Here's the research that I shared that day during Drama :)

FACTS:
1) 1) A tradition in Indian society for the past centuries

2) Factors taken into consideration include age, height, personal values, tastes, family background (wealth/ social status) and etc.

3) In India, 1.1% of marriages result in divorce (because there are a lot of arranged marriages)

4) In USA, over 45.8% result in divorce. Fewer arranged marriages, higher divorce rate.

5) Said to be more stable than love marriages

6) Definition: An arranged marriage is a marriage in which neither the bride nor the groom has any official say over the selection of their future spouses. However, in an arranged marriage, both parties give full consent to the marriage.

7) Arranged marriages have been a successful traditional aspect of family life in many cultures for many years.

8) The rise of cell phones has made long-distance courtships easier. A small 2006 study from a University of Washington researcher found that young Indians living in Bangalore used cell phones to get to know partners introduced to them by their parents.

9) Through sites like Shaadi.com ("shaadi" means "wedding" in Hindi) and BharatMatrimony.com, parents can create a profile for their child for matchmaking.

Stories/ Accounts:
1)1) 16.5 carat wedding (Straits Times) involving 2 extremely wealthy families

2) ROMEO AND JULIET (Shakespeare)

3) http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/11621/
“I’ve been fielding such messages—or, rather, my father has—more and more these days, having crossed the unmarriageable threshold for an Indian woman, 30, two years ago. My parents, in a very earnest bid to secure my eternal happiness, have been trying to marry me off to, well, just about anyone lately. In my childhood home near Sacramento, my father is up at night on arranged-marriage Websites. And the result—strange e-mails from boys’ fathers and stranger dates with those boys themselves—has become so much a part of my dating life that I’ve lost sight of how bizarre it once seemed.”

“Still, for years, I didn’t want to get married the way my brother did. He’d met his wife through a newspaper ad my parents had taken out. He’s very happily married, with a baby daughter, but he also never had a girlfriend before his wedding day.”

4) http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/04/23/web.arranged.marriages/index.html
“When it was time for Sabiha Ansari to get married, her parents flew her to India. She met her husband-to-be for less than 20 minutes, with family, then was asked whether she liked him.
“That was really hard for me," she says. "I kind of wanted to have some time alone with him to talk to him, or even on the phone."
But she said yes, and they were married five days later. That was in 1991

5) http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/04/23/web.arranged.marriages/index.html
“Things were different for Sabiha's younger sister, Huma Ansari, in 2005.
"Sometimes it feels weird for me to even call it an arranged marriage because I feel like I got to know my husband pretty well," says the 27-year-old Richmond, Virginia, optometrist.
She and her husband, Saud Rahman, 29, a medical resident, were introduced through family friends at a casual dinner, then e-mailed and called each other for several months. They married a year later.”

6) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041771/They-told-I-servant-says-Muslim-bride-beaten-day-flown-Pakistan-arranged-marriage.html
The relative of a young Muslim bride who was beaten every day and treated like a servant after an arranged marriage, described a catalogue of abuse the woman experienced today.

Zahida Khan told St Albans Crown Court her cousin Sania Bibi, 20, had described a range of incidents she suffered at the hands of her husband and mother-in-law.

Mrs Bibi was allegedly abused and treated like a slave after she arrived in Britain from Pakistan following the marriage in April 2006.

7) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s book, “Arranged Marriage” (1995)
In the story “Doors,” the character Preeti, after moving to the United States, has come to love the western idea of privacy. She faces a dilemma when her husband’s cousin wants to come live with them. She expresses her discontent with the situation, which shows her newfound decisiveness and her fight against her husband’s view of a traditional Indian wife.

8) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s book, “Arranged Marriage” (1995)
In the story “Clothes,” the husband of the narrator, Sumita, dies and she is faced with the decision of staying in America or going back to India to live with her in-laws. Sumita calls widows who are serving their in-laws in India “doves with cutoff wings.”

/CHERMAINE WONG