Weddings - why we all love them! || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Ropar (2023)

Questioner (Q): Namaskar, Sir. My question is related to Indian weddings. Since in the last two months only — November and December — we saw there was some wedding season on every consecutive day. There were some processions and a lot of noise. And even social media was flooded with pics and videos of luxurious royal weddings, which have been followed not only by film stars now, but that is being followed by the masses as well. Even the common middlemen are also making up those marriage ceremonies. And because of this reason, even I stopped using Facebook. And whenever I open my account, I just see my feed flooded with marriage or pre-wedding shoots from some of my relatives or friends.

So, while I was looking at all these things, I read some results of some surveys related to India, which showed that about sixty per cent of Indian families spent about their more than a year's annual earnings on wedding ceremonies. Even more shocking was about twenty per cent of Indian families spend even their lifelong earnings on the wedding ceremony. And among these people, more than sixty or seventy per cent of people are those who actually borrowed money to finance these weddings. So, I've been in a middle-class family. I know how hard it is for a common man to earn. He does all this himself to earn this much money. And then, on the next side, I see that within two days, they just spend all that money just in a fraction of a second. So, it is very much shocking for me.

And also, during this survey, I got to know that this was not the case about thirty or forty years back. Previously, the scenario was, people did have marriage ceremonies, but it was in small numbers with small budgets. And even way back in 1975, even in some states, there were regulations that in a wedding ceremony — there should not be more than twenty people in that gathering, what even COVID forced us to do.

So, I just wanted to hear your views on this. Why are we Indians so much crazy about big fat Indian weddings? And you might have seen this trend a few years ago; they started pre-wedding shoots. Now, I think they're even starting this pre-engagement shoot. After this, they may also start some other pre-pre; I don't know what they'll do. So, I just wanted to hear your views on this. Why are we so much crazy about this?