Google alerted me to an article in The New York Times: Courtship Ideas of South Asians Get a U.S. Touch.

Once you go through the whole article as someone living in India, I began to think the concept of an assisted marriage has always been around.There have been exceptions when the groom and bride don’t meet each other until after the wedding. So the "US touch" doesn’t hold ground here. Today individuality and rationality guide the arranged marriage, so it isn't as impinging as it was years ago.

Now I think the writer is looking at Indian marriages and courtship from a very Western perspective. Marriage is the cornerstone of society, so people try to preserve the continuity of their families, culture, and tradition by trying to marry their offspring to someone who has the same background as them. This sounds archaic and ancient but India has an ancient time-tested culture with regards to marriages.

The purpose of assisted marriage here 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.

Look at our films and literature; all culminate in a “BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING”, and all family politics and gossip happen around a wedding. The marriage is all about class, family prestige, religon etc.

According to the writer the American invention in the courtship game meant prospective bride and grooms are not obliged to marry the persons whom their parents have chosen. I don’t think that is an American invention, freedom of choice, to select your partner is a choice and has been promoted by the Hindu tradition. But largely ignored by the Indians and the diaspora that is steeped in the India of the 60's and 70's.Times are changing.

Somewhere along the way India and its diaspora have forgotten the enriching Hindu tradition of marriage. The West ofcourse has to be educated on the Indian style arranged marriage.

Further debate can be read on Sepia Mutiny - My eyes “gleam” when I think about being arranged Issues