RAWALPINDI: Pakistan’s traditional matchmakers play a revered role in molding daughters into potential brides, but marriage apps marketing themselves as halal are offering women a new route to finding a husband.
“When I saw my colleague happy after being married to someone she met online... I thought, since we have tried rishta aunties for four or five years, let’s try this too,” Ezza Nawaz, a textile designer in Lahore, told AFP.
Rishta aunties – or traditional matchmakers – polish up women and present them to the families of potential suitors, in a country where dating is considered dishonorable.
But in the last few years, marriage apps for Muslims have emerged in Pakistan promising so-called “love matches.”
Some offer a “chaperone” option – which provides a weekly transcript of sent and received messages to a chosen relative, satisfying families wary of their son or daughter connecting with strangers.
For Ezza, it was a success: just three months after meeting Waseem Akhtar on Muzz, she was married.
“We went on a couple of dates before we got our family involved. We took our time,” she said.
More than 80 percent of Pakistanis have arranged marriages, according to a survey by Gallup and Gilani Pakistan, where families decide the union, sometimes settling an engagement without the bride and the groom even meeting.
Parents enlist the help of professional rishta aunties to help find a suitable family, with the first impression often based on how the young woman looks as she pours tea for her potential in-laws.
The app, however, says 1.2 million Pakistanis have signed up since it launched last year with an advertising campaign in major cities, and 15,000 people have already married.
Marriage apps describe themselves as “halal,” or permissible in Islam, offering options to blur profile pictures for privacy and making clear the purpose is to reach a proposal.
But they continue to battle a stigma linking them to casual dating apps such as Tinder, which has been banned in Pakistan for being “immoral.”
“I do not tell people how I met my wife until I am sure that the person would not judge us,” said Waseem.
Marriage is viewed as a coming together of two families in Pakistan, where many live in multigenerational households.
Choosing your husband or wife yourself can be seen as a challenge to the deeply ingrained reverence toward elders and a threat to the traditional family structure.
Rishta aunties are therefore relied upon to find suitors from acceptable families – a process that young women, who are widely expected to marry by the age of 25, can sometimes find demeaning.
“I was asked not to tell the guy’s family that my hobbies are hiking or photography, but are cooking and cleaning... it made me angry,” said Rida Fatima.
“They had the audacity to talk about how I looked, what I did, how much I earned, who my family is, how many brothers I have, what are my future aspirations. So, every little thing is judged.”
Fatima was presented with several potential matches through a rishta auntie appointed by her parents, but was asked to pay around $700 for an introductory meeting with a guy.
The rate fluctuates depending on whether the match has a foreign passport, she added.
Eventually, she ditched the process, becoming part of the 18 percent of Pakistanis who have a “love marriage” after meeting her husband by chance.
“No matter how the guy looks, even if he is bald or has a big belly, he wants a wife who looks like a model,” said Muskan Ali, the managing director at a marriage consultancy in Karachi.
Rishta aunties do not feel threatened yet.
Their offices buzz with parents and their children crafting profiles on computers, as matchmakers strive to digitize their businesses with sleek websites and WhatsApp groups for client communication.
Consultants teach young women how to walk, talk and dress to best correspond to the wishes of their future in-laws.
Many traditional matchmakers like Fauzia Aazam, the head of a community of rishta aunties in Rawalpindi, reject marriage apps altogether.
“People waste time on these apps,” she said.
“Chatting together all through the night, I just don’t like it.”
For Aisha Sarwari, a feminist author, the matchmaking process is about exercising “control” over daughters-in-law.
“I would say that we need to find a good middle ground, where the respect is equal on both sides and there is no sense of demeaning a human being just because they look a certain way or they are from a particular race,” she told AFP.
Aneela, a digital media artist, whose name has been changed, tried her best to avoid being poured over by a matchmaker and turned to a marriage app, but found a new set of concerns.
“It is hard being on an app... men lie,” she said, swiping through her profile at a cafe in Islamabad.
She later admitted to using a fake name and pictures on her profile so that men cannot identify her.
“The only option left is to go for an arranged marriage instead.”

ISLAMABAD: Indian journalists accompanying External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to Pakistan this week described his visit to Pakistan as a “positive” sign for bilateral ties between the two states, but expressed little hope the move would trigger a major thaw in strained relations between them. 

Around a dozen Indian journalists accompanied Jaishankar to Islamabad when he arrived in the capital on Tuesday to attend the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Council of Heads of Government summit. This marked the first visit by a top Indian diplomat to Pakistan in nearly 10 years. 

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are bitter adversaries with longstanding political tensions, having fought several wars and numerous skirmishes since the partition of British India in 1947. Cross-border militancy and territorial dispute over the Himalayan Kashmir region ruled in parts by both countries have fueled their conflicts over the years. 

Jaishankar shook hands with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during the visit, exchanged greetings and sat with Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar during a luncheon for SCO delegates. Hours after the two-day regional gathering concluded, Jaishankar thanked the Pakistani leaders and government for their “hospitality and courtesies.”

“The fact that he [Jaishankar] did choose to come, that the prime minister [Narendra Modi] did ask the foreign minister to attend this summit meeting, that is a positive signal and a construct,” Smita Sharma, an Indian freelance journalist, told Arab News on Wednesday. 

She noted that the SCO Charter does not permit member states to highlight bilateral issues, describing it as a “blessing in disguise.” 

“This adds to the pressure on both New Delhi and Islamabad to not really bring their differences to the table and derail this platform as well,” Sharma noted. “But whether they utilize this opportunity to pave the way for a larger bilateral construct, I have very little hopes of it.”

Sharma blamed India and Pakistan’s “inflexible issues” and difficult, principled positions on “terrorism” and the Kashmir disputed for longstanding tensions.

“I do not see a peace dividend or a peace appetite at the moment as far as the political leaderships are concerned,” she said.

Ashish Kumar Singh, the national bureau head at ABP News in New Delhi, called for greater access between the two countries. This he said could be achieved by easing visa restrictions to enhance people-to-people exchanges and journalists.

“As far as people-to-people exchanges are concerned, before 2014 there were more exchanges between India and Pakistan,” Singh pointed out. “But then the relationship was made hostage primarily due to India’s concerns on terrorism.”

During his address at the summit, Jaishankar spoke of three major issues facing the region, “terrorism, separatism and extremism.” He said the multi-nation platform sought greater regional cooperation but also noted that lack of good neighborliness and trust was impeding cooperation within the SCO. 

’POSITIVE’ BODY LANGUAGE 

Singh said he observed that the body language of both Pakistani leaders and Jaishankar at the summit was “positive.”

“The kind of body language that I have just noted, and in diplomacy, body language matters,” Singh said. “When an external official is there, to see him for two consecutive days sharing good smiles with the prime minister of Pakistan is positive,” he said.

Pakistan’s current premier Sharif is the younger brother of former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who during his previous tenure in office tried to improve Pakistan’s relations with India. Nawaz Sharif faced criticism from his political opponents for warming up to Pakistan’s traditional rival.

Singh noted that whenever the Sharif family comes into power in Pakistan, both countries take steps in a positive direction for India-Pakistan relations.

“The kind of body language we are seeing here during the SCO summit, it gives a way of hope and maybe in days to come, both sides may sit and find some way of increasing the people-to-people contact,” he said. 

Talking to the media, Pakistan’s information minister Attaullah Tarar described Jaishankar’s visit as an “ice breaker.” He said that by hosting the SCO summit, Pakistan had enhanced its capacity at the regional level.

“We have chaired this session of the SCO summit and for regional connectivity, for climate change, for counterterrorism, we can play our role and the world accepts that we have a key role to play as a major player,” Tarar told Arab News.