Walking into the trap

Marriage is a significant institution embedded in our social fabric. The choice of partner is influenced by many factors and it is an evolving process in every society. Any society regulates marriage by various means and agencies. Institutions like Culture, Religion, Family, Class, Caste, and Market are the key players in this regard.

These institutions bring to bear their influence according to the type of society/community or even a group. However, processes such as modernisation, rationalisation, democratisation, westernisation, and globalisation changed the way marriage was structured and organised. It changed marriage as an institution as well as a social process.

Furthermore such processes effected the entire our social phenomenon tearing it apart. The tearing apart gave birth to new phenomena and new traps. It also created new social spheres full of distortion. This developed a situation that I call the trap of Mr. and Mrs. Right.

The marriage was organized as a rite of passage for both partners.  It was providing them the social roles accordingly (gender specific). It was more functional than now, more normal than abnormal.

However, emerging countercultures and subcultures in our society are changing marriage as a rite of passage to a trap. Based on this trap anticipated bride/groom is constructing weighing machines which are found nowhere, and are very ideal in nature? And in such process family plays equal part.

Boys and girls who are eligible are entering in this trap, which ultimately creates new burdens on both an individual and a family. The trap is not based on any strong reason. As empirical studies showed Mr. or Mrs. Right is not always Mr. and Mrs. Right. Further, researchers found most of the Mr. and Mrs. Right turned out to be Mr. and Mrs. Wrong.

The trap is located in our social locations which consequently are constructed, based on the position, and spaces an individual gets. As we know there is a lot of difference between theory and praxis. Creating a pre-world imagination and expectations based on reel life from either of the side (boy or girl) lands us in a world of social quagmire. As in the trap of Mr. and Mrs. Right recognition is given to simulations.

The trap subjugates our minds to such an extent that the person who out of his income can satisfy the basic needs of the anticipated family, is treated as ineligible. We from one side are very critical of the rising age of marriage, late marriages, and the new family formations, and at the same time are favoring this collective colonization when it is our turn.

The nitty-gritty of this trap lies in the heart of the interface between faith and capital. We are best at giving pieces of advice based on our faith concerning marriages and are equally good to go against it.

For us, Mr. and Mrs. Right is one having capital (money, property, job, good looks, social networks, cultural capital, being modern, good family background, good financial prospects, better educated, ambitions, and industriousness). This is not what I am against. What I am trying to portray is that these things will be responsible for many social troubles. There is a world beyond the above-mentioned capitals.

Our collective consciousness need to take some steps to make the new family formation a very easy task, so that we are free of many social evils. The weighing machine we developed out of temporary temptation and simulations will lead us to distress. Furthermore, making a job (especially a government one) a passport to marriage.

Initially, the trap is an individual act (micro), however, over time it gets acceptance at the meso and macro level through an unstructured mode. It could be sometimes the trap of joy, money, property, age, caste, class, beauty, and family background.

However, this varies according to the capital (social, cultural, and economic) of an actor. In other words the points of view (doxa) of an agency, dominated by structures of the society? The best is to realize it and give thought to marriage as an institution and process.

The requirement of the new members in society is fundamental to its endurance. Calculability, the basic feature of modernity, need not be endorsed when it comes to the new family formation. There is a social life, beyond the McWorld boundaries of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. As our preceding generations teach us better in this regard.

Shameem Ahamad, Research Scholar, Department of Sociology, University of Kashmir