Concerning Divorce
Concerning Divorce
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when people began to realize that divorce
inevitably led one into financial straits, the marriage
bond began to be dispensed with altogether. Men
and women simply started to live together without
going through the formality of the marriage
ceremony. Now more than fifty percent of the
younger generation prefer to live in an unmarried
state.
It was only natural that a reaction should have set
in against a law that so patently disfavored men
and brought corruption, perversion and all kinds of
misery in its wake. Children—even newborn
babies—were the greatest sufferers.
Now take the situation prevailing in Hindu society,
in which the extreme difficulty of divorce acts as a
deterrent. Obviously this was a bid to reform, but
this has served only to aggravate the matter. The
ancient Indian religious reformers held that
separation was illegal: they even prohibited women
from remarrying, so that they would be left with no
incentive to seek divorce. The laws were made in
such a way that once marriage ceremonies were
finalized, neither could a man divorce his wife, nor
