Friend “K.S.”
writes:
In your righteous fury against Dr. Pattabhi’s anti-Communist
tirades you have been betrayed into a rather rash attack on Indian marriages.
From one’s knowledge of what happens in a few well-to-do
Hindu families one has no right to generalize that dowries and parental
compulsion bring about all Indian marriages or that the irrevocability of the
marriage tie is in practice upheld by all Indian communities. Easy and frequent
divorces occur not only in Russia but unofficially among some submerged classes
in India.
The Hindu ideal of marriage is certainly that it should be
both permanent and for a purpose beyond the pleasure of the partners. The
relation of the Webbs and the Curies is a close approximation to the old Hindu
ideal of marriage as a union inspired by the determined pursuit of a common
dharma. Several unions among contemporary Indian Communists are nearer to the
ancient Hindu ideal than the orthodox marriages which are dharmic in form but
wholly sordid in reality.
That marriage is not the mere individual concern of the
partners to it, but an event of great significance to the race is common ground
to the Hindu and the Communist. The idea of romantic love of a leisured and
aristocratic society where the idle rich have overpoetized a biological need
regardless of the integrity of the family and of society.
It is difficult to see how in a settled and civilized society
marriage can be anything but the permanent union of a man and a woman. We
cannot now go back to the simple, seasonal mating habits of birds and beasts—even
though you did have an English friend and he did remark to you once that he “could
not understand at all what passed as marriage in India.” After all that
Gandhiji and Rajaji have done, it will be difficult even for you to persuade a
Hindu woman that Sita and Savitri are back numbers to be discarded and that
marriage should cease to be a status involving permanent social and religious
duties but must become a contract conferring temporary rights.
I am afraid that at as time passes there will be fewer and
fewer divorces even in Russia. It is possible and desirable to change our
economic system without making foolish social experiments in imitation of less civilized
peoples.
In our family life at least
wehave practiced Satyagraha for centuries. That is, when we differ from our
partner in life we don’t look for blame outside of ourselves, but accept it as
our own, and try to change ourselves and not the other party. The result is
that we don’t have so many sexy novels and films as in the West, nor have we so
many nervous wrecks or suicides.
*
* *
“K.S.” belongs to a profession
allied to that of journalist, but he does most of his work with the tongue and
not the pen. He is uncontaminated by the poison of journalese which consists in
making words do for themselves when thoughts and events of sufficient
importance happen to be lacking. He is a great scholar, and is endowed with the
gift of intuition for singling out the apt word for the right shade of meaning.
But he insists on refusing to write unless between what is written and the rest
of life as lived daily, there is no gap left; to him words and action must
synchronise.
*
* *
Such a one does not let loose
fragments of ideas lie about to disturb his tidy mind. Everything must be synthesized
and referred back to one great central fount of culture, whatever fails to fit
in with it being discarded. “K.S.” is steeped in the culture of the Ramayana.
He sees, or wishes to see, in every sister an aspiring Sita. For all that
Gandhiji and Rajaji have done, I do not feel that many Hindu women will act as
Sita or Savitgri did if confronted with a crisis similar to the one
traditionally associated with Sita and Savitri. No modern son would care to
abandon his inheritance and roam the forests as an exile for fourteen years to
enable an infatuated father to keep his promise to a step-mother. Nor, if he
did, would his wife follow him as Sita did. If any widowed Hindu woman revealed
an immovable faith in the possibility of rescuing her husband back to life from
the kingdom of the God of Death, her relatively would scarcely regard her as an
incarnation of Savitri. It is more likely they would consult a doctor.
*
* *
Reverence for the characters
pictured in great works should be distinguished from taking them as models in
all things. Time does make a difference in standards. Wifely obedience, exalted
gloriously in sita, represents a standard of the man-made world which must, to
some extent at least, be changed and reshaped, now that woman is insisting on
her share of voice in all affairs.
*
* *
Divorce is no doubt a feature of
the new world, but divorce should not be treated as a device favouring
impermanence in marriage. It is only the sort of permanence that is secured by
being firmly tied up without any escape,--which is a sort that is in no sense
dharmic—that is affected by divorce. Permanence
in marriage should come by free choice and not by compulsion, and divorce
provides for only this much and no more.
*
* *
Divorce is a reserve refuge
against marital unhappiness. “That as time passes there will be fewer and fewer
divorces in Russia” shows how little reason there is to get panicky over
divorce as a dangerous innovation likely to disturb the permanence of marriage.
The significance of marriage to the race
comes as an after-effect and is not immediately worked for; just like happiness
for which there is no direct approach, but which comes in pursuit of other
things. Romantic love dwells as much in huts where the people live by the sweat
of their brow as in the palaces of our leisured and aristocratic society.
Without it, marriage will be dull and drab. I do not like to regard marriage as
a sedate transaction altruistically entered into for the benefit of the race.
It would be unnatural if an element of desire and pleasure does not enter into
it. The young that go in for marriage are neither monks nor nuns.—(March 23,
1946) S A K A
No comments:
Post a Comment