Netflix's Indian Matchmaking & Patriarchal Stereotypes

A number of left wing women journalists have condemned Netflix's bingeable 'Indian Matchmaking' as 'cringe worthy' and chock-full of 'Patriarchal Stereotypes'. This is nonsense. We did not see
1) any mention of dowry which is illegal in India but not elsewhere. Yet, most genuine arranged marriages feature quite substantial transfer of assets more particularly in the mercantile communities who form the bedrock of 'Sima Aunty's' client base. She herself is at the more 'liberal' end of the spectrum dealing with families which rose initially through education before gaining nouveau riche status through a successful real estate or business start up. But dowries among this class and even expenditure on the marriage itself are lower by several orders of magnitude than amongst the 'old money' Merchant Prince families.

2) Fathers driving the process with Mothers taking a back seat. Even in the one 'old money' Bania Joint family, it is the groom's mother who is cracking the whip. For some reason she wants her younger son to be married before her elder son becomes a father. I have never heard of any such scruple. There is no foundation for it in Indian culture. However, if you read the Financial pages of Indian newspapers, you can quickly guess the real reason why the Mother wants this. You can then also understand the curiously submissive or 'passive-aggressive' strategy being used by her younger son. But this is pure Economics of a novel and contemporary type. It has nothing to do with 'Patriarchy' or 'Indian Sociology'.

The one father with decided views is Sikh. But his other daughter is married to an African American. Thus we can't take too seriously his insistence on a Sikh boy who has not been defiled by a previous marriage to an American.

3) Inquisition re. the Girl's Virginity and 'Samskari' credentials. Nobody on the series says 'my daughter keeps such and such fast on such and such day of the week. She sings such and such kirtans. On festival days she prepares such and such dish in the same manner as our dear departed granny.'

4)  Caste and horoscope. People are giving their generic 'varna' but not their specific 'jati'. Even where these are notionally equal, families tend to maintain the superiority of their own particular endogamous sub-division. Girls don't like the notion that they are marrying into a lower sub-caste- at least partly because this affects dowry, or is perceived to so do. Essentially, male hypergamy brands the female spouse as having a defect or being 'damaged goods'.

The matchmaker is shown as consulting astrologers and face-readers and numerologists. But this is not how things work. Each family should be getting the horoscope done by their own Jyotish who can point out how the marriage might affect others in the family. Plenty of 'suitable girls' and 'suitable boys' have been rejected because the position of Mars in their 'kundali' poses a threat to the longevity of an in-law.

5) The series focuses on the expectations and attitudes of the prospective grooms and brides. Under Patriarchy, such considerations are wholly irrelevant. The girl is expected to weep copiously on being parted from her family. The groom is expected to stand around with a hangdog air. Neither are expected to show any enthusiasm for the event. Conventionally, among Brahmins, the groom is expected to do a ritual 'Kashi Yatra'- i.e. pretend to be going off to Benares to become a monk- and the father-in-law is supposed to run after him begging him to return and take on the responsibilities of a householder.

The series does reveal something unexpected- viz. 'heightism'. Sima Aunty has a soft spot for an oddball, who is not 'earning well', and whose Dad was in prison for trying to have his third wife killed. Is it because the hefty fellow is 6 foot 7? The girls seem, quite sensibly, to have given him a wide berth.

The fact is, in an arranged marriage, only one thing really matters- money. That is why elite matchmaking is now a thriving business all over the world. Due diligence re assets is performed by white shoe Lawyers and Accountants. Genetic and acquired traits are given a weighting and turned into dollars. The scope for the arbitrageur arises from 'Value Discrepancy'.

In India this has a political dimension. So and so may have no money but her Mamaji is the Minister for Petroleum. She gets matched to a wealthy family with a handsome Wharton MBA boy because they are in Plastics and are hoping to expand into Petro-chemicals. Time is of the essence. If horoscopes don't match, Pundits are brought in to perform appropriate rituals. The girl may be adopted into the Purohit's family if the match would otherwise be 'svagotra'. There is always a workaround for every obstacle. Curiously, such marriages are stable because of their reputational effect. The girl will be able to befriend the daughter of the next Petroleum Minister and thus business can flourish no matter how things change in the Parliamentary Game of Musical Chairs.

Female journalists objecting to this Netflix series seem to have watched a completely show from the rest of us. One such, Poulomi Das says-

Her clientele, at least the ones who feature on the show, seem to be exclusively upper-class and wealthy – a majority of them are in fact, non-resident Indians.

The NRIs featured are middle class- in some cases barely so. One of them, who has his own law firm, may become very wealthy. But then again he may not. He is one malpractice suit away from the Poor House. Others have hit their peak earnings and need to be doing some careful financial planning. Their homes are shabby in comparison with the Indians featured who, with one exception, are merely nouveau  riche. Their gains could easily be wiped out by a financial crisis or a prolonged COVID type lockdown. By contrast, 'old money' can ride out any Recession.

By focusing only on these one-percenters, Indian Matchmaking, at the outset, makes the choice to remain blind to the realities of India, limiting its scope to a version of arranged marriage that is heavily sanitised and often comes with no real repercussions.

Dowry is illegal in India. This series can't reflect the reality of arranged marriage  for this simple reason. What this series' Indian segment shows is that a new class has emerged in the big cities which is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Teens know they have to find their own partner in the Western fashion- viz. by having sex. In some cases, two people who have established this type of bond find that they have equal earning power. They then get married. This is a case of assortative mating based on pre-established physical compatibility. There is nothing particularly new about this. It was happening in my cohort and, more discreetly, it happened in my parent's cohort. But it will increasingly become the norm for an urbanized population.

The Indian Indians featured here have either missed this boat or were incapable of getting on it for some psychological reason. This does not matter too much for the men. They will always be able to get a wife, from a lower class, to look after them in their old age. Some of the girls will end up living with their sisters in a 'Friends' type apartment while discussing which of them is the Phoebe and which the Monica. This is by no means a bad outcome. They can always adopt a girl child who will look after them in their old age.

The American desis, by contrast, are losers. They didn't find their sweetheart in High School or College or in their first year or two of Professional life. They have the American sense of entitlement and believe that their link to India means that there is some phantom market in which they can get a good spouse. In the old days, this was true. You could get an attractive spouse of your sub-caste from the ancestral place. The trouble is, nowadays, they will run away once they qualify for residency unless the family is tightly bound up with a muscular religious community. In that case, the spouse is merely a glorified slave. This explains why the Sikh community has a culture of battered husbands. If the boy from the Pind tries to escape his slavery as an unpaid laborer in the in-laws' business, he is caught and thrashed. Brides take great delight in beating seven bells out of their husbands. Girls who elope with a boy from the Pind are slaughtered on orders from their own Mothers. This is the other side of Patriarchy.

Poulomi Das watched a show which featured two 'events-planners'. There are none in the show I watched. In America, there is a gorgeous Guyanese origin girl who teaches Bollywood Dance. In India there is a smart girl with an online startup featuring designer denim.

Das writes-

In the show, Taparia's clients are men and women in their 20s and 30s, spread out across Mumbai, Delhi, and America. There's a clear distinction in how her Indian clients and her Indian-American clients respond to the idea of arranged marriage.

The Indian-Americans are in their thirties. They have hit peak earnings. They missed the 'assortative mating' boat or, in the case of the single mother, have already had a failed marriage. The fact is, they can gain a potentially high earning, good looking, spouse who wants an American passport. But Netflix can't show this at a time when Trump wants to crack down on 'family reunification' based immigration.

The diaspora – a lonely event planner,

actually a Bollywood dance instructor

a love-lorn teaching counsellor,

High School Guidance Counsellor

a divorced single mother, and an independent lawyer,

Shekhar is an 'independent lawyer'. But Aparna works for a Company.

– exercise a far greater level of control over their decisions.

Everybody controls their own decisions. Even the 'submissive' old money man-child gets his way in the end. The trouble is, 'Arranged Marriages'- at least of the sort Netflix will put on the screen- don't expand their choice set and permit them to marry out of their league.

For them, being set up by a strange woman from their own community is a quirky alternative to dating apps ("Tinder Premium, but with families involved," as a character explains).

The truth is an India based Matchmaker is expected to produce Indian candidates who look like Hrithik Roshan or Kangana Ranaut and who want an American passport so as to use their software or other skills to make much much more money.  But Netflix can't show this. So it highlights the psychological aspect. People with obvious character flaws need to do some work on themselves or else lower their expectations.

But for the much younger Indians on the show – a feminist event planner,

Das means a very clever designer denim E-entrepreneur in her Thirties. She could certainly have been married before now but there would have been a lot of pressure on her to go to a fat farm so as to look slim in the wedding pictures. We can relate to her body image issues. Few men would care about her weight because the girl is attractive, dynamic, and has a great personality. But, it is true that some men are brutal enough to say 'lose 10 kg for the wedding'. This is because the wedding photos must look good. The day after the wedding you can gorge yourself as much as you like. But, when the time comes for the kids to get married, your wedding picture will be passed around just to show that you are a big fattie not for any genetic reason but because you like eating- which, in India, is considered a good thing.

an indecisive manchild, and a wealthy commitment phobe

The truth is both want to marry out of their league, looks-wise. The problem is that the super-model type girl can marry a billionaire- many of whom are good looking because their frog like fathers and grandfathers married ravishing, but 'samskari' girls.

Here the 'old money' dude has the advantage but only if he will support a socialite wife rather than expect her to stay home sucking up to the mother-in-law and fighting with her elder sister-in-law.

I personally think the boy is play-acting because he has big ambitions. Reading between the lines, we can predict that this family is going to go the way of the Ambanis. The young 'submissive' is playing a waiting game. When he makes his move, he will do it with the support of a glamorous socialite wife who may be a divorcee closer in age to his Mum. This is the real meaning of his 'I want to marry my Mum' gaucherie. Of course, like Mukesh Ambani or Lalit Modi, his plans may not succeed. Like Laxmi Mittal's younger brother, he may go bankrupt. But then again, it will be quite a ride.

– embracing arranged marriage is both a familial and social obligation.

This is nonsense. They should have followed 'assortative mating' protocols and gained a spouse such that the household has synergy. If the family belongs to an orthodox sub-sect, this is still possible, indeed it is facilitated, through their Creed's various Institutions. 'Virtue' is signalled through a long engagement. Indeed, Gandhi's Ashrams promoted marriages of this type- even across caste and regional boundaries.

The families exert a much greater say in their choice of a life-partner and as the season progresses, we see parents pressuring their children, clearly not ready for marriage, and even going as far as emotionally manipulating them to get their way.

There is only one such character- an 'old money' mother. She wants her two sons to stick together rather than go their separate ways- a legal nightmare for Hindu Joint Families. Thus she wants the gormless, but sly, younger son to get married to an 18 year old who will bond with her elder sister-in-law before the latter has her first baby. That baby will be shared, thus creating an even stronger link. Assuming it is a son, his Aunty won't dispute his right to lead the family because she will feel he is her own.

Of course, for the purposes of Netflix, the lady can't say all this. Instead she sets up obviously flawed matches. The one we witness is with a girl who is both a Chartered Accountant and an MBA. Obviously, she will want to run her own businesses and this will weaken the Joint Family. The sly dude pretends to go along with everything. He has established an alibi and now, quite ruthlessly, is blaming her and her family as if they had some skeleton in their cupboard. As I say, this is a guy to watch out for. He is ambitious. He may be content with a gorgeous 18 year old from the village. He may find himself an older socialite divorcee. But whatever he does will be based on a deeply pondered business strategy. When he makes his move, he wants to be able to throw the blame on the elder brother's wife who will be depicted as a bully who never accepted her younger sister-in-law. After grabbing his share of the ancestral wealth, this young man will go in for highly leveraged ventures in glamor markets. Such strategies can fail spectacularly. But, for a while, the ride is thrilling.

Das says there is 'family pressure' in India. But none is shown on the series. Yes, you have a Mum who wants the Joint Family to stay together. But this is something anybody who reads the Financial Columns of Indian newspapers understands and knows about. This is about Business, not Society. The enormous tax advantages of the 'Hindu Joint Family', not 'Patriarchy', have created this situation.

Indian Matchmaking does give a distorted picture of both India, because dowry and finance can't be discussed, and America, because importing a spouse can't be depicted, but intelligent people can easily read between the lines.

Das is not intelligent.

But Indian Matchmaking clubs both these experiences – one that is largely harmless and the other, far more insidious – together, comfortably neglecting to highlight just how harmful this practice continues to be for young India.

What is this silly woman talking about? Caste is not mentioned, Dowry is not mentioned, the only discordant note is 'heightism'- everyone wants a taller than average spouse- but this features in other Societies as well.

Throughout Indian Matchmaking, Taparia claims that the secret to a long-lasting marriage is compromise,

But this is universally true! If hubby says 'lets honeymoon in Jamaica' and wifey says, 'You go to Jamaica. I'm going to Iceland', the marriage is not going to last very long.

except she relays this particular expectation of adjustment only to her female clients.

This is blatantly false. She keeps telling the male clients to lower their expectations and stop being indecisive. She is sympathetic to the female entrepreneur with body image issues. She approves of the fact that this girl and her sister are utterly committed to growing their business. Like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, they may marry a business associate in Japan or Nigeria or Scotland or wherever. But, they may prefer to remain single. There's nothing wrong with that at all. They can adopt daughters and bring them up to be high achievers. That is true Feminism.

The men who appear on the show are hardly told to be more accommodating or change any of their unfavourable traits.

On the contrary, this is precisely what happens. The Matchmaker is the 'Aunty' who tells you home-truths. She shows you the 'open market rate' for your collection of traits. Consider the handsome jewelry designer. His 'exchange value' is equal to the small town, up and coming, interior designer. Yes, he gets a moment in the Sun with the glamourous Punjabi model with an impeccable English accent. But she isn't going to marry him. This lesson will sink in. He needs to marry a young small town designer who will help him grow his business laterally so as to become robust to market shocks.

Instead she endlessly indulges them to an extent that the show is routinely reduced to stroking the great Indian male ego (It’s no coincidence that the two clients who get the maximum screen time on the show are both men). When Vyasar, a jovial 30-year-old man with a tragic past, is rejected by a prospective match because he earns less than her, Sima suggests that the girl should have also taken his good heart into consideration.

Sima does indeed have a soft spot for Vyasar. But so does the audience. He is highly sympathetic. It is not his fault, his dad went to jail for trying to kill his wife. He is prepared to marry a significantly older woman but, quite rightly, she rejects him. At her time in life, she wants stability with a mature man who owns property and has a well padded 401k.

On the other hand, she launches a sustained attack on Aparna, an ambitious 34-year-old lawyer, taking immense offense at her for being picky about her choices in men.

Aparna is more than picky. She is rude. She is conceited. She represents everything people dislike about lawyers. Shekhar too is a lawyer- a more successful one. But he is 'laid back' and mentions his desire to help refugees on a pro bono basis. No doubt, he has his head well screwed on. I suspect he will go into politics. Depending on where he wants to run from, he will make a judicious choice of spouse- but the spouse would be making the same sort of calculation. But this is 'assortative mating', not 'arranged marriage'.

At one point, she goes as far as undermining Aparna’s intelligence only because she dares to go against convention and settle with someone who doesn’t fit into the idea that she has for her own future.

So what? A Matchmaker is like a realtor. Their job is to lower your expectations so as to end up with something rather than nothing. The fact is a Sindhi lawyer in her mid Thirties, who went to Vanderbilt, and whose career has plateaued in the Corporate sector, has to either marry a poorer man or settle for a divorcee with kids in College.

Another male client, Pradyuman, a fussy 30-year-old jewellery designer, proves to be as difficult but is treated with far more kindness than what Taparia reserves for Aparna.

Because he hasn't aged out of the market quite yet. Moreover, he has kept in shape. Now, what matters is whether he gets a spouse who can help him grow his business. Otherwise he gets stuck in a niche. His earnings may have already peaked. Rather than looking at the big metros, or Europe and America, he may need to build a solid brand in the Tier Two Cities. But, that market has higher mark-up and is continually expanding.

The matchmaker going out of her way to villainise a woman unafraid to acknowledge her needs is telling of a society that continues to be rankled by opinionated women who refuse to shrink themselves for mediocre men.

This does not happen on the series. Aparna comes across as elitist, entitled and judgemental. That's bad because it corresponds to a negative stereotype about lawyers. One suspects she helps shield the Company she works for from justified complaints from the hoi polloi.

This is a well made series which reflects audience reactions. It can say little about actual Indian Matchmaking for Legal and Political reasons. But, the overall message is quite sensible. Marriage is a partnership. You need to look down the road to what you can achieve together rather than say 'I want a better match than I am entitled to on the basis of my own endowment set'. The person who wants to get into a better College than their grades allow, or to buy a house on the cheap in a neighborhood they can't really afford, or get a trophy spouse, may indeed- in the short run- luck out. We all know mediocre people who got hired by McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. But what happens to them subsequently? Often they are chewed up and spat out. Some adjust and rise. But in that case they had a particular trait- adaptability- which the market was not pricing in.

It is now more than 50 years since mathematical economists and game theorists started analysing 'Stable Marriage problems'. The solution is similar to the 'Secretary problem'- advertise widely but economize on screening. A broker who gives you three choices learns your preferences and offers you 3 more. But within two or three further iterations it is a case of shit or get off the pot.

 The female journalists who have condemned this Netflix series are too stupid and ignorant to apply Social Science to the underlying problem. More worryingly, they can't understand what they see on the screen. All they can see is 'Patriarchy' and Society being mean to girls coz they can't pee standing up.

Consider, Oxford MBA student, Nehmat Kaur's bizarre rant in the Wire-

Marrying within your caste and class is already shockingly easy in India,

How is it shocking? Endogamous jatis exist precisely for the purpose of making it easy for all its members to get a spouse so as to fulfil their ritual obligations as householders.

and you’re likely to end up in a socially respectable marriage without ever acknowledging the existence of either criteria.

This is mad! Endogamous jatis tell you your 'caste' from infancy onward. Often it is encoded in your surname. There may be mentally retarded people who don't know their caste and who still get married to someone with a different type of disability. But the reason they can't acknowledge their caste is the same as the reason they can't acknowledge the hegemonic role of the Gramscian Nomenklatura under conditions of Late FinanzKapital. It is also the reason they can't tie their own shoelaces.

As for 'class'- everyone says they are 'middle class'. Some add 'upper middle'. The days of 'Raja aur Runk' are long gone.

Stagnant social mobility, casteist educational institutions and economic inequality glom together to create families, neighbourhoods, schools, colleges and work places where everyone has similar incomes and wealth, lifestyles, intellectual interests and ambitions.

This is nonsense. India has rapid urbanization. Joint Families have ceased to be cohesive. Socio-Economic outcomes increasingly diverge for purely market reasons. Endogamous groups tend to split along 'class' and regional lines. Nehmat, who appears to be entirely ignorant of Marxist Social Science, thinks there is some big Conspiracy.

In other words, the metrics of compatibility all conspire towards upholding oppressive structures.

What are 'metrics of compatibility'? Is it the sort of algorithm used by Dating or Matrimonial sites? But these are Market based phenomena driven by technology. They are not associated with 'casteism' or any other feature of backward agricultural societies.

So to seek out an arranged marriage is to tell the world that you don’t want to leave even the possibility of straying out of your privilege.

Very true. The world is watching you very closely. If you don't stray out of your privilege- for example by Instagraming yourself giving blow jobs to homeless dudes- the world will be very disappointed with you. It may have a nervous breakdown and start screaming and shitting itself uncontrollably. Is that what you want? No? Then go out and start giving blow jobs to homeless dudes. Cancel your Privilege. Get AIDS and die in a crack house. You know you want to. Just do it already.