On Tuesday 10 Mar 2009 1:39:56 pm Mahesh Murthy wrote: <snip> > realities. Traditional Christian or Western (and Islamic) marriage rituals > have held that fidelity is key to a marriage - and one oft-proven reason > for the high incidence of divorce in traditional Christian cultures like > the US is the inability for a spouse to maintain this desired state of > being.
<snip> > > The increasing rate of divorce in modern India is perhaps more due to the > prevalence of the (western) infidelity-intolerant mindset among Indian men > and women Er it really should be Indian infidelity and not "Western" infdelity shouldn't it? Be that as it may, the divorce rates in the West are not necessarily high merely because of infidelity are they? They are high because divorce laws are liberal and allow divorce on various gounds other than infidelity. Incompatibility, cruelty and other factors can lead to divorce. Many Western societies are far more secular than Indian society and allow these divorce laws to operate without interference from religious and other pressure groups, unlike India. There is pressure not to divorce in Indian society and the increasing rates of divorce are probably not so much related to fidelity as the fact that divorce is now possible without shaming the woman forever. The other point is that fidelity is indeed demanded in Hindu marriages - from the woman. What the man should do is not clearly mentioned. Clearly here is an instance in which fidelity must be demanded from the man as well. but "traditionalists" who do not want to touch Hindu rituals will be shocked at such an Idea. However the traditionalists have already lost ground. "Hindu laws" usually meant that a married daughter is excluded from inhertitance of her paternal ancestral property. This silly law has now been overturned. Married women get an equal share of ancestral property. I think that for India: 1) The institution of marriage must be protected but not if it is clearly harmful to man or woman 2) The woman must be protected against cruelty, forced marriage and bondage 3) Fidelity must be expected of the man as well as the woman All this looks so easy and simple - one can say that Indian laws ensure exactly these three points. But in reality i believe that Hindu society is still living in the past. What happened in the past that does not happen now? Well - a man would get married and have 11 children.7 would die and after a while his wife would die too- naturally. That meant that the man could marry again. If the man died - you know what became of the widow. Hindutva still does not accept that bias against women is built into Hindu attitudes. The woman must change and accommodate, not the man. Everything about the Hindu past is considered so fine and so glorious and yet is considered to have been raped and misrepresented so badly (By the British and Muslims) that: a) Nobody will countenance a molocule of change b) Nobody wants to hear a single word of criticism. What really loads the dice against women in india is what is happening in the West - in which the decadence of the West is being (rightly or wrongly) linked to all the freedoms that people have - with female freedom being seen as a fundamntal factor leading to the demise of the family and dissolution of society. Bondage, modesty, self effacement, fidelity and servitude of women in India is portrayed as "good and righteous" - being beneficial to society. Hindutva finds it easy to laugh mockingly at Islam's admittedly ludicrous claim to respect women. But no Hindutva supporter has accepted any of the arguments I make to show that Hindu treatment of women is the pits. This insight just does not exist. I am accused of saying such things because "my mind has been twisted" by Westernization. But it is difficult not to accept that the West too had botched things badly and that is the biggest boost that both Islamists and Hindutvadis get when you use the West as comparison in terms of womens rights and freedoms. The future IMO will mean not copying the West. But things must not remain the same either. shiv
