"On Our Own", Finding Our Spouses By Ourselves, It is a Great Thing, for both Brahmin Youth & Parents, and it is = DHAARMIC BRAAHMAN MATRIMONY ==>> Fwd: My Second Article to HAA. for Havyasiri 2026, is here = "On Our Own", Finding Our Spouses By Ourselves, It is a Great Thing, for both Brahmin Youth & Parents, and it is = DHAARMIC BRAAHMAN MATRIMONY
Thirumala Raya Halemane
From: Thirumala Raya Halemane <trhal...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 10:41 AM
Subject: My Second Article to HAA. for Havyasiri 2026, is here = "On Our Own", Finding Our Spouses By Ourselves, It is a Great Thing, for both Brahmin Youth & Parents, and it is = DHAARMIC BRAAHMAN MATRIMONY
To: <havy...@havyak.org>, Havyaka Association of <pres...@havyak.org>, Nirmal Choubey WBF World <worldbraham...@gmail.com>, Nirmal Choubey <nirmal_...@yahoo.com>, Nirmal Choubey <nirmal....@gmail.com>, Raghavan Pratiwadi <rnpra...@gmail.com>, Mythili Pratiwadi <mythili....@gmail.com>
Cc: Shilpi Halemane <shi...@gmail.com>, Kavi Halemane <khal...@gmail.com>, Usha Halemane <uhal...@gmail.com>, Halemane Usha <usha.h...@diag.bracco.com>, Keshava PRASAD Halemane <K.Pra...@gmail.com>, Udaya Bhanu Halemane <Udaya.Bhan...@gmail.com>, Usha Ammankallu <ushaamm...@gmail.com>, Rajendra Halemane <hale...@gmail.com>, Ravi Bhat Halemane <madhur...@gmail.com>, Ravi Bhat Halemane <ravibh...@gmail.com>, Vijaya Subrahmanya <vijikar...@gmail.com>, keshavaprasad s <mithaja...@gmail.com>, Thirumala Halemane <raya...@yahoo.com>
by Dr Thirumala Raya Halemane, 13 Eagles Pass, Princeton, NJ, USA, Email – trhal...@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:
Our youth, boys and girls, would love to find their own spouses or lovers or partners, "on their own", by themselves, without involving parents. It is considered as a "manly" thing also in the social arena around us, and a fair one, because involving parents immediately makes it as being considered as "Hindu arranged marriage", a No, No, for all the negativity perceptions that lingers regarding it .
Nothing wrong with finding our spouses on our own . We all would like it that way. And, it would be great for the parents also, not just the youth. Our traditions are actually in that realm only, that is Dhaarmic Braahman Matrimony, which is not the forced-version arranged marriages that has sometimes prevailed, for historical or practical reasons etc,
Braahmans have practised dharmic matrimony, as per the shaastras, from ancient times. This superior and most civilized form of marriage process and living together as wife and husband, and family, is getting a bad reputation because of negative stereotyping by the press, and from our westernization. We discuss here some of the issues involved, and suggest that brahmin families can take an active role in this issue to help the community by popularizing the dhaarmic marriage process and vivaaha system and steer braahmans away from self-damage, self-destruction.
And, often, in the society around us, much importance is attached to the boy proposing first, It is totally unnecessary. It does not matter who proposes first. Like in the age-old Hindu concept of "swayamvara", the girl doing the choosing, the girl can propose first, and it is even better in some sense, and under current situations, perhaps. In any case, the boy and the girl need to talk to each other, agree with each other.
1. Introduction:
Sex is a very strong energy in nature, and comes from the basic constitution of the human body/mind/soul makeup and is a fundamental activity for living, and for continuation of human species. All feelings, like love, lust, anger, hate, depression, greed, happiness have energies associated with them, and the different feelings and energies sometimes get mixed up. Feeling is the basic starting point for any action. Feeling is necessary for action. But, one can just feel and act (like an emotional action or a reaction to something) or one can feel, think and act. The latter, that is to do the thinking also before taking action is prudent, rational and wise.
Feeling is the basic instinct for all animals, but thinking is done most superbly by human beings. Culture and civilization are the result of thinking before acting. This extra step in-between denotes the cultural refinement and civility and the extra considerations shown to others that are characteristic of human civilized societies. In any such society, males and females, children and adults have to live together, harmoniously, with each other. Sathya and Dharma are the only two basic and primary, and most fundamental pillars for harmony in society - other values are derived from these.
2. Importance of Marriage – its Robustness:
Marriage is a social instrument/contrivance that gives a sense of stability, confidence, and assurance to the married partners and their children. Dharma ensures that the marriage process and married life, both, include the values of fairness and responsibility, love and sympathy, mutuality of respect as well as service. Marriage is by far the most robust type of sexual man-woman relationship that exists as a general formula.
Other arrangements that can be considered, like, living together, free sex, swinging, change-partners-every-so-many-years etc, have their own appeals, and may work for some in a limited sense, for sure, but they are less reliable, less trustworthy, more susceptible to negative effects and negative feelings, less robust. Most of all, children get excluded from full attention and suffer in these scenarios. It is not what a parent desires for their children – a parent wants a true, loving, sexy, dhaarmic marriage for their children, and, they do not wish for any aberrations. While shaastras allow many types of ways of finding partners, for the Braahmans, with saatvik characteristics being the most dominant, dhaarmic marriage is the most suitable.
3. Legalize Remedies for Problems in Marriage:
But aberrations and marriage perturbations do happen/exist in practice, and formulas have been devised to take care of these in dhaarmic ways. For example, under certain conditions, shaastras allow for a man to take a second wife (only with the approval of the first wife - my mother brought my attention to this prerequisite), not as a right, but as a way to address shortcomings in the first marriage. More negative situations of today, like total estrangement and divorce, will require relevant newer remedies. However, please note that, in general, most (though not all) negative situations result from botched up processes prior to the problem, or because society itself has deviated from the dhaarmic marriage process, and attitudes, behaviors and expectations have deviated from what is suitable for continuation of dhaarmic matrimony.
At present in countries around the world, except for Islamic men with rights to marry four wives, people are not allowed second spouses, although the "consenting-adults" maxim allows for extramarital relationships (which may sometimes bring some relief to aggrieved parties, while causing more harm to the first marriage itself). This should change, second wives/husbands should be legally allowed, with the consent of the first marriage partner. Human condition is often hard and complex, and there is no reason for the law to make it even harder.
4. Western Marriage System:
In the current western marriage system, notions like "love at first sight", "let me find my own lover/partner", "free to choose", "compatibility", "care-free-life" etc are celebrated. Actually the dhaarmic system also incorporates all these features plus more. If you have fully accepted the dhaarmic system and the person you are marrying, as you should, you would have liked the person from the first opportunity or even the first thought of marriage, and that love would have kept on growing, so it includes "love at first sight". The dhaarmic process also takes care of other cases where the youth may have needed a bit more parental guidance and persuading - after marriage the love grows despite this, the acceptance is automatic.
You can find your own partner/lover and be married dhaarmically. Moreover, when others help to introduce a new person to you, the responsibility of the final decision is still yours, both for the boy and the girl, their wishes and acceptance are included, so in their mind, they will feel they themselves found their lover/partner, despite meeting through a third party. This is also what happens most of the time anyway in the western world, meeting the other person in some context or occasion. Free to choose and compatibility are considered in the dhaarmic system as well, but additional input from others are often taken into account, or can be ignored also.
Of course, in the dhaarmic system, compatibility test and freedom of choice does not normally include living together as sex partners – this, as everyone knows, has many negative fallouts and cannot really serve the intended purpose. Instead, with the right attitude, and complete acceptance of the choice made at marriage, compatibility can be worked out and achieved by the new wife and husband. Besides, statistics of divorce rates suggest that the western marriage system is less compatible in the long run than the dhaarmic system. Care free life is actually not at all practical for anybody, but, in reality, a happy dhaarmically married couple are more care free (confident and assured, free of worries) about their relationship and sex life, than anyone in the western system, where both the man and woman are worried constantly about devious attacks on their relationship from all directions, they never achieve care-free-status.
Western writers and commentators often justify the deceptive and cheating behaviors of men and women as because of their being true to their nature, by comparing with behaviors in the animal kingdom (!), alpha=male etc. – it is actually a lack of self-discipline that people fall into when society allows it, humans becoming more uncivilized to each other.
5. Dhaarmic Matrimony Is Not the Negative Stereotype Arranged Marriage:
Stereotyping of the Hindu traditional marriage system as badly or forcibly arranged marriages, and focusing on the wrong/bad examples has caused a lot of harm in the minds of our youngsters. And, they are suffering because of this, and the parents are in turn suffering. The young men and women are suffering most because they are neither here nor there – unable and unwilling to use either the traditional system or the modern you-are-on-your-own system. Rebellious while young, they turn away from the traditional system, and, for one reason or other, do not get the answers/results they had hoped for on their own, and they suffer - wasted efforts, wasted time, wasted energies, wasted money, not enough sex and companionship, no life partner, evaporated hopes and plenty of disillusionment. Because of this, the continuation of vedic dharma is also at stake, as the youngsters are abandoning traditional learning, as the new young families are not practicing it. This will result in a slow and sure death for the most civilized and most noble gentle culture in the world, the culture of the satvik braahmans.
6. Educate and Popularize Dhaarmic Vivaaha:
Brahmin families have to explain our marriage system in a proper and fair manner, not get weighed down by the negative stereotyping as "arranged marriage" and get embarrassed about it, the best system in the world – dhaarmic vivaaha, or dharmic marriage process or matrimonial system, and dhaarmic living as husband and wife and family.
Dhaarmic matrimony pays attention to many aspects and considerations. The true wishes of the boy and the girl are respected. The helping role of the relatives and friends is accommodated. The close relatives play an advisory role and also are responsible for coming to rescue in case of difficulties any time before or after marriage. A supporting environment is created by the positive and helping attitudes of the people around. The marriage rituals, ceremonies and other social events are designed to naturally foster the growth of a loving relationship in a supportive new environment (everything is designed for the two to come closer emotionally, mentally, physically). While our boys and girls are free to find their life partners on their own, if they so desire, they should be clear about what the traditional dhaarmic alternative is and it should be available to them if they exercise this option instead.
7. Much Good Activity and Progress in Recent Decades:
It is a pleasure to see now, since 2006, that brahmin families and various relevant organizations, like WBF, HAA etc, and many others, have set up their ways, websites etc, for braahmans from all over the world to interact, in exchanging their matrimonial needs, to find spouses for themselves or their relatives, to make this possible to be done in a suitable way, respecting privacy, discouraging misuse and abuse of the facility. offered and maintained, with or without service fees. And then, a lot of education and spreading of the message (in print, in public, in private, by mouth, and by other media) has to be done and the concept has to be talked up and popularized so that our youth consider it to be a viable or good alternative to pure randomness and chance (without help) that many seem to be laying their hopes on, thinking that any traditionally arranged marriage process is to be looked down upon, just like it has been done over the past many years, creating the better perception for some utopian type ideal alternative "love marriage", causing confusions, perhaps there is some subtle, deliberate anti-brahmin anti-hindu agenda-driven manufacturing involved in it, cannot be ruled out..
8. Youth Need Guidance & Help, All Marriages are "Arranged" in Some Sense:
We need to empathize with the youth. For, in general, there always exists a third party involvement in getting a boy and a girl together, some known or not-easily-visible person or factor, which can happen deliberately or not-so-deliberately or for-other-reasons, or accidentally etc., and in that sense every marriage is "arranged", whether we are aware of it or not, or because of somethings happening behind the scenes, invisible to us, attributable to Providence or Divinity, perhaps, So, "we did it ourselves, none else was involved", is a myth, not correct. For example, if the boy or girl you found on your own was in the same class section, some administrative clerk may have done it, or if it was in the same party someone invited you there, or if in the neighborhood someone had helped you or caused you to buy the house there etc.
And, it does not matter who proposes first. As in Hindu "swayamvara", the girl doing the choosing, the girl can propose first, and it is even better under prevailing scenarios, perhaps. In any case, the boy and the girl need to talk to each other, agree with each other, and if they are happy, the parents are also happy, bless them, help them if possible andor needed, as their parental role.
9. Summary:
In summary, there is nothing wrong in finding your spouse on your own or by yourself in some way, including meeting in the neighborhood, school, party, on the street etc., which is commonly considered as "love marriage" or with "arranged marriage", that is traditionally approached involving parents, family, friends, others, etc,
The important thing for parents of both the boy and the girl is that they are happy, that they love each other, that they support each other, that they have a happy family life etc. And the parents' role is to be helpful, to try to facilitate for this to happen, like a catalyst say, so that the boy and the girl can do it on their own, by themselves. And, while continuing to do this, playing the parental role, hoping and praying for good things to happen, for the Best.
Best Wishes, Aummm...
JAI TRUTH & DHARMA.
About The Author:
Of India origin, born there in 1953, he came to University of Rochester, Rochester, NY in 1974, and now settled in New Jersey in USA, Dr Thirumala Raya Halemane, is a scientist-engineer, has worked in academia and industry, has multi-disciplinary expertise, in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Communications, Optics, Statistics, Management. He is married to Usha, they have two sons Kaviraj & Shilpi. He has also done much volunteer work contributions in the community. ,, (see more info in another article here by this author) ....
Initially this article, titled "Dhaarmic Braahman Matrimony", was written in 2006, for WBF World Brahman Federation, at the suggestion and request from its Founder & President Shree Nirmal Choubey Ji. Now I have re-touched it a bit, added an Abstract, and added three small sections at the end including a Summary. I have also enhanced the title, but the spirit of the article, and its content, are essentially the same. Our many thanks and regards to Shree Nirmal ChoubeyJi and WBF World Brahman Federation and others, for all the excellent help, kind invitations, great opportunity, and full support. Please feel free to pass it on, re-print, or publish..
13 Eagles Pass
Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
