THE SACRED WEDLOCK

THE SACRED WEDLOCK

There is a common saying that marriages are made in heaven.  A lot of people believe in this, yet they are very much worried about marriages.  Though the concept of marriage is the same throughout the world, the social implications of marriage have different dimensions in different parts of the world.  Of course, religions also play an important part and they have got different definitions of marriage.

The western countries are very much liberal about marriage and married life.  But they also had conservative outlooks about marriage in olden days, and the present liberal outlook was generated through many a centuries.  Being an Indian, I can make definite conclusions about marriage from the point of view of Indian civilization only.   Formerly, marriage was just a ritual in which a girl was handed over to a man as his pair.  He was to look after the girl and in turn the girl was to organize a family for him, bear his children and so on.  The male domination in married life was clearly defined in olden days and as such women were not having a strong position in married life.  There is a saying in Tamil – KANAVANE KANKANDA DAIVAM – this means husband is the God of wife.  This was almost the same in almost all the eastern civilizations.

The role of man was so dominant in the family during olden days and this has led to so many tragedies for women.  To some extent, the lives of women were horrible then and this suppression has paved way to the women’s liberation movement.  In India this movement was not so evident, yet there were remarkable changes in the Indian society also.  The credit goes to the women’s liberation movement which was strong enough in the western regions especially in the European nations.  

This has resulted in a welcome change in the Indian outlook about marriage.  Women are more liberalized than the olden days and they also play an important role in almost all fields of life.  We can very well say that women of the present day have got a more important role in the family life than in the olden days.   Of course there are some physical features which make women inferior to men, but they are stronger than men in many facets of life.  The modern society has accepted this phenomena and this has related in a strong family life. 

Now there is yet another fact which disturbs very much the positive changes that has occurred in marriage and family life. It is nothing but the increasing number of divorces in our society.  I think the role of parents in marriage is becoming lesser and lesser in modern society.  The number of wrecked marriages are on the increase and it is time to think positively about our children’s lives.  It is the duty of the society  to find a solution to this and save our children’s life.

I think our young generation has gone wrong somewhere in the definitions of freedom.  And of course they are becoming more and more selfish and this of course is not their fault.  We are to be blamed for the upbringing of a selfish young generation.  The joint family concept of the olden days have given way to the nuclear family concept.  This nuclear feature itself is a selfish idea and we must teach our young generation to be more liberalized in their outlook about family and not to consider their family as so neuclear.

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