A NOVEL
Six Lanes of Kamathipura
SOCIETY & RELATIONSHIPS
The New Indian Marriage
SOCIETY & RELATIONSHIPS
The New Indian Marriage
Love, Dating Apps, Live-In Relationships, Divorce, Infidelity and the Changing Indian Family
What Indian marriage actually looks like today — arranged marriage in the smartphone era, live-in relationships, dowry, dating apps, and a generation delaying marriage entirely.
The New Indian Marriage is a nonfiction study by Indian author Parvind Kumar examining what marriage actually looks like across India today, not what it's supposed to look like. Each chapter opens with a real story and is grounded in a Supreme Court ruling, a national survey, or a government dataset, with fifteen charts and a full source list backing the claims.
The book covers arranged marriage in the smartphone era, dowry and why the law hasn't stopped it, inter-caste and interfaith love still fought over in court, live-in couples with nowhere to legally rent, dating apps quietly becoming marriage bureaus, financial independence and the resentment it can trigger, and divorce, infidelity, surrogacy and LGBTQ+ rights.
It doesn't argue that arranged marriage is outdated or love marriage is better. It shows, honestly, what marriage in India looks like now — messy, uneven, and still somehow holding a country together.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Arranged Marriage in the Smartphone Era: WhatsApp introductions and the persistence of family-arranged matches.
- Chapter 2: Dowry, Sixty Years Later: Why a decades-old law hasn't ended the practice.
- Chapter 3: Love Across the Lines: Inter-caste and interfaith marriage, still fought over in court.
- Chapter 4: Live-In and Legally Invisible: Couples navigating a country with no clear rental or legal status for cohabitation.
- Chapter 5: Dating Apps as Marriage Bureaus: How swiping quietly became a modern matchmaking system.
- Chapter 6: Divorce, Infidelity and What Comes Next: Surrogacy, LGBTQ+ rights, and a generation delaying marriage.
Reviews & Testimonials
★★★★★
“Data-driven and genuinely even-handed — rare for a book on this subject.”
— Reader Review★★★★★
“Fifteen charts and real court rulings back up every claim. This isn't opinion writing.”
— Family & Society Journal