Marriage is devout social and religious
institution. It binds persons and families in a social bond. It helps to
promote respect of relations and fosters coherence. It also helps to neutralize
negativities prevail among individuals and societies. The occasion of marriage
also provides an opportunity to get together with friends and family. However,
in modern times marriage has taken a completely different meaning. Pomp and
show, exuberant expenses and a competition to surpass others in show off has
set a totally different image of marriage. In modern, glamorous world, it is a
burden instead of convenience. It causes frustration among the poor class;
create social issues and widen of the rich poor gap.
Marriage is simple and all religions have created
simplicity in its performance, so that poor people may not find any complication.
But unfortunately, it hasn’t remained simple. Many unnecessary rituals which
require an inordinate amount of money have been attached to marriage. The
affluent class, the media and timeworn traditions are responsible for this. Practically,
affluent and authoritative classes are trend setters in every society, when
they perform exaggerated practice it becomes a trend. When poor, observe them,
they have to tread these trends irrespective of their financial position.
Our marriage trends revolve around
glamour and dresses. People get worried what to wear and what arrangement they
have to make paying less attention to pure marriage relation. Our marriage ceremonies
have multi day event, including Mayon, Mehandi, food and performances of
wedding dance on special wedding songs. Media and advertisement campaigns have
sparked lavish marriage ceremonies to expand their business. In fact, it is an
artificially constructed environment and cannot bring real happiness for
individuals. It is and exploitative trend which needed to abolish.
“There
is nothing wrong with people celebration, wedding ceremonies with friends and
family, but there comes a point in a time where something becomes wrong.” Says
a famous Islamic scholar. Enjoyment cannot be warranted with unnecessary
rituals, how one can justify spending inordinate amount of wealth on wedding
when a major portion of people dying for a piece of bread. The food situation
in Muslim countries is exceptionally worse and it is people on Muslim countries
who are wasting their wealth on unnecessary events.
Here the part of education comes into
question. Our education fails to train individuals of character that may discourage
such exploitative practices of wasting our time and energies on useless
activities. It is the duty of educated people or celebrities to discourage these
unnecessary traditions. Trend setters (upper class) need to set new trends that
may create easiness in the lives of the masses.
Factually, the exaggeration of marriage
ceremonies has crept in our society over the time. It is the legacy of our
ancestors and some are inventions of the age of ignorance. But, today we have
become humanized, we have a great religion which provides guidelines on every
area of life and which provides ease to mankind. We have to learn to crack the
complicated practices that have complicated the performance of this obligation.
One does need platonic philosophy to set new examples
to celebrate marriages. Actually, we are intoxicated with such practices. Also,
our elders are adamant; they negate any change of rituals which have been part
of society. People in favor of lavish spending in marriage ceremonies have only
rational argument that “marriage happens only ones” so it must be celebrated.
The educated and rational people must take
initiative to stop practicing mehandi and Mayon (manja) or following dowry
practice and numerous such other rituals which are burdensome and have become a
major reason of our social and economic vows. Also, expensive wedding dresses which
may only be used once must be replaced by simple dresses. Also, there is no
point of arranging night long dholkis before marriage and surely, marriage can
be performed without throwing a number of fresh notes over the groom’s head.
Celebrations, wedding dances on wedding songs must be done away with. On the
one side there is a violent display of wealth and waste of resources, and on
the other side people are striving for food maintain their lives, something
must be done to avoid this increasing social imbalance.
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