Young Bride And Groom Standing In Front Of A House Dressed For The Ceremony And...

Arranged marriages have been an integral part of the Indian society since ages; according to Amnesty International, 95 % of the marriage in India are arranged by people other than those getting married; these people could be parents, matchmakers, matrimonial sites; the practice of arranged marriage was at the beginning a way of maintaining the castes system, therefore mixed marriage (religion, caste, social status, economic class) are quite impossible; this custom although it is not based on spirituals values, remains deeply anchored in Indian society which considers marriage as an alliance between two families rather than between two individuals; nowadays the bride and groom are asked fort their consent, nevertheless matchmaking is still widely practiced; most of the times matchmakers also called nayam are priests, religious leaders, relatives, family friends; they try to found possible matches by looking at the social background, the caste and the horoscope of the couple to check the compatibility; once a match is found, the two families meet in order to agree about modalities of the wedding such as the dowry, a practise prohibited in India since 1961 but still valid; today, newspapers, the Internet or television ads can serve as modern matchmakers