Love, Arranged Marriage, and the Indian Social Structure

Abstract

This paper examines the concepts of “romantic love” and “conjugal love” and their relationship to arranged marriage in the Indian social system. The family system, though it is pervasive in all social systems, represents unique features of a particular society and its ongoing changes which control the expression of premarital love/romantic love and also determine the importance of conjugal love/marital love. In a society where the family system is a strong agency of socialization and emphasizes family unity as opposed to individual goals, in the absence of other agencies of emotional and marital support, the family exerts a great control on the mate-selection process and the institutionalization of “arranged marriage”. The purposes and consequences of arranged marriage are tentatively analyzed and a generalized picture of cultural norms and the social system is presented as a theoretical paradigm to understand the importance of arranged marriage in India.