> The theory sounds compelling and deserves to be considered as a close > approximation of reality - but going by Hindu tradition the demand for > female > fidelity is older than Christianity and Islam.
Asking someone to look at a constellation - assuming you could find it during a rare cloudless nocturnal wedding ceremony - and then saying "do try to be an ideal wife like her" can hardly be construed as a Hindu "demand for female fidelity". *(In fact, you'll find an interesting take here<http://books.google.co.in/books?id=rjL3ogbdJNkC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=arundhati+ideal+wife&source=bl&ots=hNnKNg-Hqc&sig=D22gu0sGZrseKAp-bXVGibuyu74&hl=en&ei=q564SfT1B4Gs6wODgIXvBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=11&ct=result#PPA133,M1>where the entire Arundhati thing is supposed to be used as a method by the spouse to systematically titillate, distract and deflower his bride right after the marriage ceremony, so the ritual perhaps signifies less of "be an ideal faithful wife" and more of "be an ideal sexually active wife to the spouse".)* In fact, most evidence - of the Kama Sutra / Khajuraho / Krishna / Draupadi / sleep-with-his-or-her-sibling-if he-or-she-can't-give-you-a-child/ etc kind seems to suggest that fidelity was not really a big deal in traditional / medieval India. Admittedly this traditional Indian rambunctious nature (after all we didn't get to be a billion+ people by practicing any form of repressed sexuality) has been somewhat downplayed in recent times perhaps in the post-Moghul and the post-colonial missionary era. Even today, most talk of fidelity seems to emanate from those who were brought up in Christian / Islamic backgrounds of convent schools or madrassas, and hence is perhaps more an elitist or middle-class urban phenomena - especially in the case of the convent-educated. Many of us can quote stories / incidents of sexual liberation in small towns / villages, putting some sort of a lie to the thought that India is traditionally sexually conservative. I will posit that sexual conservativism is more of an urban, middle-class phenomena in India. > > Certainly the acquisition/control of property (a geographical area with > resources?) by a physically dominant male would seem to demand female > fidelity. Per most available evidence, alpha males do not demand fidelity from their female partners - just the right to access them as and when they feel like. > > Even with all this I think one in five primate species are apparently > mainly > monoogamous Again, there is no evidence that suggest this is true. Primates are furiously polygamous. I am also specifically not sure what "mainly monogamous" means. Is that something like "marginally virginal" or "almost pregnant"? > which suggests that there may be some survival advantages in > monogamy. There are none indicated. > > > It is simplistic to pin down human behavior by comparing with any > convenient > animal society depending on what bias one might want to highlight. Popular > science tends to justify recreational sex in humans based on observations > of > some animal species - which seems to be a conveinient way of saying > 'Bonobos > have fun sex aso it is natural for humans to do that - don't feel guilty". It may be simplistic, but then most truths are. When observations are not restricted to "some" animal species but are across "all" then one might pay heed to them, regardless of what one's Moral Science teacher told us in Class 6. It is fashionable to debunk science when it disagrees with what religion or upbringing tells us - methinks this is no different from the arguments in favour of intelligent design. The fact that sex is recreational and not just procreational has been known and recorded for millenia by humans - long before Margaret Mead or descriptions of the bonobos gave various well-off old religious men sleepless nights. > Speaking of animals and survival traits, it is likely that the institution > of > marriage was merely a formalization of a widespread human custom that aided > survival of cooperative human societies (increased cooperation, decreased > infighting) by demanding male fidelity as well as female fidelity. Let's not confuse marriage with fidelity. One does not need to exist for the other to. In fact, data suggests that they rarely, if ever co-exist. >From an evolutionary point of view, the most indicated construct that successful species follow is marriage without fidelity. > Female > fidelity to one partner at a time seems to be the norm for almost any > species, I'm not sure what "fidelity to one partner at a time" means. No group sex? If so, I'd agree somewhat - few creatures display troilism. What does "at a time" mean? Within a span of 5 minutes? Perhaps yes. Within the span of a lifetime - certainly no. Sequential relationships over parallel relationships? Evidence does not point to that. Evidence points to parallel and sequential relationships co-existing in most species. Its not > as if animals are randomly f*ck1ng around. My point exactly - if we accept that we behave in a manner that makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, then we must accept that fidelity is an aberration, perhaps a random, short-term one among humans that will go away with the decline in other conservative religious values in a few years or a few hundred. My $0.02, Mahesh
