One Indian reader recently posted an interesting comment about her love marriage into a conservative family from a village in Bihar. She said she had to adjust to their customs, such as covering her face with a ghoonghat in front of men so that her eyes wouldn’t be seen. It was difficult and frustrating for her at first, because it wasn’t part of her tradition. She was a cosmopolitan girl who had worn jeans and a t-shirt before marriage.
It’s no secret that I’ve also made an effort to adapt to Indian customs. Although I haven’t had to go as far as wear saris on a daily basis and cover my face, I’ve still had to make many changes. Some of them I find difficult — such as not referring to my husband by his name, and the different behaviour at social functions. Other customs, I enjoy — such as touching the feet of my parents-in-law on special occasions.
I’ve been happy to make the effort to embrace these customs to earn the respect and acceptance of people.
However, others wonder why bother. Should Indian traditions such as wearing a ghoonghat, which promote inequality, be retained? And should an outsider adapt to them?
Related Posts:
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- The Difficulty of Dating an Indian Part 2
- The Difficulty of Dating an Indian Part 3
- Challenges With Indian-Foreigner Marriages
- 4 Hours at the Mumbai Registrar of Marriage
- The Unitedness of Indian Families
- The Difficulty of Being Married to an Indian
- My Bad Indian Habits
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Hahaha…this is such a funny discussion! I would presume the people in the examples dont face the train so that none of their relatives can recognise them and make small talk saying..oh i saw you on the train tracks the other day.
Really admire your patience Suhani, for the way you adjust to such customs for the happiness of your husband and his parents. I know that I could never ever be that patient, or try and understand or follow those customs. Sometimes I feel there is a very delicate balance between being yourself and people loving you for who you are…versus changing your identity completely to something you dont believe in to earn ‘respect’ for the person who you have become. But then again, who is to define a person at a given instance of time. People keep changing all the time.
The tradition of Ghoonghat started as a impact of invasion of Islamic kings in India. That time the life of north Indians was not much stable due to the continuous battles, so the North Indian women adopted ghoonghat as a preventive measure for their protection as a mini version of burqa and later on that adoptation became the tradition.
That’s why South Indian women do not take ghoonghat, as you may have seen married Maharashtrian women never taking ghoonghat.
Before Islamic invasion the women’s cloths were quite liberal but later on women lost their freedom of wearing liberally due to the abovementioned things. So the ghoonghat is not a religious thing but a purely cultural thing.
Personally I don’t like women take ghoonghat by loosing their freedom. But if anyone wants to take it as her choice, then I will not mind it.
As it is mentioned in the previous comments, if in a rural area, a women stops taking ghoonghat then her family loose respect in the community. But due to the increasing use of technology in our daily life & by education, one day this tradition will disappear completely but it will take more time.
“Before Islamic invasion the women’s cloths were quite liberal but later on women lost their freedom of wearing liberally due to the abovementioned things.”
It’s 2010. Let’s see more liberal clothes again.
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