With all of that, perhaps we can actually re-phrase the question into,
"How many Sikhs have married outside their social/cultural circle, or outside the group of people with whom they were raised?" and we can add another one, "If there were any difficulties with relatives or friends about it, how did you deal with it?" We can add yet another one; "What are some of the most graceful ways of dealing with difficulties associated with marrying outside of one's usual social circle?"
Cheers,
KulwantK
Thank you for that clarification. I am a little too young (22 years old) to be married, so maybe I shouldn't be in this discussion at all. But below are my thoughts on what I would like in the future.
As far as people marrying outside of their class - I think this is a complicated question. Even without considerations of appeasing culture, it is difficult to think a marriage would survive happily wherein the two individuals had radically different expectations for lifestyle and different ideas about money.
Obviously, the class that one occupies at birth does not necessarily influence compatibility on these points between individuals later in life. But the class occupied by the individuals at the time of marriage, or at least the class that they aspire too should be roughly in line, otherwise it is impossible to envision it not being a source of conflict. So it doesn't seem like it would matter for the daughter of a wealthy businessman to marry the son of a poor subsistence farmer if, say, they met in college where they were both studying to improve themselves and aspiring to similar kinds of lives. But it is hard to imagine a marriage existing between two different notions of lifestyle or to believe that eventually one member of such a marriage, forced to cave on his/her conception of what life should be like, would not be resentful.
That said, as someone with a college education who intends to be educated further and as someone with parents with 2 advanced degrees each, I want to have a moderately comfortable life for myself and my children meaning I want to live in a house I own in a safe neighborhood, to not have to worry excessively about affording food, clothing, basic utilities, and occasional entertainment etc. for my family. I also believe education is important. I could not marry someone who did not want a similar lifestyle and who did not believe in the importance of education.
I guess, in this sense, I would not marry outside of my class. But I don't think it would make a difference to me whether or not my partner's parents or relatives had similar views, as long as my partner wanted to make the same kind of life with me that I would want to make with him.
I don't care about marrying outside of my race.
And I know this will be controversial, but I don't care about marrying outside of the religion I was born into either.
But I care very much about the spiritual beliefs of the person I marry. He must believe:
1) that everything is connected and all part of the same substance of the universe, that everything exists together in a balance in which we must strive to fulfill our rightful place without disrupting the harmony and existence of all the other parts
which leads to:
a) He must believe all people should be respected as individuals and treated kindly as we would want to be treated, that no person, regardless of sex, race, class, religion, etc. is very different from us fundamentally in that they all want love and comfort and are not inherently evil or purely good. He must have a strong sense of connection to all other human beings, even if their religious, racial, and historical background is very different from ours. No one controls where they are born, only who they are when they live. He cannot prioritize one group over another because he perceives them to be more similar to himself.
b) He must believe it is important not to be destructive or wasteful, because everything matters and being wasteful and destructive does not respect the world around us and the people we live with
c) He must believe that we should not engage in practices that hurt our bodies and disrespect our abilities, e.g. excessive drinking or the use of drugs, promiscuity, etc.
2) He must not want to strictly raise our children in a religion, forcing them to attend services and practice rituals and wear symbols before they can understand any meaning in them. He must understand that it is more important to condition a child's way of thinking about people and the world and approaching things (see point 1) and that rituals and symbols are not the essence of spirituality.
3) He cannot adhere to any religious principles that are contrary to the points in 1), so I could not, say, marry someone who expected women to cover themselves excessively while men do not need to hide their beauty or forms. I could not marry someone who believes that it is their right and duty to force their superior thoughts etc. on people of different beliefs, people he would consider lesser than himself and in need of saving. I also could not marry a strict secularist who thought that he had the right to say that others should not practice their religion as they see fit. In short, my husband would have to believe, as I do, that we must do the best we can ourselves and beyond that, we must understand that we can only create the world we want by example and through our own selves and works and not by trying to fight with others and force our own practices.
In this sense, I would not marry outside of my belief system.
But I don't think that the gurus meant that people should marry people they are completely incompatible with, but that rather they should not let arbitrary circumstances of birth bar them from good people that they are compatible with in marriage.
But I wouldn't consider any of this to be marrying outside of my social circle.
Other indians have been in the minority in my friend pool because they were in the minority in the general pool of people I came into contact with. The pool I had to choose from for friends was very wide, and so my personal social circle did not follow lines of class or race or religion, but rather more along the lines given above - what kind of things we valued and wanted in our lives and how we believed we should live in the world and treat other people. So I suppose it would be impossible for me to marry outside of my social circle, since it did not have narrow cultural containments.
I will most likely marry a white person of Christian or Jewish or mixed descent who does not practice a religion, but has strong beliefs about right and wrong, because they are the people I associate with most. No doubt, some of my relatives, especially some of those beyond the level of first cousins and those that married into my family, will see this as an action traitorous to my heritage. And they will just have to deal with it. As long as what I am doing is right, I don't care what they think, and those people that are important to me would never have a problem with my choices because they have similar ideas about goodness.
It is a principle that I was raised to believe in and that of much of my family believes too - that it does not matter what others think as long as what you are doing is right by your self and by God.
