Ridiculous sublime   29 April 2011

Photo: madhatrk, flickr

India has emerged as one of the most desirable locations for opulent ‘destination weddings’ among celebrities from Hollywood and elsewhere, a trend arising from a heady cocktail of their ideas about the country. The West, while regarding India as the cradle of Eastern spirituality and a place of escape from materialism through yoga and meditation, also gawks at lavish Indian wedding parties. The result is a strange mishmash of spirituality and spectacle.

In recent years, the glamour and conspicuous consumption of Indian marriages has captured the Western imagination and generated countless columns of coverage. Expensive weddings are hardly a new phenomenon in Southasia, but with economic liberalisation, multi-million-dollar Indian weddings are on the rise. ‘The socialist inhibitions of old have gone,’ comments sociologist Patricia Oberoi. ‘And there is encouragement from private interests, and by default from the government, to spend more.’

A case in point is the recent March wedding, dubbed India’s most expensive wedding ever, of Congress politician Kanwar Singh Tanwar’s son Lalit. The bash was the apogee of modern-day Indian consumerism; unofficial estimates put the cost at USD 22-50 million. The bride’s family reportedly gifted a helicopter to the groom, who wore a garland of banknotes during the wedding ceremony.

The media in the West is enamoured by India’s growing economic clout, especially since the country survived the recent global financial crisis in a shape better than most economies in Europe and North America. Even at times of the deepest financial gloom, India consistently provided the international media with colourful stories of consumption and runaway growth. Tales of outlandish weddings sit nicely against this backdrop.

Everything for sale
The honour of being the trendsetters for outlandish Western celebrity weddings in India can be bestowed upon Arun Nayar and Liz Hurley, the textiles heir and model, respectively. In 2007, they decided to follow their English-castle wedding with a Hindu one in the groom’s homeland. The ceremony took place at a maharajah’s palace outside Jodhpur. Hurley’s fabled cleavage was tastefully covered with a pink sari for the ceremony, and guests were required to pick an ‘ethnic’ outfit from a boutique set up especially for the purpose in a swanky Mumbai hotel. British tabloids and celebrity magazines had a field day covering the celebrations, reportedly one of the most expensive celebrity weddings of all time. The marriage itself, however, was short-lived. The couple recently separated amidst rumours that Hurley was having an affair with cricketer Shane Warne.

In December last year, American pop star Katy Perry married British comedian Russell Brand in a seven-day North Indian extravaganza. The festivities featured a procession of 21 horses, camels and elephants, and an after-party at which P Diddy, the American rap star, performed alongside Indian classical dancers. The couple later remarked – apparently, without a hint of irony – that it had been a ‘very private and spiritual ceremony’.

Now, the biggest Hollywood celeb couple of them all, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (aka Brangelina) are rumoured to be talking of a traditional shaadi in India. The couple are said to have turned to 83-year-old Hindu mystic Gurudev Ramlaji Siyag to teach them yoga and meditation, in order to get through a rough patch in their relationship. Rumour has it that it is at this guru’s ashram in Rajasthan that the pair now plans to tie the knot, sometime in 2011. Few stories would be capable of uniting both financial journalists and celebrity hacks in a feeding frenzy, but this one has.

Even though outsiders technically cannot convert to Hinduism, the religion is gaining popularity in Hollywood. Julia Roberts, for instance, has done her fair share of promoting Hinduism over the past year. While starring in the movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s travelogue Eat Pray Love – the story of an American divorcee who embarks on a journey through Italy, India and Indonesia on a quest for inner peace – the actress ‘converted’ to Hinduism. Roberts recently told the media that she goes to a Hindu temple regularly to ‘chant, pray and celebrate’ with her family. Ironically, while the actress was shooting for the film, local Hindu devotees were banned from celebrating Navaratri at a nearby temple, as the area had been closed off by Roberts’s 350-strong entourage of security and staff.

Western celebrities seem to visit India, as they do other countries in the Global South, with the idea that anything is possible, and that everything is for sale. Feeling a lack of traditions in your home country? Well, they can be bought in India at a luxury resort. Want to hire out a former maharajah’s palace? Tick. Want a procession of elephants for your special day? That can be arranged too. Such behaviour might seem to have colonial undertones, but it is more an expression of aggressive capitalism than anything else.

In 2006, ‘Brangelina’ notoriously chose to go to Namibia for their daughter’s birth, and spent more than USD 415,000 on accommodation and medical fees. The country was put under lockdown in the run-up to the birth. The couple’s security team, which allegedly included members of an Apartheid-era counterinsurgency unit, was criticised for its heavy-handed treatment of local journalists. It would be intriguing to see to what extent Jolie and Pitt are able to boss around the Indian authorities, if they do decide to marry in India. Will their money and celebrity status be enough to win them special treatment, or will the government put its foot down if their demands become too outlandish? Either way, the outcome will make for some interesting insights about the state of India’s economy and the image of the country that its politicians want to project.

Vulgar
There have been sniggers from some quarters at the recent vogue for Hollywood weddings in India. Internet comedian Sumeet Raghavan (of Jay Hind) lampooned ‘Brangelina’ in a recent sketch for wanting to have a ‘typical Indian wedding’, speculating whether they will be incorporating such ‘traditional features’ of Indian marriages several hundred uncles who get drunk on whisky at the reception and start fights, or hiring a super-intrusive camera operator to film the wedding video.

More broadly, there is something inherently comic about Westerners appropriating traditions and practices that they do not fully understand. Bollywood comedy Bunty aur Babli features a scene in which the hero and heroine, a pair of small-town crooks, successfully con an American couple, who want an ‘authentic’ Indian wedding, into believing that it can be arranged in a nearby palace. The bride and groom later arrive at the palace on an elephant with the wedding guests, only to discover that the venue is locked and empty. Nevertheless, with multi-million-dollar wedding budgets and an army of hired heavies behind them, it seems that Hollywood celebs will always have the last laugh, no matter how obnoxious or risible their wedding plans.

Indeed, some Indians have been outraged by the idea of foreigners tying the knot in their country. A Hindu pundit filed a court complaint over the Hurley-Nayar wedding, claiming that it made a ‘mockery’ of Hindu customs, not least because the pair had already wed in a Christian ceremony in England. Meanwhile, Katy Perry and Russell Brand failed to endear themselves to locals in Rathambathore, Rajasthan, after they allegedly violated laws about noise pollution in the national park where the wedding was held.

Politicians in New Delhi have started to express their disapproval of extravagant weddings, for foreigners and locals, and there have been rumblings about legislation to curb the excess. In late April, Food Minister K V Thomas said that he was looking at measures to limit the number of guests and the amount of food on offer at weddings. The truth is that while India’s economy is racing ahead, the country is also suffering from serious food shortages. Recent months have seen public protests across the country, as ordinary people are being hit hard by steep rises in the price of basic goods. But while wedding-related scale-back measures would emulate similar laws in Pakistan, critics say that the laws would be impossible to be enforced – not to mention would do nothing to get at the heart of India’s food shortages.

The current discussion really is nothing new. During the 1960s, Jawaharlal Nehru complained that the excessive use of wedding lights was ‘vulgar’, as it put a strain on India’s struggling national grid. Trimming down the ostentation now will be no mean feat, given how entrenched the trend for mega-spending has become among the upper and middle classes. If any such measures are put in place, what would it mean for Hollywood celebrity weddings in India? Will celebrities such as Jolie and Pitt stick to a simple wedding in an ashram, rather than a multi-day blowout? Or will they, along with wealthy Indians, see themselves as above the law anyway?

Hollywood weddings in India reveal contradictory attitudes towards the country: as a heartland of ancient spirituality and of consumerism on a monumental scale. On one hand, these celeb weddings are a sign of the country’s economic resurgence. On the other, they give a far less flattering message: Everything is available – from animals, religious identity, palaces of deposed nobility, jewels, saris, to access to a temple – as long as you have enough money. 

Sophia Furber is a financial journalist in London, UK.

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