A Marriage Without Kanyadaan: Would You Ever Do It?

A Marriage Without Kanyadaan: Would You Ever Do It?

Marriages commonly highlight the tales of materialism of the parties involved. The Big Fat Indian weddings are celebrated in a way that the bride’s or groom’s parents mortgage their property to make it happen.

I wonder at times, ‘Where are we heading’? Imagine spending this amount in lakh and crore in something more productive. But our Indian society truly believes that the customs and the rituals of ‘lena-dena’ are so important. And this isn’t it – the way in which our society is biased on the basis of gender, it haunts me when I can’t think of even one ritual wherein there is gender equality.

Talking about the Kanyadaan custom specifically, it epitomizes how women are seen as the belonging of one family which is to be passed over to another and that’s how it is called ‘Kanya’ ka ‘Daan’.

Could we ever do away with this patriarchal mindset where parents appear to be renouncing the custody of their daughter (Kanya), treating her as a commodity and giving her away as donation (daan).

Kanyadaan is an open name to abuse, fake virility and absolute sexism in India.

Giving your daughter away is just wrong on a lot of levels. The entire idea of affection itself gets bogged down due to the fact you end up giving up your daughter as if she’s a non-living object. If this doesn’t make you think that you are on the same page, maybe you should think about how women are being stated in our society, ‘khuli tijori’, paraya dhan’ and so much more. How crooked is this now?

In many cases, marrying a woman is the parents’ principal task, which tells the woman that she is born for this. 

In 2017, Ashay Shahasrabuddhe and Shivada Chauthaiwale got hitched in Nagpur and selected a “No-Kanyadaan Custom”.

They skirted this normal Hindu custom completely and their parents agreed with them. This even got popular when they determined to take vows in the front of a priestess. This blew the whole country and it has become the actual instance of breaking stereotypes.

Our only motto for a wedding to happen should be – reintroducing the culture and heritage of India to the younger generation while excluding the inequality, orthodoxy or ambiguity.

Would our society be sensible enough to erase this custom on the whole? It’s time we change. It’s time our folks change.

 

 

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This article is written by Snehil Patel, our intern.

Ishita Kapoor

Ishita Kapoor