own profiles rather than having one created for them by parents or relatives. For Preethi, the process worked well as she spent a lot of time getting to know her partner before taking the plunge.

According to Preethi, these sorts of services can also help introverts, people with no prior relationship experience or anybody pressed for time to find partners. Finding companionship in a foreign land isn’t the only reason why expats go to matchmakers like Neri. Often, the societal pressure to get married and bear children is so strong that people set strict deadlines for matchmakers. And then there are also caste or religious boundaries which families advise their children stick to while choosing partners.

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle