Arranged marriages fascinate people in the UK ‘like watching horror films’. Don’t scoff, says Ziauddin Sardar (author of Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience), British society could learn a lot from the Asian experience. In The Guardian:
Consider the case of two sisters whose lives are thrown into turmoil by political events. The partition of India was mass trauma. The sisters were uprooted from all the normality they had known and had to trek to Pakistan along with their extensive family. But making a new life in a new place sent family members hiving off in all directions to find jobs and opportunity. The bonds of family seemed to be weakening, indeed on the verge of destruction. So the sisters hatched a plan to countermand the forces that were shattering their tradition. If their first-born children were a boy and a girl then they would arrange their marriage to one another. In this way they could preserve the family and pass on to their offspring the solidity and support the sisters had once known.
How could two women conceive of such a scheme for two people they had not yet conceived? And why would they imagine such a premature arrangement could possibly have a chance of succeeding? Well, consider that as sisters they shared a common heritage of values, socialisation, education and all the nurturing that goes into giving people a similar outlook on life and requirement of human behaviour. Who better to trust to pass these most cherished values and grooming on to a new generation than one’s own sister?
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