Reliance Foundation Chairperson Nita Ambani speaks during the second day of her son Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant's wedding reception ‘Mangal Utsav’, organised for the Reliance employees and media, in Mumbai, Monday, July 15, 2024. Other members of the Ambani and Merchant families are also seen.
Credit: PTI Photo
In contemporary times marriages are one of the better ways of understanding how the State, economy, and society together have built an unabashed wonderland to be aspired by the upwardly mobile.
Historically, social class has determined the relative opulence of such an event. The invites to such occasions always reflected the display of social capital, and the intent of furthering a socio-economic and political network. The zamindars, the nobility or the royalty had their marriages organised within this frame so are the events of modern businessmen.
The ritual necessity for social approval has always been a minute part of it. The ritual as well as non-ritual forms altered over time with the changing demands of the economy. The rituals got laced with more opulence. They get spectacularised as marriages increasingly become an event. From being a simple invitation card carrying religious symbolism you can have now an invitation that equals the annual salary of a middle-class Indian.
The spectacle of marriages is about taking the vulgarity of capitalist commodity economy to its zenith. Each social class tries to spectacularise their events according to its economic ability. Hence, these events become a statement of our society, and the existing social relations.
With reported spending of Rs 2,500 crore, the Anant Ambani wedding appears to be the costliest ever. This is, however, a mere progression of tendencies that displayed wealth through such events. Not long ago Karnataka saw a Rs 500 crore wedding. It was in 2011 that the wedding of a Congress leader’s son made news. We have seen film stars, businessmen, and politicians flaunting their wealth through marriages as events.
In the words of French philosopher Guy Debord, we are at a stage when there is a "general shift from ‘having’ to ‘appearing’ — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances." He tells us that “the spectacle is the ruling order's non-stop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life.”
Politicians ignore the cost of opulence
The Indian Air Force assisted in the operations of the Jamnagar airport for the pre-wedding celebrations of the Ambanis, and traffic restrictions were issued in Mumbai for the wedding. The wedding was attended by the prime minister, chief ministers, and politicians, apart from others. The participation of the Indian State has been there all along, even if it is through the personal capacity of the individuals who are in positions of political power.
Even as individuals, through their participation, the political personalities approved of the display of wealth. They consumed the spectacle that was created at the cost of a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and they experienced first-hand how the wealth and income of the top 1 per cent have grown multiple-fold. While political leaders of different hues made their presence felt, they ought to have not forgotten that the opulence they experienced coexisted when the spending on health and education like fundamental services was abysmally low, and unemployment skyrocketing. Hence, the questions being asked about this expenditure are valid in times when people have to survive on free rations, and have to live on meagre income insufficient to survive.
Opening the wedding market
The culture industry ensures an aspiration that would create new kinds of competition, and, hence, the expansion of the wedding market. Rituals of marriage are no longer the same as one saw it earlier. Competing with the models of marriages set up by the surplus accumulating class, the middle class has created an ever-expanding market of event managers and wedding planners. They have become drivers of economic growth. With the expansion of the market, they have changed as new ways of ‘celebrating’ the bond of marriage get introduced. Every possible marriage tries to express its aspirations leading to a massive wedding market, which, in 2023, was expected to the tune of Rs 4,74,000 crore.
During my fieldwork, I came across a groom in Bihar, recently hired as a loco-pilot in the Railways, demanding that he be flown in a helicopter though his house is accessible only through a two-wheeler. In another district, the groom, a policeman, wanted 20 black Mahindra Scorpios lined up for his baraat. All resonate with the aspirations generated by the celluloid or by the lifestyles of those with money power.
The other side of the story
In a society ridden with class and caste conflict, the principle of competition and demonstration of power also culminates in violence. While Jamnagar witnesses the opulence of the Ambanis, the Dalits are attacked in Gandhinagar for riding a horse or for wearing a turban in Banaskantha in the same state. The situation has indubitably changed, and such cases have reduced but they are there nonetheless. There are also estimates that over 50 per cent of families get into a debt trap due to weddings.
When economic means are limited, and when the social hierarchies and associated privileges are embedded in minds, any effort by the marginalised to even aspire gets a violent reaction from society. While the market forces may want the inclusion of everyone in the commodity economy, the economic hardships of the dominant social classes present a hurdle manifested through coercive behavioural patterns of the dominant castes. This story of the majority of India is subdued by the presence of the spectacle that India’s ruling elite presents. What it has also done is completely take away the historically built criticisms of marriage as an institution invented by patriarchy as new forms of consumerism became hallmarks of the ever-predatory capitalist social relations.
As Guy Debord writes, the spectacle “is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society's unreality."
(Ravi Kumar is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.