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In South Asia, love is duty.
My parents had an arranged marriage. They met on a marriage website specifically for people with my last name and my caste. So did their parents. So did the parents of all my friends. In India’s national newspaper, the Times of India, there is a section dedicated to “matrimonial ads,” which normally include a description of the bachelor or bachelorette, usually including short “key” details like height, weight, skin color, caste, age, education level, tax bracket and occupation. A similar description of their desired significant other will follow. These adverts change every weekend, with just one page normally carrying over a hundred, and the parents of the bachelor or bachelorette typically publish the ads.
Growing up, the one refrain I heard most was “parampara.” Tradition. Centered around “preserving” familial values and cultural practices, tradition was often flung in my face to justify a whole lot of -isms, from sexism to racism to casteism. Tradition was synonymous with the idea of dharma — duty. Duty to my family, to my “community,” to my people. A duty to preserve our racial heritage, to maintain “purity.” A duty to marry, but only the “right” kind of man.
South Asia’s arranged marriage culture is no secret to anyone within the South Asian community, from India to Guyana to London to New Jersey. Websites like Jeevansaathi or Shaadi, where users can filter potential spouses based on caste and lineage, are some of the most used platforms among the South Asian community. However, for most non-South Asians, the 2020 Netflix show “Indian Matchmaking” served as an introduction to this billion-dollar industry, where your time of birth and last name is more important than your personality.
When the hit show debuted with all its fanfare in 2020, it packaged these ideals into a fun-filled, Bollywood-style extravaganza, with all of the shine and none of the depth. Starring Bombay socialite and self-proclaimed “marriage consultant” Sima Taparia, the docu-series-slash-reality show follows various Non-Residential Indians (NRIs) — a colloquial term for the South Asian diaspora — and their families as they relentlessly try to engineer loveless marriages for their children.
Suddenly, everyone was talking about “that new Indian reality TV show.” With its revolving door of spoiled, snooty South Asians and unflinching narcissism, the show was the best of the worst reality TV everyone secretly enjoys, becoming an instant Netflix classic that spawned three seasons, Sima Auntie’s own matchmaking app UrbanMatch, music videos, a Jewish spin-off and even a tour of universities that included Georgetown.
The legacy of “Indian Matchmaking” is complex. For some South Asians, it’s a celebration of culture. For others, it’s nothing more than a hate-watch.
To the non-South Asian, Sima Auntie is a loveable and eccentric character whose ignorance is humorous and whose controversial one-liners, like “slim, trim and educated” and “marriage is like breaking biscuits,” are memorable quotes to use for advertisements and entertainment. For most South Asians, though, she’s all too real — an embodiment of that one nosy auntie who has way too much time on her hands, representing a patriarchal, casteist, sexist and colorist society that stubbornly refuses to change.
There is little I can add to the overwhelming, nuanced and deserved backlash for reality TV normalizing the -isms and profiting off of them or to the other side of the conversation, which hails the show as an unabashed docu-series by creator and avid feminist Smriti Mundhra that showcases the reality of South Asian culture.
But what I can say is this:
South Asian representation is limited. Real people are flawed and messy. Real society isn’t a perfect and dreamlike big, fat Indian wedding. From “The Bachelor” to “Love Island,” there is a plethora of TV shows packed with drama and the same problematic stereotypes and caricatures — shows where British or American characters are free to find love, however short-lived or toxic. Maybe South Asia can have one show like that too.
At the same time, there is an increasing urgency to create media that interrogates the -isms that govern South Asian society, not normalize them. The purpose of art has always been to provoke thought and create progressive change, and that has never been needed more than now. We need to put characters, shows and films on screen that hold up a mirror to who we are but also challenge us to imagine who we could be: a world that is less flawed and messy, perhaps less shiny, but far more equal.
This is precisely why it’s so important to make shows like Indian Matchmaking and then dissect them for all they are worth.
Yes, love is a duty. But it should also be so much more.