 I'm Shazna, and arranged marriage is sort of like online dating. Yes, folks, I said this recently. And because I said this, I've been quizzed about it incessantly. To me, it came from sort of watching firsthand so many arranged marriages happen in my life, but also watching so many of my friends who are dating online. And the more I watch these matchmaking methods, the more similarities I saw between them. What it also made me realize is what a bad rap arranged marriage has in the West generally. One thing I want to make very clear, arranged marriage is not the same as forced marriage. Arranged marriages are consensual, forced marriages are not. So I found this amazing statistic that was apparently verified by UNICEF that 55% of marriages in the world are actually arranged. That's a staggering figure. And it makes me think how arranged marriages were really the way of the world just until a few hundred years ago, and in fact they happen still all the time. Lady Diane Prince Charles, Lady Diane Prince Charles, that was definitely arranged, maybe even forced. Then we have this 19th century Russian painting of a young girl being forced into a marriage. Now for disclosure, I'm happily married. It was not an arranged marriage and I did not find my husband online. However, I do have a deep understanding of the topic. When I was born in London and grew up in a pretty traditional Bangladeshi family, and when I was 16 they arranged a marriage for me and before I knew what was going on I found myself in Bangladesh about to get married off and I did not consent to this at all. Luckily for me though I managed to get out of the country thanks to the help of a human rights attorney, British Embassy and other people. But even though all those things happen to me I still think that arranged marriages can work when there is consent. So beyond me I looked to my bookshelf just the other day. Jane Austen. Jane Austen explores the idea of romance before marriage in a time when people married for convenience. We look at Cathy from Wuthering Heights. She married to up her status even though she was deeply in love with Heathcliff and that reflects the idea of marriage and the ideals of marriage in that era in England. We have Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet is being hounded to marry Count Paris even though she's madly in love with Romeo and we will know how that ends tragically and I love the logo on this cover, Love is Toxic. And lastly one of my favourite books, The Buddha of Suburbia where the Pakistani-British character Jamila ends up marrying someone she doesn't want to marry because her father goes on a hunger strike because she has a protest to her resistance. So scholars have divided marriage up into four different states. So you have forced arranged marriages where the individual has no say. Then you have marriages that are arranged by a guardian or a matchmaker and individuals can say yes or they can say no. Then you have number three individuals who actually find their own mates and then the parents are consulted and get to say yes or no. And then you have autonomous marriage also known as love marriage where you marry whoever the hell you want and you don't care what anybody has to say about it in society. So arranged marriages happen for all kinds of reasons, here's a bunch of them. What you won't see here is love because love is actually seen as a bit of a hindrance, a bit of a folly when you're trying to pick your life mate. So back to online dating, if you think about online dating it's really a marketplace where we go to shop and we go to sell in the hopes of finding a potential mate. Well that's what arranged marriage is too. It's a marketplace to shop and to sell partnerships. And I forgot, what next? Well anyway, there are lots of similarities. I actually have a really good anecdote. When I was in Bangladesh, I remember one of the things I was allowed to do was I was allowed to peek through a curtain at potential suitors who came to visit me so I'd open the curtain and close the curtain. And hey, who uses Tinder in here? Ring a bell? Another similarity is, you know, a lot of arranged marriages employ matchmakers, professional matchmakers, who curate contenders. That's pretty cool, you get somebody who's actually a concierge if you like and bringing potential mates to you. And on online dating, if you like, that concierge is the algorithm, it's the technology. At the end of the day, whether you have an arranged marriage or a love marriage it all is in the luck of the draw. Thank you for watching.