The dominant marriage institution in most countries of South Asia including India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are arranged marriages. The different religions and cultures throughout these regions have distinct ways of organizing the arranged marriage, but ultimately in all of them the bride and groom unite through a family agreement. Family agreements are a crucial part of South Asian marriages because for centuries, Asians have considered marriages as a union of two families rather than only the individuals. As a result, arranged marriages are created carefully and strategically.

Arranged marriages are a long drawn out process in which deciding the suitability between two individuals can take up to months or even years. Commonly, the parents, or the closest family members, of the bride and groom decide almost every facet of the arrangement. The guardians of the individuals begin seeking for a match by spreading the news that they are looking to find a partner for their child within their social circle of relatives and neighbors. Other options that exist to facilitate their search are matchmaking websites or local matchmakers who keep a data portfolio of single individuals within the neighborhood.

After the search begins, matches are made by taking into account various different factors that are often tailored to be suitable for both of the parties. The highest criteria for deciding an alliance is religion. In South Asia, preserving religion in the family is given the utmost priority and that is why, a majority of the time, Hindus will search for a Hindu partner, Muslims will search for a Muslim partner, and Christians will search for a Christian partner.

In India, where the majority of the population is Hindu, caste is another factor that is considered when making a marital decision. The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. These four main castes are further divided into 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes. For centuries, this system has dictated almost all aspects of the religious and social life of Hindus. Each group occupies a specific place in the complex hierarchical ladder based on their karma (work) and dharma (religious duty). After India gained independence from the British rule, the new constitution of 1949 abolished the caste system but it still affects social life in the modern day. In marriages, for example, the guardians of the two parties prefer a match to be made within the same caste and sub-caste.

Cultural background is taken into consideration in almost all arranged marriages. Families that are conservative seek to find other families that share their values and avoid creating a relationship with one that seems unorthodox. The opposite is true as well. Open minded families may find conservative families outdated and not want to form any alliances with them. The educational background of the potential bride and groom is another factor that is weighed heavily because it is a determinant of their professional stature. Profession, however, is not always an important criterion for the bride since in many South Asian cultures, the groom is usually the one who is earning money to support the family.

Physical appearance is heavily looked upon during marital matchmaking. After the British colonization of South Asia, the light skin tone of the Europeans was glorified and associated with wealth and power. This ideology traveled throughout time to modern day and impacts the lives of millions of women throughout South Asia as their appearance is considered more than the appearance of men in an arranged marriage. During a physical encounter of the two parties, the skin tone of the potential bride is observed. Fair skinned women are almost always preferred over darker skinned women. This practice often results in the families of darker skin girls requiring to give a dowry of property or money to the groom’s family to accept the marriage. This alliance is toxic for the bride as her dark skin tone remains an unwanted quality that her husband and his family can ridicule.

To this way, girls in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are taught to stay out of the sun from a young age to avoid getting a tan. The Bengali word “porishkar” means clean and is used to describe girls with fair skin and the word “moila” which means dirty is used to describe girls with dark skin. This stigma around dark skin is not going to change any time soon because most forms of entertainment in South Asia cast light skin actors as the main lead and brainwash young girls into believing that white equates to beauty and success.

The very popular skin lightening cream Fair and Lovely is advertised religiously during commercial breaks featuring television’s most well-known celebrities promoting a whiter skin complexion. These commercials always have a variation of the same skit: a dark skin female getting bullied in school, having a hard time finding a job and not receiving marriage proposals because of her dark skin until she discovers Fair and Lovely which solves all of her problems. Young girls grow up watching these commercials and those who have a dark skin tone are influenced to believe they are worthless and will have a harder time in life than their lighter skin female peers. In the article What Went Wrong With Her? Is She Adopted?’ My Struggle With The ‘Kali-Kalooti’ Complex, the author Jyoti Kumani sheds a light on the judgment and ridicule she had to face because of her dark skin. While she was in school, many of her peers called her names like “kali” or “kalooti”, which are slang words for dark-skinned people. Her relatives would continuously tell her that she will not be able to get married and if someone did agree to marry her, then her parents would have to pay them a minimum of Rs. 20 lakh (29,531.20 USD) in dowry for accepting their dark-skinned daughter.

If this horrifying belief in South Asia that “whiter is better” continues to be promoted in media, millions of innocent girls will continue to suffer in ridicule for a quality they should be proud of. This can definitely be changed if the show businesses throughout Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan cast women of darker skin and give them leading roles. If the younger generations grow up watching powerful female leads, who share the same skin tone as them, save the world from destruction, transform from being dirt poor to a CEO and get to marry without being judged of their skin color, then they will feel empowered. Media is a significant part of the South Asian countries and casting darker skinned actors will have an enormous impact on how the entire dark-skinned population is viewed and treated. Although I initially did not think of analyzing the relationship between skin complexation and arranged marriages, the severity of this issue does lure me to make further investigations. I want my autoethnography to highlight the unjust treatment of dark-skinned South Asian women in arranged marriages to erase the bias South Asian history and media has created.

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