Hello Hindustan with Kapil Krishnaswamy (2) - I'm getting married !

Indians' arranged nuptials now include right to say 'no' .

For thousands of young Indian couples the parental engineering in Indian marriage is undergoing a change, as the venerable South Asian tradition of arranged marriages has withstood a subtle if substantive reinvention.

Take the example of Ronak Shah who married Dr. Kunal Patel in Whippany, New Jersey (US). Patel's mother and father had much to do with their daughter's shift in marital status. They were in touch with friends, cousins and cousins of cousins for suggestions about whom she should marry. But Patel was free to reject them all.

Only over dinner with Shah - her ninth suitor - did she finally begin a courtship that was fueled as much by chemical attraction as by familial interest. Her marriage, as some young Indians refer to it, was "love-cum-arranged."

Less than a decade ago, the decision about whom a South Asian woman here might marry was still often left to her parents, the prospective bride's individual preference for tall dentists or contemplative artists notwithstanding.

But recently, purely arranged marriage has morphed into a new culture of what might be called "assisted" marriage, in which parents are free to arrange all they like - allowing a roster of nominees screened for caste, lineage and geography, among other measures - and leaving the children free to veto their choices.

As Madhulika Khandelwal, a historian who has studied the Indian community here, said, "Young people don't want to make individual decisions alone." The transition from formally arranged marriage reflects social changes in India itself, where assisted marriage is now common among highly educated middle-class people in urban areas. That is because there are fewer extended-family living arrangements and more women pursuing higher education. The purpose of assisted marriage outside India is not simply to preserve Indian cultural identity, but more pointedly to maintain class, religious and regional identities in a place where they might easily be diffused, those who have studied the Indian diaspora say. Among South Asians here in their 20s and 30s, a vast majority foreign born, fewer than 10 percent marry outside their ethnic group, according to an American Community Survey.

"In the beginning I was pretty against all of this'' Patel said of this newer approach. "Growing up here in the United States you feel that you're supposed to fall in love, but once you figure out that everyone goes on blind dates it doesn't feel quite as strange.''