Semester at Sea Fall
2006 Voyage 
- Home Page
- My Biography
- Shipboard Interview
- Japan: They are
Japanese, not Esenapaj, you Nacirema!
- Vietnam: A War, Not a Country
- Burma: Oppressed by
Too Much Talk of Oppression
- India:
Transnationalizing Marriage
- Egypt: True Wealth
of Knowledge
- Turkey: Serendipity
in Istanbul
- Croatia: It's a Small World After
All
- Multisited Ethnography Project: It's a Small World After All
- Open Letter
Transnationalizing
Marriage
A highly
talked about issue in the West regarding
My grasp of
the two perspectives was challenged when I went to the Five Star Ethnic
Village
Resort Hotel in
I was
intrigued that many of the men wearing Western style suits were Indian
and
several women in saris were Caucasian. I surmised that the
Caucasian ladies are probably friends of the newly wed Indian couple
who
invited them to witness a traditional Indian wedding ceremony. It
was not
until a lady introduced herself as the mother of the Caucasian bride,
and
mother in law of the Indian groom, did I realize how incorrect and
stereotypical
my thoughts were. This was a cross cultural marriage, and the Caucasian
ladies
in saris were not merely guests but actual family members of the newly
weds.
It was a
fascinating, beautiful ceremony. At the traditional Indian wedding
ceremony, in
the middle of the lawn, there was a big screen that projected the
couple’s
first wedding, which had been performed Western style, complete with a
reverend,
tuxedo
and white gown. Had I drawn conclusions from my own observations
without
talking to the bride’s mother, I would have never known the couples’
diverse ethnicities
or that the couple in the clip was the same as the one I now saw at the
Indian
wedding. Prior
to meeting the bride’s mother, the cultural clothes and ceremony styles
of the
two weddings gave me a misguided, narrow impression that the couple was
of the
same ethnicity as their clothes and each other.
I was
intrigued by the notion of a cross cultural marriage, especially
between an
Indian and American. Nanda’s article had portrayed the two cultures as
completely opposite - so contrary that it was difficult to imagine how
the two families
balanced cultural clashes, especially with respect to modernization and
globalization.
When thinking about the effects of globalization on a traditional
system that
is still so commonly practiced in “modernized” India today, I realized
that
in a
sense, the cross cultural marriage I witnessed had created a new breed
of
marriage ceremonies. It was not purely Western or Indian, but a mixture
of
both. This new breed reflected the effects of globalization, the
intertwining
of cultures, as it took pieces of both cultures and created a new,
transnational subculture.
Still, I
wondered about the initial reactions of both families when they heard
about
their child’s choice of partner. Given that arranged marriages are
still
prevalent in India, what did the groom’s family think when he first
announced
his bride was American? Did his bride endure rigid scrutiny from his
family,
similar to the process illustrated in Nanda’s article? Or did they
accept
modern ideas of choosing one’s own spouse? How did caste play a part in
the
wedding, if the bride did not even have a caste? Would the marriage
work, since
each family had contrasting expectations and values, such as the vital
issue of
gender roles? While I do not know the difficulties the families may
have
endured while tolerating and accepting the others’ culture, I am
confident that
the marriage I witnessed would be successful because of the main
unifying
factor of Indian and Western marriage practices: families have their
childrens’
best interest at heart.