| March 15, 2008 | Saturday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1429 |
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Life’s great lottery
MARRIAGES, far from being made in heaven, are lotteries where there are winners and losers. More than any human relationship, they require constant care and attention. And above all, they need daily compromises if they are to work.
There are arguments for and against arranged marriages, as there are for and against love matches. But at the end of the day, their success or failure depends on so many factors that you could just as well spin a coin, or get hitched on the Internet with a total stranger.
In Pakistan, as in most traditional societies, the vast majority of young men and women have few opportunities to meet and get to know each other before tying the knot. Thus, parents and other relatives play the role of matchmakers, usually doing their best to make sure that their sons and daughters end up with the most suitable spouse possible, and lead happy lives. Clearly, judging by our high birth rate, this system works well for the majority of Pakistani couples.
But all too often, factors other than the desire for marital bliss come into play. Family honour, status, caste and dowries are all ingredients in parental selection and approval. Beauty is one constant, and financial security another.
Given how rigidly our society is segregated by gender, most young people have few options but to go along with their parents’ choice. And in most cases, this arrangement works well enough. However, there are many instances where marriage is forced on unwilling young people. Indeed, this is the fate of tens of thousands of Pakistani girls every year.
Often, family, clan and caste considerations dictate a match that is far from ideal from the bride’s point of view. In the rural areas where women have even fewer rights than in the cities, powerful feudals can virtually dictate the selection process, and tenants and their daughters are helpless. And even in urban, middle-class families, many young girls are promised in marriage virtually at birth.
What causes attraction between the sexes is a mysterious thing. In arranged marriages, love flowers after two people get together; but if it doesn’t, the fallout can be messy and tragic. All too often, wives without qualifications are financially dependent on their husbands and cannot opt out of a failed marriage. In any case, their own parents discourage divorce even when their daughters are clearly miserable. When they get married, young brides are told that they are leaving for their new homes, and will only be welcomed back in funeral shrouds.
Indeed, our entire society frowns on divorce, and the law is loaded against women. Unless the husband agrees, it is extremely difficult for a woman to win her freedom from a bad marriage. And even if she does succeed, archaic custody rules can tear her children from her. Finally, alimony and child support laws are also heavily weighted in favour of men.
As if the system wasn’t already tilted against women, they also have to contend with forced marriages and honour killings. For some bizarre reason, women are the repositories of family honour, and any deviation from an outdated and barbaric code of sexual conduct invites not just widespread condemnation, but socially sanctioned violence and even murder. Even if a woman is raped, she is deemed to be somehow at fault, and far from being given sympathy and support she suffers from ostracism and rejection.
While all these attitudes are shameful but perfectly acceptable aspects of our society, they cause horror and revulsion in the West. With sickening regularity, there are reports in the media about honour killings in the Muslim immigrant communities in Europe. Young girls who refuse to marry the men selected by their parents are usually the victims. In other cases, they are Muslim girls who fall in love with men deemed unsuitable by parents because they are from another faith or ethnic background.In any case, among traditional groups, it is unacceptable for girls to fall in love before they are engaged. And should a daughter or sister exhibit such independence, she is considered to have tarnished the family’s honour. If she refuses to renounce her choice, she can (and often is) cast out of the fold. In more extreme cases, she is killed.
Thus far, the authorities in the West have not pursued such cases with the full force of the law. There have been occasional convictions that have attracted banner headlines, but by and large the family’s refusal to cooperate with investigations has defeated attempts to prosecute.
Forced marriages have been largely condoned, with young girls being obliged to sponsor their new husbands in their countries of origin to migrate to the West. This steady inflow of young men into Europe and the US from rigid, traditional societies has reinforced concepts like ‘family honour’.
Basically, traditional immigrant families have tried to maintain the social customs of their homeland while living in modern western societies. Thus, while they are willing to enjoy the higher incomes and many amenities available to them in their chosen new homes, they despise the lifestyle and moral values of the host community. Inevitably, it is their children who are most affected by the tensions and contradictions this balancing act produces.
Girls suffer more than boys from this situation as they are supposed to respect largely irrelevant traditions at home, while dealing with an entirely different world at school, university and work. Parents fear that they will be unable to find good matches for their daughters if they become ‘too westernised’.
However, there is a growing feeling that the law should be applied equally to all citizens, and that forced marriages and honour killings have no place in civilised societies. School administrators and social workers in the UK are being told to look out for girls from immigrant families who might be under pressure to marry.
Such a proactive approach will no doubt upset many immigrant groups, and give rise to accusations of racism and racial profiling. But clearly, no young woman should be forced into spending the rest of her life with somebody against her will. This is perhaps the most important decision in a person’s life, and if marriage is a lottery one should be allowed to pick the number for oneself.
