Now that valentine’s day is over, for those few fortunate lovebirds who could find their soulmate in this lifetime, it’s time to ponder on the fact that there are many unfortunate people in India who haven’t found their soulmate yet and many have even given up the hopes for any love marriage/relationship. They would either eventually get married by the traditional arranged marriage or remain single. Seeing so many of them makes me wonder why dating is so difficult in Indian society.
First of all, there are many who prefer to remain single by choice. India is a land where some of the most famous and accomplished personalities have/had remained single by choice throughout their life — be it industrialist Ratan Tata, India’s Missile Man APJ Abdul Kalam and several politicians like Atal ji, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee.
Even film stars like Rekha, Salman Khan, Sushmita Sen and many more have remained single without committing to anyone, which has surprised their fans for quite some time. Hence, there is nothing wrong with being single. It’s their personal choice that we all should respect.
But then, not everyone wants to be single in life. Many want to fall in love, date someone and thus find a soulmate for life. But many realise that it’s difficult to find that in India. We see thousands of desperate questions being asked on Reddit and Quora on why it is so difficult to find a date in India. Why is Indian society so obsessed with arranged marriages? I find there are many reasons for this harsh reality of dating in India.
Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushasan
One of the important reasons is the strong influence of family, caste and religion in Indian society. The roots of family lineage and traditions have deepened over centuries in India. That’s why for any family, it becomes a matter of family status to marry their daughter or sister into an equal status family.
The same logic applies to caste and religion. The trio of these superficial concepts has destroyed the dating fabric in Indian society. One finds it difficult to go against their family, community and religion by dating or marrying someone who does not belong to the same community. They either get ostracised by the family/society, in the worst-case scenario, they become a victim of honour killing. The situation in villages is even dire where caste and religion-based violence over love affairs are not uncommon.
Hence, it narrows down the scope of any person to limit their dating window to include only those who are acceptable to their family, caste and religious rules. In other words, dating in Indian society is nothing but an indirect way of finding someone for marriage as per the family/society expectations. It is rarely based on friendship, love or mutual respect for each other.
Portrayal Of Dating In Bollywood
Then, Indian society suffers from over-protection and safety concerns. For a long time, our movies, television and media have influenced us with the wrong side effects of falling in love. We all know that some of the most common scenes filmed are often about a woman getting betrayed by a man after she tells him she is going to be the mother of his child.
We all have seen and watched this over-dramatic scene several times in movies. Such movies and television shows have inadvertently impacted Indian society. We have become prone to assume that whoever dates our sister or daughter will turn out to be a villain. This fear is so much imbibed in our society that often, a woman’s brother behaves like her bodyguard (in movies ‘Pyaar Kiya toh Darna Kya’, ‘Anari’, ‘Chup Chup Ke’, ‘Hulchul’ and many more).
But on the other side, that same brother doesn’t mind falling in love with someone else’s sister. His dating is acceptable in society, but his sister’s dating is not. So this myopic attitude toward dating has led to Indian society becoming more conservative and fear-driven.
We often falsely assume in our society that a young woman or even a man can never find their life partner on their own. Hence, parents take up this responsibility even if no one has asked them to do so. They decide the fate of their kids’ dating lives even though their kids have grown up and become adults. This lack of belief amongst parents in their kids’ choice for their life partner, coupled with the security issues and fear that their kids, especially daughters, would end up marrying someone from another community/religion, has affected the dating environment in India.
That’s why dating in India, unlike in Western countries, never got its space to become acceptable like arranged marriages. Many consider it a part of Western culture, even though dating doesn’t have any nationality. The middle-class blames dating on rich people’s timepass and expect their kids to stay away from dating in order to focus on studies and thereby become successful in life. And among many rural populations in our society, dating doesn’t even enter their dictionary. It’s often a taboo for them, even assuming it to be a sort of hidden prostitution.
Hence, even though there are dating sites and apps available for people to connect and meet, due to the above reasons, finding a date online becomes difficult. In fact, unlike in Western countries, dating sites in India have added boundaries of caste, religion, language etc. that make the app almost a rehearsal for marriage.
It isn’t surprising that many dating sites have become matrimony sites. This doesn’t happen in other countries, where dating often involves meeting, understanding and liking each other in person without such superficial barriers. That is what dating should ideally have been in India.
Let’s hope that someday our society becomes more accepting of dating and the iconic DDLJ ending scene ‘Jaa Simran Jaa, Jee Le Apni Jindagi’ becomes a reality in the dating scene.