Although India is a modern country, arranged marriages are not the thing of the past. There are many different forms of arranging marriages in India, but they all have one thing in common – parents and even wider family have a great role in finding s suitable match. This tradition is mainly due to the Indian culture – men and women don’t mingle that much and dating is not the norm. In India, traditional marriages depend significantly on tying a husband and a wife based on characteristics such as caste, social status, religion, location, language, education, age, height etc. However, parents (and wider family) also look for other qualities, such as horoscopes matching. Before the internet, print matrimonial and word of mouth were the most important tools for finding a suitable partner.
The increasing popularity of world wide web encouraged people for arranging marriages online. Indian matrimonial websites are now the main instrument for matchmaking. An online matrimonial website uses registration profiles to filter given preference (caste, religion, region, language, horoscope matching etc.). This is convenient for future grooms and brides to be more involved in looking for a spouse in more noncommittal way.
The tradition of arranging a marriage in India might sound unromantic to people from western countries. The statistics, on the other hand, indicate that love marriages work worse than arranged marriages. In India, there is a divorce rate of 1.1%, while in US approximate divorce rate is 45%. However, the main reason for such a low rate in India may be that divorces are still socially unacceptable.
In India, arranging a marriage has always played an important role in the society. This tradition is very likely to persist, since traditional practice is still followed despite the rapid economic and technological development of the country. This maybe because when matchmaking, Indians don’t refuse modern technology benefits. On the contrary, they just use all the advantages of Internet and IT to make matchmaking easier and more successful.