On Indian marriages
J.L. Nehru
Indian marriages, both among the rich and the poor, have had their full share of condemnation as the wasteful and extravagant displays. They deserve all this. Even apart from the waste, it is most painful to see a vulgar display that has no artistic or aesthetic value of any kind (Needless to say there are exceptions). For all this, the really guilty people are the middle classes. The poor are also extravagant, even at the cost of burdensome debts, but it is the height of absurdity to say, as some people do, that their poverty is due to their social customs. It is often forgotten that the life of the poor is terribly dull and monotonous, and an occasional marriage celebration, bringing with it some feasting and singing, comes to them as an oasis in a desert of soulless toil, a refuge from domesticity and the prosaic business of life. Who would be cruel enough to deny this consolation to them, who have such few occasions for laughter? Stop waste, by all means, lessen the extravagance (bug and foolish words to use for the little show that the poor put up in their poverty), but do not make their life drabber and more cheerless than it is.
