The Golden Age of Love is yet to begin.
- Akshay
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
Put on the shoes of the Internet and start strolling through different neighbourhoods, and you’ll see people complaining that love is dying, true love is nowhere to be found, and modern relationships are facile.
It’s easy to see why people feel this way.
After all, the rise of situationships, casual short-term flings, and the broken courtship phase does signal that something is going astray in the dating culture.
Such dark times often fillip nostalgia, making people believe that the golden age of love is long gone.
But is it?
A research published in February, 2025 surveyed around 86,310 individuals from 90 countries to study how important love is in long-term relationships.
It’s probably one of the broadest studies giving a glimpse into the global outlook on love and its role in relationships.
So, what did the researchers find?
Not Compatibility, but Love binds a Relationship.
Contrary to popular belief that it is compatibility or the personal rapport between partners that helps sustain relationships, the researchers postulate that it is love that acts as the glue in the relationship.
Given its role, the researchers called Love a “Commitment Device”.
Almost all the countries surveyed valued love as an important component for long-term relationships, such as marriage.
But if you carefully notice the graph, you’d notice some anomalies.
For example, notice the stark difference in values between Uganda and Kenya, despite them sharing a border. Similar is the case with Pakistan and India.
While for Pakistan and Uganda, love doesn’t matter as much for a long-term relationship, it comparatively does for India and Kenya (when juxtaposed with their bordering nation).
What explains this difference?
Why Love is important for some, and not for others.
The researchers found that love is valued more in relationships in developed countries.
It is then no wonder that most European countries are found at the bottom of this graph, emphasising the role of love in relationships.
But, why is love the most important for Argentina, then? It is neither in Europe, nor developed.
Apart from the stage of development, the researchers postulated that the role of love as a Commitment Device increases when the individuals are from a lower socio-economic status.
Think of it like this, if there is a perceived vulnerability to the external environment (like poverty, fear of abandonment, etc), then more people would want to get into a relationship with somebody they love than with somebody they don’t.
The reason is simple: Love acts as a constraint to stop one from leaving. It secures your investment in the relationship and ensures that you have a companion.
So, if you’ve been following the news for some time, you’d know that Argentina is going through an acute financial crisis and hyperinflation. It would then make sense as to why people there see love as essential for a relationship.
This also corroborates another of the earlier evolutionary theories on gender differences in the perception of love.
The evolutionary perspective argues that because women have more parental investment in a relationship than men, they tend to be selective in choosing a partner.
The researchers found similar results- women valued love more than men for getting into a relationship.
Why the Golden period of Love is yet to begin in India
The researchers in this study used HDI (Human Development Index) indicators to determine the demographic variations in the perception of love. While the countries with low HDI did not consider love as important for relationships, those with high HDI did.
India has been making progress on its HDI indicators lately, with a minor slowdown in recent years.
With the bold objective to make India a developed nation under the Viksit Bharat mission, its per capita income, along with other factors under HDI is bound to increase.
If the theory put forth by the researchers sustains, the effects of development would spill over to the culture and might lead to an increase in the significance of love (as is in the case of highly developed economies of the western world).
Can Love Marriages replace Arranged Marriages in India?
It has long been argued that love marriages cannot usurp the centuries-old arranged marriages. The importance of caste is often cited to concretise this claim.
While it is true that arranged marriages have sustained, as have the castes, the argument for arranged marriages standing their ground is open to criticism.
As shown by NK Bose and MN Srinivas, people in less economically potent societies often emulate the ways of life of the economically dominant ones.
This happens not only between societies, but also within societies, even amongst caste groups.
Thus, culture flows from the upper class to the lower classes. So if love marriages are adopted by the upper class in India due to global value-set and exposure, it is likely to permeate through other social groups as well.
The proliferation of iPhones, KTM bikes, and clothing trends is a testament to that.
But arranged marriages have sustained due to caste restrictions, which seem to be rigid when observed.
So, can love make its place in marriages?
To answer that, we must come back to one of the most renowned Indian sociologists- MN Srinivas.
He argued that castes are not rigid, but fluid and dynamic on a functional level.
He propounded the theory of Sanskritisation, which posited that lower castes often emulate higher castes to improve their social standing. So, if the upper castes adopted a practice, the lower castes would want to emulate that.
But how likely is it that the upper castes would accept love marriages?
In “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization” published in 1956, Srinivas argued that the upper castes are likely to adopt Western culture with the advent of Modernism if it helps them improve the chances of mobility.
Take, for example, the case of cattle skin, vegetarianism, and drinking.
Earlier, the lower castes were discriminated against because of their occupation, which required them to deal with the skin of dead animals, and because of their dietary habits, which included meat-eating and drinking. Hence, their touch was considered “polluting”.
However, when the British came to India, the upper castes did not mind taking to the practices of the officers if it allowed them to gain proximity to the British administration.
They not only partook in wine drinking and meat eating under the garb of modernism, but also wore leather footwear, confounding many who perceived caste practices to be sacrosanct and rigid.
Thus, arguments based on the notion of intransigence of the Indian culture are fallacious to some extent. After all, the Indian society is the only other living civilisation apart from the Chinese. It could not have happened without adapting to new ways and means of life, even if contrary to the earlier ones.
It would then not be aggrandising to say that the importance of love in relationships and marriage is bound to increase with the Golden Age of Love yet to begin in India, as its socio-economic development gathers pace.
The walls of arranged marriage may not crumble overnight, but they will erode over time, giving way to a new era where love is at the heart of lasting relationships.
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