Marriage as an institution has undergone a radical transformation from 'ritual' to 'commercial' in its outlook. Explain the factors behind this change.

From ritual to commercial outlook

A ritual outlook treats marriage as a duty that completes householder life, transfers women between patrilineages, and reproduces caste. Louis Dumont and later kinship studies stressed alliance. The commercial outlook treats the wedding as a package of goods and the spouse as a bundle of credentials: job, salary, skin colour, overseas visa and family property. Matrimonial sites and newspaper columns make this market visible. Veena Das and others have shown how honour still sits inside this market, so the change is not a simple move from sacred to secular. It is a move toward pricing of status.

Factors behind the change

Hypergamy pushes families to buy a higher-status groom. Uma Chakravarti’s account of Brahmanical patriarchy links control of women’s sexuality to caste property. Dowry inflation follows when education and government jobs become scarce status goods. M. N. Srinivas already noted the modernisation of dowry among groups that once practised bride-price. Urban middle-class consumer culture, television and social media turn the wedding into a public performance. The wedding industry, hotels and gold markets have a material interest in this display. Legal bans such as the Dowry Prohibition Act exist, but weak enforcement and family complicity keep the market alive. Migration and the NRI groom have added a global price list.

The commercial outlook does not mean that love or ritual has disappeared. Companionable marriage and court choice have grown in cities. The point of the question is the dominant public language of bargaining, costing and show. Capitalism did not invent arranged marriage. It has commercialised the search and the ceremony.