Bettina Bakos
Marriage habits in a Sikh community
Abstract The intent of this paper is to determine the meaning of arranged and love marriage in India and to explore how the youth today make their choices in marriage, how much is the influence of parents and society on their life. Key terms marriage habits, Sikh community, participant observation, caste system, endogamy, exogamy, arranged marriage, love marriage, matchmaker, matrimonial advertisement, dowry, sati, joint family system
Prologue This paper is based on the data of my first cultural anthropological fieldwork and the basic questions of my research are how the Indian marriage system exists, what kind of forms it has, are these forms separated or are there some relations between different types of marriages. To answer my questions, I have done one and a half year of fieldwork to find out the views of youth and the older generation on marriage customs and how their personal choices have affected their own relationships. I have been intrigued by the Indian culture for a very long time and that is the main reason I studied Indology in Budapest. In this Bachelor course, I had an unique opportunity to examine the Indian culture in more detail and to learn Hindi, Sanskrit and Pali languages. After my Bachelor studies I pursued Masters in Cultural Anthropology and in this I learnt the methodology of anthropology and hence therefore I travelled to India for my fieldwork. Thanks to the Campus Mundi Scholarship Programme that I could come to Kolkata in 2018. My fieldwork took place between November 2018 and February 2020. During 174
