Arranged marriage, individuation and the adult-child in Indian society

By Priyanka Lugani

Arranged marriage is not inherently the problem. Like any social institution, it can be conscious or unconscious. The issue arises when individuals enter marriage without having developed a stable sense of self. Many young people are prevented from exploring relationships, intimacy and attraction during their formative years. Dating is discouraged. Interactions between genders are heavily monitored.

Natural developmental experiences become sources of shame. The result is often a form of arrested development. The individual enters marriage with the emotional and relational maturity of a teenager while carrying the responsibilities of an adult.

In the West, the opposite distortion can occur. Sexual development is accelerated while emotional maturity lags behind. Both extremes create imbalance. A healthy society requires integration. Marriage works best when two adults meet. Not when two children inherit a contract.

Without awareness, marriage can become merely a continuation of existing family systems. Old wounds, loyalties and unconscious dynamics pass from one generation to the next.

Remembering an Older Wisdom

Ironically, many of these developmental insights are not foreign imports imposed upon Indian culture. They already exist within Indian tradition. What remains today is often neither traditional nor modern, but a confused hybrid. Ancient wisdom is invoked to justify behaviours that have little to do with the traditions from which they supposedly emerge. The result is a society filled with people carrying adult responsibilities while still searching for permission to become themselves.

Perhaps the deeper question is not whether a culture is Eastern or Western, traditional or modern.

The question is whether the people within it have been allowed to grow.

A child who is not permitted to mature may become a narcissistic adult. A woman who is not allowed to develop autonomy may enter relationships without knowing how to protect herself. A man who never individuates may mistake control for love. A family system that fears development often reproduces the very dysfunction it seeks to avoid.

The task, then, is not to reject family. Nor is it to worship individualism. The task is not rebellion. It is consciousness.

To see the inherited patterns. To understand the arrangements we were born into. To ask whether they are helping us grow, or simply teaching us to remain the people we once were. Because only when the child, the adult and the elder are all allowed to emerge can a human being become whole.

And perhaps that was the wisdom embedded within the Ashrama system all along: that love is not measured by how tightly we hold on to one another, but by whether we allow each stage of life to unfold as it should.