What’s Wrong With India & Pakistan’s Wedding Culture?
The Wedding Obsession: A Deep Dive into South Asian Lavishness
Hello, everyone. So I really wanted to talk about something I think is very relevant lately, especially in South Asia; maybe you also noticed it: this obsession with weddings and huge spending.
Frankly, I don’t really care to know the blow-by-blow details of what exactly the recent Ambani wedding entailed. I mean, yes, that Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant wedding that will reportedly take up a record $600 million. Instead, I want to step back, zoom out, and ask, why are people of South Asia like that-worried even more so by the desire to spend lavishly on weddings?
Alright, not to speak ill of the good people here; I’m certainly not here to bash anyone who’s frittering away their money. If you’ve got it and you wanna throw one hell of a shindig, then so be it. What’s really captivating to me here, though, is the mentality behind these shows of excess and how that speaks to our culture.
But first, let’s get to the numbers. This Ambani wedding? Seven months. Yep, you heard that right. 7 months! That is longer than most political leaders stay in power. The total cost? $600 million, which translates to around 5,000 crore rupees in Indian terms and 12,000 crore in Pakistani terms. To put it into perspective, that is four times more expensive than the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles! Now imagine how much leftover we are talking here.
But that’s enough about this for now. I’d like to address the problem at large: our general obsession with wedding material in South Asian culture. And no, it is not just the ultra-rich who are sucked into this. Regular people, like you and me, are splurging way over what we can afford to shell out simply to have these grand, larger-than-life celebrations of our weddings.
I see it firsthand. Friends, relatives, colleagues-you name them. It seems that this myth, alleged to be magical, of becoming the wedding that nobody will ever forget is on everyone’s mind. It feels almost as if everybody needs to outdo each other with regards to elaborate weddings-with me having to bear the brunt. I do know people who take loans and start siphoning off their savings just to meet expectations that seem so impossible.
Why? Public judgment is gruesome. If we don’t do a grand wedding with decorations galore, then they will talk in the villages, saying: “Have you seen her? Her wedding attire was nothing in comparison to so-and-so’s.” “Why was theirs so small?” Social standards are very grueling, and we end up spending all our financial security on just one single day.
Now, let us halt for a while here. Alright, well, let me ask you something.I’m going to bet pretty safely that all of you do. Now, that is just a classic story, right? Take the average Pakistani wedding. That will cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000, three times what most families earn in a year. And pretty much same goes the story on the other side of the border too, India.
The Indian wedding industry is worth 130 billion. Yes, 130 billion dollars! And the Pakistani wedding industry is about 900 billion rupees. Compare that to what these countries spend on education, and you will see just how backwards this whole situation is. In Pakistan, the government of Punjab spends 500 billion rupees on education, yet we are spending almost double that amount for weddings.
So, what’s the reality? Why do we love the idea of such enormous weddings?
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That’s my view: Throughout much of the woman’s life, a woman in South Asia, Pakistan in particular, hasn’t much of a say in it. You don’t really give them much say over much, but you do give them the right to choose something about something in their life — their marriage. It is something that they can prepare for, so emotionally there’s much at stake getting it to be the most memorable event of their lives.
Yet anyhow this is sad too. For a long time already, society teaches a woman how to think of marriage as a life’s purpose and then only in the interest of children’s birth. And therefore it is quite natural that the desire to make it as large as possible starts to grow as soon as the wedding becomes a great “life purpose”.
It is not just the couple but the society and the culture. They want to meet an expected norm by hosting these massive fairy-tale weddings because everybody else is doing that thing. I am here to report that we are just doing that-by giving in to social pressure, we perpetuate an unhealthy practice of consumerism on ourselves.
So I think most of you have heard the term “keeping up with the Joneses.” Out here in South Asia, it is more like keeping up with the Khans and the Ambanis. So, if your neighbor had the most beautiful wedding ever, then you feel that you must at least match or outdo them. People talk, and nobody wants that to happen.
Not that I say marriages do not deserve at least some special celebration. Of course you must! But how much is too much? At what point do we burn money to appear doing just that?
It reminds me of the idea I once read from Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment. They say there’s “the culture industry,” like entertainment, to keep people busy and occupied rather than intellectually challenged or provoked to dig deeper. In that respect, weddings are part of that industry. This, after all, is a major occasion where we amuse and try to give evidence of affluence that we’ve accumulated, rather than adding more depth to our lives.
What you see in a movie or a reality TV is only a percentage of what some peoples’ lives are; these characters are living such showy lifestyles, and you think that’s what you would want too! However that is the thing, though-these lifestyles have got little to do with the majority of people. Still, everyone runs after them because people have been conditioned to believe that material wealth defines happiness.
But then ask me if such an ostentatious wedding keeps you joyful in the long term. Is it just another new avenue of popularizing yourselves for a couple of hours when things regain their status quo?
Real happiness comes from meaning, not just stuff. Things one owns shouldn’t end up owning one. If we could put an end to never good enough and stop trying to outdo each other in all avenues and instead position what’s most important-love, relationships, experiences meaningful to us-we’d all be better off.
The next time the word wedding flashes in your mind — whether yours or somebody else’s, recall that: It is not about the show. It is about people and memories. You don’t need to break the bank for it to make sense.
Thanks for listening!
