Discussion about India and Indian people (or whatever you want but English only)

Dear @Teekanne and your "new agency",
First of all, I would like to say thank to both of you for spending time on responding to all of my questions. You have provided me with a very detailed and thorough brief of LM vs. AM in Indian society more than I expected.

Secondly, I would like to put forward some points of view as regard to this issue:

- Love marriage, in my opinion, undeniably has increased in India but slowly and deliberately. A marriage for love seems now to be accepted by both families with careful consideration and hesitation. From your information, I understand that the youth themselves do not want to take risks with their life partners. The tendency to follow a tra***ional "dating" is quite obvious even when they have a chance to pursue a more opened one (if I am not wrong). From my observation and personal experience, the majority Indians feel safer and more secured with an Indian girl for a long term commitment relationship. I would not say they are playboys but unless and until there is a strong connection and unbreakable attachment to their loved ones, I do not believe they will move on while facing their parents' dissatisfaction. I want to make my points clear here, that is Indians are happy and have no strong resistance to the arrangement even when their sweethearts are from India too. Therefore, the chance to go on with an intercultural marriage (I am specifically talking about Vietnamese girls in this case) is pretty thin. I would not say they are coward, it is just the way they were born and brought up.

- In ad***ion, I would not totally oppose arranged marriage. The heart is to some extent it is arranged? I firmly believe that love should not be the only reason to attach your life with someone. A happy/successful marriage, to me, is the interface of thinking and value of life. Where we get it from? These are formed in family, in education and each person's environment. Obviously, people who share the same bringing up will have common features in most of the aspects, e.g. expen***ure (money using), behaviour, lifestyle... I am not talking about interests since it varies from one to another. I am mentioning about philosophy of life and core values shaped in each person in the world where they grow up. Therefore, an arranged marriage, to some extent, is the procedure of looking for matches, one of the factors which guarantee a sustainable marriage.

Once again, it is so grateful that you guys elaborated /clarified my concerns. Should anything needs to be discussed more, please feel free to tell.

The "news agency"'s response to @copconmisa


Just to clarify a few things, I never meant to say that the youth dont want to take risks with their life partners. By taking risk, I guess we both mean going against the arranged marriage route, and choosing to marry someone you fall in love with. In fact that is every youth's fantasy. That is what they want to do.
For this very reason, I also disagree that the Indian youth would prefer to follow a tra***ional arranged marriage route even when they have the chance to pursue the more open route of love marriage. Like I said in my previous post, it is only when they have failed to kindle a love relationship that they would say ok, fine, looks like arranged marriage is better than getting old and not being able to find a decent husband or wife at all. It is not the youth but the parents that prefer the tra***ional arranged marriage route. However, if the person the youth falls in love with is a match that the parents would have approved anyway, then they have no problem accepting that love marriage. I think how difficult it is for the parents to accept a love marriage depends on how far from their expectations that match is.

In my earlier post, I was only answering your questions about love marriages in India, among Indians. I was not even considering love marriages where there is a foreigner involved. Regarding this, I dont understand why Indian guys would feel particularly safer and more secure with an Indian girl than with an Asian (Vietnamese) girl, especially as Indian women become increasingly independent and assertive. After all, divorce rates are truly on the rise in India. It might be true for women from advanced western countries though, because western women would in general be much more assertive and aware of their rights than the common Indian woman. There could be other reasons why Indian men would like to marry Indian women, such as having common background, similar tastes, similar habits, etc.

There are some parts of your first paragraph that are not completely clear, so I'm sorry if I misunderstand you, but I want to clarify my own views on what you said. If I understand correctly, you are saying that Indian guys can fall in love (whether it is with an Indian girl or a foreigner), but when it comes to marriage they will still go for an arranged marriage and follow their parents' wishes. And you say that it is not because they are playboys, it is just the way they are brought up.
I am surprised that you are so forgiving and understanding with that kind of behavior. To me someone who does that clearly falls into the category of playboy. And when they give excuses such as "Oh I truly love you with all my heart, but what can I do? I cant go against my parents' wishes," I have only one or two words for that - depending on whether you think bullsh*t is one word or two.

When a guy pursues a romantic relationship with a girl, he knows very clearly what he is getting into. At the same time, having spent at least 18 years with his parents, he knows exactly what his parents are like. When he later tells his lover that he cant marry her because his parents wont allow it and he cant defy his parents, the realization did not come as a surprise for him. He knew all along that this would happen one day. A responsible and self-righteous person would not have started a romantic relationship in the first place, knowing that it would eventually fail.

If however he chooses to fall in love, and later on cannot standup for his own love, he does not respect the feelings of someone who he claims to have loved. Then either his love was not true, or he is a coward who does not have the courage to stand up for what is right. But when I mention that as two separate ideas (1. a false love, 2. lacking the courage to defend love), I must also clarify that they are essentially the same thing. If someone cannot stand up and fight for his/her love when a difficult situation arrives, they cannot claim that it was a true love in the first place. They cannot claim that "I truly loved you and you were the most important person in my life and I still cant live without you" and yet when the first challenge comes along (opposition from parents), they surrender and claim that they have been brought up to respect their parents' wishes. Again, that's bullsh*t. They will claim that "My parents will die of a heart attack if I dont follow their wishes." Bullsh*t. "I really want to be true to you and spend my life with you, but now I have to fulfill my duty towards my parents so I will have to go through this sacrifice." Bullsh*t.

I am aware that this happens a lot around the world, and I am surprised to see that with Indian men it is often said that the poor guys were completely honest and sincere and lovely, but what could they do, they come from such a tra***ional culture and their parents forced them. Even the girls they loved will pin it on the culture and tra***ions they cant understand and still feel bad for the poor guys. I'm sure it'd hurt, but I think all these girls need to wake up and admit that they have been played, taken for a ride, used, and abused. And then they need to tell the guys that they wont accept all that cultural tra***ional bullsh*t any more because those are just easy escape routes. Those guys had their fun, their taste of freedom in relationships with no strings attached and then walked away. And now they dont even have to feel guilty about it because they have explained to their old lover that they still love them but are trapped in a marriage they did not want. Bullsh*t.

Regrettably, in this scenario, foreign girls are especially easy preys. I absolutely dont mean this in the sense that they have "easy" characters. I only say easy because they don't understand the ways of the Indians, and they are alone, without the support of a community. These guys can then just simply abandon the girls, retreat to the protection of their home country, and have a nice quiet life with their arranged marriages and no one will know about their foreign affairs. I don't know if understanding the role of the culture vs. the guy's personal responsibility would help those girls protect themselves better or not, but I very much hope so. I also believe that girls who have been unlucky enough to fall preys *****ch guys should call them out for their selfish deception. Otherwise, forgiving them so easily is the same as allowing guys like that to break the hearts of more girls all over the world.

Sorry for the long rant. I always feel worked up when I see such injustice done to women, and they don't even try to fight back. I also do not want Indian culture to bear the blame for the weak character of some individuals. I am an Indian, I grew up with this culture, and I was never taught to love one person then break her heart to marry another. Sometimes it is the guys themselves, sometimes it is the parents, but they often bring up culture and tra***ion only as an excuse to escape taking responsibility for their own actions.


To make the long post short (and this is in my own words, not his): It's true that there's a thing called arranged marriage in Indian culture. It's true that most Indian parents would prefer their children to follow their wishes and marry someone of their choices (the parents' choices of course). But then, it's also true that romantic relationship before marriage is frown upon in Indian culture and generally disapproved by most parents. So, if an Indian guy chooses to go against his culture and his parents' wishes to start a romantic relationship with a girl, Indian or not, he no longer gets to play the culture+parents card when he wants to dump said girl and go for an arranged marriage. There is no acceptable excuses for this behavior. He is not an honest man, neither to himself, to his parents, nor to the girl. In other words, he's a player
I must add that the same holds true for girls (gender equality )

Bravo for your new agency and you too, @teekanne