‘Til Death Do Us Part?
Leaving Life To An Algorithm:
The Rise and Risks of High-Tech
Arranged Marriages
By: Sanjana Nigam
THE MEET CUTE
After a long day of classes, 26-year-old Jessena Varghese living in Queens, New York, came home to find her parents scrambling to get the house ready for some mystery guests on their way over. “The house is spotless and I was like, ‘Oh man, something’s going down’ and then I go downstairs and I can just see my parents in the kitchen scrambling to make stuff,” said Varghese.
Unbeknownst to her, she was about to meet her future husband and in-laws for the first time. As instructed by her parents, Varghese went into her room, put on an Indian kurta top and a pair of jeans and waited in her room for her potential suitor and his parents to arrive. “I refused to help my parents. They’re like in the kitchen cooking snacks. And I just stayed in my room and waited.” says Varghese, “I did paint my toenails though.”
Things moved quickly from there. “So then the doorbell rings and it’s like he brought everybody. It was my in-laws, my husband, their uncle, their auntie. Yeah, everybody came,” says Varghese. Once everyone was situated in the living room, Varghese served her future in-laws and future husband, Danny, some cookies and was instructed to sit down next to him on the couch. Until a few minutes later, when Danny’s father suggested she and Danny go someplace else to get to know each other.
Luckily, Varghese had stalked Danny mere minutes earlier as she waited for him to ring her doorbell. From her online sleuthing she learned two key details about Danny: Danny was a nurse and Danny enjoyed hiking. “So I started the conversation and I was like, ‘Hey, do you like hiking?’”
Their very first conversation together lasted 45 minutes and Varghese’s attitude softened. “One of the things that really attracted me to him though, is he asked me what I do. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a therapist, I’m a counselor’, and his immediate answer was, ‘Dude, I’ve always wanted to be that!’”
As Varghese’s story reveals, arranged marriages are alive and well in the United States, particularly in the South Asian diaspora. This is how it usually goes: a prospective suitor and his family come over to meet a woman and her family with a rishta, a potential marriage proposal. With preliminary background information on each other, the two families also gauge their compatibility. Soon the woman and the man meet and are left alone to get to know one another. First impressions are crucial because sometimes the potential couple decides in the first meeting if they are willing to move forward with the r ishta, and prepare for the engagement.
However, while typical, this is not the only way arranged marriages play out anymore. Websites like Shaadi.com and Bharat Matrimony.com became popular in the late 2000s and now operate akin to dating applications or apps. Matrimony websites have set a new precedent by blurring and transforming the boundaries for what even qualifies as an arranged marriage. In some ways, they appear to diminish the stigma sometimes felt by second-generation NRI’s, yet also raise questions about the risks like fear of being courted only for a green card. Convenient and trendy, they appeal to the digital generation looking to please parents and carry on a long-held tradition, yet test the ability of a computers’ clicks to compete with the wisdom and care of a loving family with one of life’s most vital decisions.
THE ENDORSEMENT
The Golden Ticket for any arranged marriage, digital or otherwise, is a great biodata. The biodata is the motherlode of information. Short for biographical data, it includes pictures of the potential bride or groom and information like age, education, personal interests, career accomplishments and goals. However, biodatas also include information that you wouldn’t find on a typical western dating app. Many Indian families have special requirements at the forefront of their matchmaking search, like horoscopes, castes, religions, regional identity, and dietary restrictions. These often play a large role in determining logistical compatibility.
At the heart of the arranged marriage process are the parents. “I think an arranged marriage is when the parents bring the proposal and endorse the person strongly,” says Bhuvaneshwari Bhagat, a professional Indian marriage counselor based in Manhattan.
The parents identify prospective mates with the help of extended family or friends of friends and after thoroughly reviewing multiple biodatas, and finding someone they like, they arrange for the potential couple’s two families to meet. Parents are also sometimes the managers of their children’s matrimony sites, sifting through biodatas and finding matches, showing their kids only the candidates who made it through parental screening.
Humsini Gopal, a data analyst from who met her now ex-husband on the site Tamil Matrimony, a regional subsidiary of Bharat Matrimony. Gopal had never dated before nor did she know which forum would be best to find someone, so she asked her parents. “I figured if I could meet them through my parents, they would be vouched for,” says Gopal. “I believe my parents would know me well enough to know what I was looking for.”
Shruti Varadharajan, a supply chain engineer living in Houston had a similar experience. She met her husband after her parents found him on Shaadi.com. Her mother managed her account, spoke with her to-be husband’s parents on the phone and then spoke with him herself. He forwarded his number for her to share with Varadharajan, and mere hours later they had set up a date. For Varadharajan, having her parents involved in the process from the beginning was a relief, she was able to avoid any awkward conversations with them.
“Isn’t that kind of good with everything out in the open, you’re not like secretly dating or not having to do the whole awkward introduction like, ‘Hi, I’m dating this person now and bring him home,’” says Varadharajan.
THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Once they hit a marriageable age, South Asians face pressure from their parents to find a spouse. With the pressure to settle down, the appeal and convenience of arranged marriages are apparent: they are quick and convenient. There is an understanding from the very beginning that these two people and their families are looking for a rishta.
Varghese’s initial reaction to an arranged marriage was entrenched in stigma and outright resistance. It became a battle of how to resolve her parent’s eastern understanding of arranged marriage with her western upbringing. Varghese felt pressure to marry and meet someone and it became a point of contention between her and her parents.
“Even though there’s a lot of freedom now and my parents always told me you can say yes, you can say no, but I felt like every time I said no, it came at a cost,” says Varghese.
Every time she rejected a match it felt like she was disappointing her father. Even worse, she feared the list of potential suitors would dry up altogether leaving her to hear her parents utter those four dreaded words: ‘I told you so.'”
In South Asian culture, navigating parents’ intense involvement in your life as an adult can become contentious, and arranged marriages are an especially tricky ordeal. Just like Varghese, there is pressure to not disappoint your parents or contribute to any brewing tension, but also a need to confront the stigma and the potential loss of independence.
I witnessed this first-hand with both my elder sisters. Around 2013, my parents had begun the arranged marriage search for my two sisters, both of whom were very resistant to the idea but agreed for our parents’ sake.
There was an unspoken tension for my sisters who had hit a “marriageable” age, they had completed their studies, they both had a Master’s degrees and were financially independent. However, pressure from my parents didn’t truly intensify until my eldest sister turned 27 and my parents began to tell her to find herself a boyfriend.
In 2016, my parents decided to take matters into their own hands. They began the hunt for a son-in-law on the matrimony site Shaadi.com. My mother had swapped out her daily routine of online shopping on her iPad for swiping through bio-datas and my father was constantly on the phone with Shaadi.com representatives, working with them intimately, to find a guy that one of my sisters would like.
However, despite the parental pressure, it is ultimately up to the son or daughter on how they want to move forward. My sisters decided they didn’t like using a matrimony site and decided not to move forward with the process. Similarly, when a couple meets for the first time, typically the decision on whether they want to move forward with marriage comes after the man and woman decide they like one another.
“The reason arranged marriage still resonates and exists is because I am okay if my parents brought in a guy and said, marry him,” says Bhagat. Bhagat believes that only one part of that statement still reigns true in today’s evolved arranged marriage process. “The first part is saying, my parents, can bring a guy and tell me to meet him. That’s all. They can’t tell me to marry him.”
The distinction matters, she says, “It’s not just between the two parents, you know, it seems like the boy and the girl have a choice, as well. And I really wanted people to understand that.”
‘MY PARENTS WERE MY APP’
Arranged marriages often have a negative impression in the West, sometimes it is even thought to be archaic. Possibly because they are sometimes confused with forced marriage or child marriage, two completely different practices. Arranged marriage is the matrimony between two consenting adults and their families.
Matrimony sites appeal to many Indian-Americans because their resemblance to Western dating apps can resolve the stigma and answer questions at the same time. That’s how Varadharajan decided to view her marriage process.
“I wasn’t honest with a lot of people that are not in our culture. I’ll just say we met through common friends or my mom knows someone,” says Varadharajan. “So I don’t really tell them that it’s arranged unless I’m super familiar with them. Like my best friend, she’s not Indian and I told her how I met him and she’s like, ‘isn’t that just an added bonus? It’s just one other way to meet people. Like people use Tinder, Bumble’.”
Varghese expected to face difficult questions from her peers, “Because I was born and raised in the States, I had a diverse group of friends, they wouldn’t understand,” says Varghese. However, some surprised her. Varghese, who was studying to be a therapist, was academically required to be seen by a therapist herself. “When I explained to her this arranged marriage process, she [the therapist] was shocked. But she was so happy about it. She’s like, you mean your parents look for the top 10 people and propose them to you. And I was like, I guess oh, yeah,” says Varghese.
Rupal Kankariya met her fiance the traditional way after her uncle met her fiance-to-be at a wedding. After inquiring with her fiance’s family, Kankariya’s uncle followed the chain of command in his family: the first person to consult was her father, the very last was Kankariya, herself. Luckily, when her uncle suggested they speak with the suitable man he had found over the phone, both Kankariya and her father agreed.
“Saying that I know of someone who I think could fit really well with your family and close the doors and this could be something worth looking into. So he kind of like played the middleman for both sides, and then blend both sides,” says Kankariya of her uncle.
The stigma was apparent but ultimately not important. “I definitely feel that stigma for sure. But I don’t really care. Because, you know, people use apps to find people and like, that’s totally okay. My parents were my app.”
THE WILD WEST
The similarities between dating apps and matrimony sites call into question whether arranged marriages still hold their value in the modern-day. Is it a westernized bastardization of the traditional arranged marriage or is it simply the 21st-century approach to traditional practice? Is it possible for an arranged marriage to exist if you stop relying on the traditional human matchmaking element and instead rely on an algorithm to find someone for you?
I created my own Shaadi.com profile to navigate how the matrimony site works and how people can embed their faith so deeply into an algorithm.
According to its website, Shaadi.com has three pillars that build their site. One of the pillars is “giving customers complete control through easy to use interfaces and features that can help them identify, filter and contact potential partners.”
Upon opening Shaadi.com you are immediately hit with a chaotic stream of pop-up notifications, people viewing your profile, constant flashing images. It is an uproar of information. My immediate response to the website after first creating the account was an overwhelming feeling, I couldn’t navigate where to start my search.
When setting up a profile, the very first questions they ask is which country you are based in, religious affiliation, mother tongue, and dietary restrictions. Next, the website asks about what you look for in a partner. The assessment of a potential match begins with their desired religious affiliations, desired income range, the country you would like them to be based in, desired residency status, education level, and dietary restrictions. A hefty list.
According to its website, Shaadi.com has a large number of users, approximately 35 million. My first few moments on the site began with no biodata, no photo, and few match preference settings. The lack of filters meant that absolutely anyone and everyone could view my account, which presented minimal information about myself and could contact me, and several did. Without specific preference filters, Shaadi.com is the wild west – no rules and pure chaos.
Alongside including your biodata, matrimony sites like Shaadi.com and Bharat Matrimony, have filters that allow users of the sites to only see matches from people who align with their preferences. This includes filters like their horoscope, dietary restrictions, caste, region, and religion. Often these categories can serve as make-or-break determinants for parents and raise sensitive issues for NRIs.
For Kankariya’s family, a compatible horoscope was paramount. “I would say, first and foremost, my parents’ requirement was all horoscopes had to match. But that was a deal-breaker right off the bat,” says Kankariya. “If the horoscopes didn’t match then my parents wouldn’t even bother showing me the guy. Even if he was Brad Pitt, it didn’t matter.”
In India, your Vedic horoscope can determine your compatibility. Your Vedic astrological birth chart, also known as your janam kundali, calculates how the planets, sun, and moon were aligned at the time of your birth date, time and place, it is based on the Vedic astrological chart. In Hindu households, your janam kundali can be written immediately after birth, by an astrologer so that when you are ready to marry it is ready to compare with your potential spouses. When a couple decides they want to marry they present their janam kundali, to a pundit, an Indian priest, who reads each of them to determine if the couple would be compatible. Janam kundalis are also used to determine an auspicious date for the wedding.
“They believe in horoscopes, just part of it with a family anecdote. Someone in my family passed away at a very young age and my grandfather said that if he had checked his horoscope, he maybe would have known that,” says Kankariya. “I think my parents also believe that you come written with part of your destiny, and the stars are reflective of the destiny already written for you.”
Over the years, the relevance of the janam kundali has varied. Some families, like Kankariya’s, value it to a high degree, whereas others, like Varadharajan’s, dismiss horoscopes altogether.
“In my parents’ marriage, horoscopes were not a big thing, they didn’t even look at it because my grandparents were like ‘horoscopes can match sure but do the people match?,’” says Varadharajan.
Regional identity is also a large determinant for many Indians, making sure they marry someone from their region or state. Bharat Matrimony, whose name translates to “national matrimony”, has subset websites specifically designed for each state. Instead of going by Bharat Matrimony, they go by Kerela Matrimony or Tamil Matrimony, there is even a Christian Matrimony or a Muslim Matrimony.
“While in India, you will not find a Tamil parent endorsing someone saying, ‘Here is this Punjabi boy you should meet’, you will rarely find anybody saying that,” says Bhagat.
India is a diverse country, every state and region can be drastically different in religion, language and values. Filtering people based on region is one of the best ways many families feel they can connect their children with matches more compatible and familiar with their family values.
The drastic difference in values is often portrayed in Bollywood movies like Two States. Two States is based on a book, loosely based on a true story, featuring a love story between a Tamil woman and a Punjabi man. Two regions of India on the opposite ends of the country differ greatly in values. Although the couple shared the same religion and want to get married, they are kept apart because their families have trouble navigating the cultural differences coming from different states in India.
Caste is the final big determinant among Indians. The caste system is an archaic hierarchy system that allows people to determine your social status. Caste can be a big motivator among Indian-Americans.
“In the US, the nature of the diaspora has tended to, in a sense support, I would say probably, upper-caste elite, who tend to predominate in the South Asian community and at the same time, make an argument that caste doesn’t matter, caste is something backward or, this is not something that they think about when doing the US,” says Anupama Rao, an associate professor at Barnard College, specializing in caste and race.
On matrimony sites like Shaadi.com, mention of your caste can be paramount, it can make-or-break the match. Profiles are filtered to match with someone of the same caste. Typically those who believe in the caste system either want to marry within their caste or higher, there is little interest in anyone who is in a caste below them.
“But because of the structures of caste and class and the ways in which they work together, you continue to, I think, see the reproduction of social privilege,” says Rao.
Shaadi.com’s final pillar is providing customers with a “superior matchmaking experience” and ensuring that they will also protect their privacy and security, according to their website. But like we said, Shaadi.com is the wild west, it’s hard to feel safe at all times.
There is a real fear of exposing yourself to fraud, particularly when it comes to citizenship. One of the first questions Shaadi.com asks you is what country you are based in and how long you have lived there, which can sometimes read as a clear indicator of citizenship. The fear that someone may be using you as a citizenship scam was incredibly real for Kankariya in particular, who is wary of strangers on the internet.
“It’s like a downward slippery slope. One of my biggest fears was genuinely that someone was going to like me, and I thought it was going to all be good and fine and then like a year into it, they were going to be like ‘cool, you got me my citizenship like peace out, I’m out’,” says Kankariya.
‘SOME CLICK, SOME DON’T…’
Hi-tech or low, the great fear is the same: what if the marriage doesn’t work? This was the case for Gopal met her husband on TamilMatrimony.com and three years later is now divorced. Gopal believes that when you don’t know the person well enough, the expectation of how and who you need to be can get lost in translation.
“I think the biggest risk is just you’re not completely sure what all your duties are as a wife, or what is involved in being part of a partnership in a marriage, and how you need to help each other out how you need to be able to reach out to your spouse, how you need to be able to open yourself up and understand the other person or help them understand you,” says Gopal.
Despite her marriage’s failure, Gopal says she is open to another arranged marriage and believes in South Asian collectivist cultures, which value community and kinship and prioritize maintaining familial relations and group bonding over the pursuit of financial or personal independence.
Dr. Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, has specialized in the psychology behind love and arranged marriages. He says that an individualistic society, like the United States, can learn something from the mindset of collectivist societies.
“Even without us becoming a collectivist society or adopting the religions of some of the countries that practice arranged marriage, we can still learn from arranged marriages, we can learn how to build love over time,” says Dr. Epstein.
According to Dr. Epstein, in individualistic societies like in the west the mindset surrounding romantic relationships leads with love first, then marriage. However, in collectivist societies the formula is reversed: marriage first, then love.
“We delude ourselves into thinking that we know our partner fully and of course feel a strong love for our partner and strong lust so we’re going to be fine the rest of our lives,” says Epstein about love marriages. “I think, why arranged marriages in general work better, are because there’s a recognition that it takes a lifetime to get to know someone, in part because people keep changing. So it’s a whole different concept of growing with your partner and growing closer to your partner, and gaining more knowledge about your partner over time, over a very long period of time.”
When an in-person matchmaker is involved, be it a relative, friend or hired professional there is a deeper understanding of both families. They grasp an understanding of the family’s personality, vibe, and values. Things an algorithm can never learn.
Gopal disagrees; she still believes that online matrimony platforms offer value.
“I think actually, that these websites help expand the search in a way because back in India, they are a very collective society, and they usually use word of mouth to help a man and a woman connect. But sometimes it limits the options. For my experience it has limited the number of options that my parents had,” says Gopal. “So this algorithm that you know shaadi.com or any matrimony site uses, I feel like it helps broaden the scope to help introduce more potential matches.”
Gopal’s divorce from her husband provided her with insight into where things went wrong in the arranged marriage process.
“I think in the beginning it was just, we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other because there was a distance issue. I was in Colorado, he was in Atlanta. Because we didn’t get to spend as much time together before the marriage as I feel we should have,” says Gopal. “Sometimes you don’t always spend a lot of time getting to know somebody but if you want to get to know somebody you’ll definitely make the time for them and I feel we never made the time to really get to know each other.”
Gopal says she is open to going through the process again, this time using the matrimony site to date for some time, instead of marrying them.
“I might look at a matrimony site at some point, but I’d also look at the possibility of just meeting someone and dating.”
For Kankariya, it will always come down to one factor that neither an algorithm nor the human experience can guarantee.
“It’s honestly just a matter of luck, some people click, some people don’t and whoever you are meant to click with, you click,” says Kankariya.
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Headline and Banner Photo Credit: Sam and Ekta and Our Labor of Love
Youtube Videos:
Two States, credit: UTV Motion Pictures
Ok Jaanu, credit: Dharma Productions
‘Til Death Do Us Part? Leaving Life To An Algorithm: 