Arranged Marriage

Arranged marriages are common in Hindu culture, however in the West, this is something we're not used to. I have never met anyone who has had an arranged marriage, but I know how valuable of a practice it is to cultures. To say that an arranged marriage is wrong would be naive and based on personal bias and not a full understanding of the meaning of arranged marriages. As westerners, we all are used to the romanticized perception of marriage but to many other cultures, getting married isn not for love but rather for sense. We're used to fairy tale love that always ends in marriage. This is what we are told is important, loving the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with. When I read the article on arranged marriages from the perspective of a girl who is a part of a culture that supports and engages in arranged matrimony. She stated in the article that she didn't trust herself enough to make the decision on who she should marry because she had no experience in the area of marriage. Letting her parents take responsibility for arranging her marriage was normal and ideal, she didn't worry that she didn't know the man she was going to marry because she had the rest of her life to get to know him and love him. People in these cultures are generally okay with arranged marriages; they do not feel as if they are vein robbed of romance or their emotional independence. I think that this is something many westerners overload when they jump straight to the conclusion that arranged marriages are wrong. Just because we consider marriage to be romantic and based on two-way love does not mean that everyone else believes this.