{"id":6305,"date":"2016-04-11T14:10:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T08:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6305"},"modified":"2016-04-11T14:10:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T08:40:24","slug":"an-equal-marriage-young-couples-are-dissolving-sexist-wedding-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6305","title":{"rendered":"An Equal Marriage: How Woke Young Couples Are Dissolving Sexist Wedding Rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"\nW<\/span>hen Saranya and Dhruv decided to get married, she made a few things very clear \u2013 there would be no kanyadaan. In the saat pheras, she would lead; she would wear no mangalsutra; and she would not touch the groom\u2019s feet. It was a decision that flew in the face of centuries-old traditions<\/a>, but to the bride-to-be, it felt like the right thing to do. If marriage is to be an honest union of equals, kicking things off with a ceremony founded on hoary, sexist customs is no way to begin.\n\nSaranya\u2019s conservative parents were aghast. \u201cWhat will people say? How will we face society?\u201d they said.\n\nSaranya is a Tamil Brahmin and Dhruv a Kannada Brahmin. In the months leading up to their union, her parents tried their best to make her change her mind. \u201cDo it for us, kanna,\u201d they pleaded. \u201cWe are asking you for just two days. We won\u2019t bother you after that.\u201d Her in-laws were upset too. But Saranya stood her ground. She explained to everyone that she was against patriarchy<\/a> and sexism, the bedrock of most of these customs.\n\nShe didn\u2019t stop there. There was a ritual where she had to go to her in-laws\u2019 home along with her family and a priest to light a diya in her husband\u2019s room. It symbolised that the bride was now a part of the groom\u2019s family. \u201cI said I\u2019ll do it only if Dhruv does it too,\u201d she chuckles, evidently pleased with her rebellion. \u201cIt took some convincing, but I did it. I made sure Dhruv came with his family and a priest to my house too and lit a diya in my room.\u201d\n\nAnother ritual was where the bride<\/a> and bridegroom sit on a swing while married women in the family perform a puja for them. Saranya wanted her widowed grandmother to also be a part of it. \u201cIt was my way of fighting the stigma associated with widowhood.\u201d\n\n

\u201cYet she has accepted me. It just goes on to show that if you love the person, and if you have an open mind, you can and will try to understand their point of view.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nRituals and ceremonies are just one way Indian weddings<\/a> treat women as inferior to men. For another bride, Nandini, the fight was about equal spending. She was financing her own wedding as her parents were not very well-off at that time, and was adamant about splitting the cost 50-50 between the groom\u2019s family and herself. She also refused to give in to demands for cash, gold, and clothes. Her in-laws were not happy, but Nandini remained unfazed.\n\n\u201cThere was this one custom,\u201d she explains, \u201cwhere the groom\u2019s family has to give a sum of money as \u2018shagun\u2019 to the bride\u2019s family and they get twice the amount back. My in-laws were thinking in lakhs. I said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry I don\u2019t have that kind of money.\u2019 In the end, they settled for 5,000 and we gave them 10,000 back.\u201d\n\nFor every demand (including 50 grams of gold and the purchase of the groom\u2019s entire family\u2019s wedding trousseau), Nandini\u2019s response was, \u201cThis is the best I can do. If you are okay with it, let\u2019s get married, otherwise let\u2019s call it off.\u201d Thankfully, her husband was on her side and that made things easy.\n\nMoney was also the reason why Siddharth and his fianc\u00e9e decided to do away with the traditional wedding altogether. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to spend our life\u2019s savings on a wedding,\u201d he says. A traditional ceremony would have set them back by a lot. So they skipped that and opted for a court marriage<\/a>. There was no grand reception, just a small get-together for their families and friends.\n\n

It was a decision that flew in the face of centuries-old traditions, but to the bride-to-be, it felt like the right thing to do. <\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nSiddharth also says he and his partner did not want their special day to be overshadowed by the caste system and patriarchy. So a court marriage was the best thing to do. \u201cA lot of people who were initially skeptical about us doing a simple wedding, today say that it was the best decision we made,\u201d he says, considering the chaos and tension around big fat weddings<\/a>.\n\nMarried for two years now, Saranya says she is happy she fought for her beliefs. \u201cPeople understood that I am not someone who follows things blindly,\u201d she says. She also feels she paved the way for her younger sister, who won\u2019t face the kind of resistance she did.\n\nNandini and her husband have been married for ten years. They address each other as \u201ctum\u201d. She does not wear a mangalsutra, sindoor<\/a>, and bichiya (toe rings). She also does not observe Karva Chauth<\/a> and Teej. At first, her in-laws were horrified by her lifestyle. But over the years, things have changed. \u201cMy mother-in-law is an orthodox Indian woman with orthodox beliefs,\u201d says Nandini. \u201cYet she has accepted me. It just goes on to show that if you love the person, and if you have an open mind, you can and will try to understand their point of view.\u201d\n\nAfter all, love is the foundation on which a marriage is supposed to be built. And love, for an increasing number of Indian women, has no room for inequality<\/a>.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rituals and ceremonies are just one way Indian weddings treat women as inferior to men. Whether it is refusing the \u201ckanyadaan\u201d ceremony, standing up to the tradition of brides touching their husbands\u2019 feet, or even splitting the cost of the wedding equally, some Indian couples have found a way to subvert tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":6306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[5476,2113,10316,19,10157,21,5321],"class_list":["post-6305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","tag-bride","tag-culture","tag-customs","tag-india","tag-inequality","tag-marriage","tag-rituals"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Equal Marriage: How Woke Young Couples Are Dissolving Sexist Wedding Rituals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rituals and ceremonies are just one way Indian weddings treat women as inferior to men. Whether it is refusing the \u201ckanyadaan\u201d ceremony, standing up to the tradition of brides touching their husbands\u2019 feet, or even splitting the cost of the wedding equally, some Indian couples have found a way to subvert tradition.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6305\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Equal Marriage: How Woke Young Couples Are Dissolving Sexist Wedding Rituals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rituals and ceremonies are just one way Indian weddings treat women as inferior to men. Whether it is refusing the \u201ckanyadaan\u201d ceremony, standing up to the tradition of brides touching their husbands\u2019 feet, or even splitting the cost of the wedding equally, some Indian couples have found a way to subvert tradition.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6305\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-04-11T08:40:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1583235112.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1520\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"850\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hitesha Phukan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"An Equal Marriage: How Woke Young Couples Are Dissolving Sexist Wedding Rituals\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Rituals and ceremonies are just one way Indian weddings treat women as inferior to men. 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