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Marriage and divorce - the new trend

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Saab

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2 divorces for every 5 knots in Mumbai
25 Jan 2008, 0141 hrs IST, Viju B,TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...5_marriages_in_Mumbai/articleshow/2729438.cms

MUMBAI: For every five weddings registered in Mumbai and Thane since 2002, family courts have received two applications for divorce.

Exactly 104,287 marriages were registered in Mumbai and Thane between January 2002 and October 2007. During the same period, the family courts in the two districts received 44,922 applications for divorce. Figures for 2007 bear out the trend. Mumbai and Thane registered 17,221 marriages between January and October last year. There were 7,813 applic ations for divorce within the same time span.

The statistics have alarmed psychiatrists and sociologists. Mumbai, say sociologists, is increasingly time-stressed with many couples doing about 80 km of commuting every day in addition to eight- to ten-hour jobs. "Even longstanding, stable matrimonial relationships may eventually crack under severe pressure," a Tata Institute of Social Sciences sociologist said.

"There is no shame or stigma attached to a divorce now and even parents often back their daughters who want to separate if things do not fall in place," psychiatrist Harish Shetty added. The increasing numbers corroborate what they say. Last year (until October) saw 4,138 divorce applications in Mumbai. This is an increase of 47.5% over the 2002 figure of 2,805.

Other urban centres in the state are catching up with Mumbai. Thane district saw 3,675 divorce pleas between January and October 2007, while Pune saw 1,372 pleas in the entire year.
 
Hindu Marriages Act breaking more homes than uniting: SC
17 Jun 2008, 1825 hrs IST,PTI

NEW DELHI: Expressing concern over an increasing number of cases flooding the courts, the Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that the Hindu Marriages Act had done more harm to the family system in the country than strengthening it.

"The Hindu Act has broken more homes than uniting," a vacation Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and G S Singhvi observed.

The apex court regretted that the growing number of divorce cases in the country was having a disastrous effect on children of which get broken in such a manner.

Enacted in 1955, the Hindu Marriages Act which had undergone several amendments till 2003 contains various provisions for validity of a Hindu marriage, restitution of conjugal rights and divorce, the latter being a concept evolved from the English law.

"Even at the time of marriages, anticipatory divorce petitions are being filed," the Bench remarked sarcastically.

The apex court passed the observation while dealing with a petition filed by a for seeking his child's custody.

"Ego should get dissolved for the sake of the child," the Bench remarked even as the separated parents tried to air their views.

The apex court told the separated that it was more concerned with the welfare of the child, rather than the mutual recrimination between the two.

"Ultimately the child suffers. If it is a girl the trauma is more, particularly at the time of the marriage of such children," Justice Pasayat speaking for the Bench observed.

The apex court lamented that the provisions provided in the Hindu Marriages Act for granting divorce on the grounds of spouses suffering from diseases like leprosy, mental illness were being misused by some couples.

"In those days our forefathers never had such problems," the apex court observed while stating that marital disputes during the olden days were sorted out within the four walls of the house.

In this case, Gaurav Nagpal through counsel Manik Karanjawala had sought custody of his 11-year old son.

Nagpal had filed the appeal after the trial court and the Delhi High Court had both granted the custody of the boy to his estranged wife Sumedha Nagpal.

There was high drama during the hearing of the case when Gaurav asked his wife to give him an hour time to sort out certain differences between.

But even before the court could give its views on the plea, Sumedha bluntly rejected the idea.

"It's just an eyewash your Lordship. He has been beating me and my father," Sumedha told the Bench, which however, said that it would not go into the merits of the case at this juncture.

Instead, the Bench said it would personally talk to the couple in chamber during the afternoon.

The matter was also listed for further hearing on Wednesday.

60 comments on this story. Read them at
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ng_homes_than_uniting/articleshow/3138462.cms
 
Editorial in Chennaionline.com

My heart goes out to the children of divorcees. They are a divided lot, because they are never fully at home. One should read Elizabeth Marquardt's 'Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce' . She ably brings out the attitudinal problems in them. For example, the way in which divorced kids try to keep secrets from their parents, and even to lie to one parent so as not to betray the other. The divorced child is perpetually uprooted. He or she becomes a guest in two new families. Their loyalties are divided. Their longings are divided. They live in an empty vacuum. The fact is that no child can be expected to have a complete life without both the parents.

The supreme Court of India has regretted that the growing number of divorce cases in the country was having a disastrous effect on children of families which get broken. And, this is a serious, if belated, concern that the opinion leaders of our society should, with a sense of urgency deal with. Expressing concern over an increasing number of divorce cases flooding the courts, the Supreme Court has observed that the Hindu Marriages Act had done more harm to the family system in the country than strengthening it. "The Hindu Marriages Act has broken more homes than uniting," a vacation Bench of Justices Mr Arijit Pasayat and Mr GS Singhvi observed. "Even at the time of marriages, anticipatory divorce petitions are being filed," the bench remarked sarcastically.

"Ego should get dissolved for the sake of the child," the Bench remarked. The apex court told the separated couple that it was more concerned with the welfare of the child, rather than the mutual recrimination between the two. "Ultimately the child suffers. If it is a girl the trauma is more, particularly at the time of the marriage of such children," Mr Justice Pasayat speaking for the Bench observed. The SC lamented that the provisions provided in the Hindu Marriages Act for granting divorce were being misused by some couples."In those days our forefathers never had such problems," the apex court observed while stating that marital disputes during the olden days were sorted out within the four walls of the house.

I am reminded of the opening lines of a song : "Mom hates dad, Dad hates mom, it all makes you feel so sad."
 
saab,

i am not so sure that breakup of marriage is as simple as what the justices make out, and the impact being felt on kids alone.

it all depends. i think.

marriage is such a couple thing, and one never knows, not even the parents, what goes on in a relationship between two people. add to it, the complexities and obligations of arranged marriages, the expectations of in-laws on both sides, (absence of) mutual regard, affection and willingness to shoulder the organization of running a family as a joint enterprise, social mores and above all potential abuse.

there are so many more, than what is listed above, which contributes to the breakup of a marriage.

also, not all breakups are harmful, i think, from a children's viewpoint. admittedly, the child gets deprived of a loving home, with the care of two parents. but, i have had friends, where home life was sheer hell, and they looked to the day when the parents would split, so that they can have peace and normalcy in the household.

personally, i think, marriage is a lottery, and those of us who lucked in, have a lot to be grateful for. for others, it is best to cut short the damages and move on with life.

the hindu marriages act was the best thing that happened to hindu women. i think, the justices are indulging in wordspeak, which is full of hot air and out of tune with the current trend of equality among the genders.

thank you
 
Menacing Midas culture---sway of American value-Agnosticism - I

By: V SUNDARAM

In India Today most people, regardless of their level of education are unable to distinguish between the quality and the quantity of what appears to make life good and worth living.

The search for the good life, the endless race for a higher standard of living, is so often defined by the new generation in terms of ‘Things’ and the means to get as many ‘Things’ as possible. This approach has turned into a dead end as more and more people have more and more. This ‘Midas Culture’ has not provided the joy or happiness that it would appear to have promisedat the beginning. We seem to be living in a land of fractured families, poisoned personal relationships, and unfulfilling work totally devoid of any job satisfaction, disloyal corporations, fragile self-esteem, and social distrust.Our public life seems to be driven by one scandal after another. Our private lives are punctuated by a sense of fragility, futility, fatuity and drift based on fear. We seem to be having less and less worth saying to one another. We seem to be living more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked only by the anonymity of the internet and the destructive, dumb-bell down medium of television, a ‘Vast and Vacuous Wasteland’ that Newton Minnow, who coined the phrase in the TV mediums infancy, could never in his worst nightmare have imagined. All the traditional sources of guidance --- family, religion, school and state --- are all themselves in great disarray and even in shambles. Most young men and women in India today seem to believe in the idea that true happiness is to be found in the new culture of materialism and sensual diversion that is ceaselessly thrust upon them in their role as passionate consumers.
Noble and selfless thoughts would appear to be far away from the minds and hearts of this indulged and indulgent generation. Only two questions seem to be relevant to this generation most of the time:


  • How much is my ‘Degree’ worth?
  • How much will my Degree’get me of this world’s ‘Goods and Things’?
These two questions are the only questions that most students seem to be asking today. No one seems to be worried about the moral use of his education and life. The value questions relating to matters of moral value, public and private virtue and a sense of fit vocation for making a good life and not just a good living --- seem to be viewed as obscurantist and even irrelevant today! The very words ‘humanity’, ‘virtue’ and ‘piety’ now have a somewhat antique and quaint sound. If there were to be a contest to find a suitable inscription for a University Building today in India, it would be impossible to find a consensus for any sentiment worthy of participation in stone. Most academic institutions in the field of higher education in India do not seem to be espousing the values of truth, virtue and service, or even of learning, teaching and wisdom, but rather those of excellence and fairness. Colleges and Universities have much to say about excellence and fairness but are reluctant to speak about goodness. There is a total and even universal absence of perception of the strategic and functional role of goodness in education. Almost all in the controlling position in the field of higher education are declaring with lopsided commitment and enthusiasm: ‘We are in the Knowledge Business and not in the Virtue Business’.In this context, I am reminded of what a well-known actress in Hollywood once said when questioned by an admirer: ‘My goodness, when did you get these beautiful and rare pearls?’ The actress replied: ‘Goodness has nothing to do with it’.Higher education in any field in India today neither implies, includes, nor promises virtue. Are more educated people likely to lie less? To express more humanitarian values? To be more beneficent to one another? To radiate more and more empathy? To take appropriate moral decisions on complex issues? I don’t think so. We have always placed a significant value on the fictitious notion that knowledge and virtue are connected. We seem to imagine that the main point of a college education – for as many as possible in our democracy --- is to provide the connection between Virtue and Knowledge. We want to believe that educationally smart people should be good people and that the smarter we are, the more virtuous we are, or at least OUGHT TO BE!The question on the proper relationship between what we know and how we act ---that is, between knowledge and virtue---is as old as Aristotle and Plateau but the tension between expectation and experience is as acute as the most recent political scandal or morally dubious behaviour committed by those eminent men in high places hailed as the ‘great’ and the ‘good’.If there is no correlation between education and virtue, this has wider implications for public decision-making. There is no reason to embrace a Moral Meritocracy on the basis of just Academic Achievements! (IIMs, IITs and the like). In other words what is the point of a costly college education, available on the basis of academic merit for the public good, if the education itself generates no sense of private probity and public good? Isn’t it all rather an indulgent waste?
Until about 50 years ago, it was commonly accepted that the University was responsible for offering its students moral guidance apart from academic training. Professors regarded themselves as not only the teachers of knowledge and skills, but also as educational stewards of a special kind of wisdom, with focus on the nature of the good life, founded on truth and goodness and beauty and the value of thought and reflection. I don’t think these goals are considered as good or relevant or useful by the Vice Chancellors (most of whom buy their posts at astronomical cost [estimated to be not less than Rs. 3 crores] from the politicians like costly Mercedes Benz Cars from an automobile shop!)George Bernard Shah contemptuously referred to the public disease of what he called ‘American Value-Agnosticism’. Today it has become a global phenomenon. In India it has become the reigning and ruling all-powerful deity--- omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
(To be continued….)
 
i wish to pen a few thoughts on v.sundaram's menacing midas culture.

i have read him occassionally through the web in newstoday.

he represents an essential viewpoint of any democracy, and also the necessary check and balance, to alternative trains of thought.

sundaram has a keen sense of observation, but i may not necessarily agree either with the tone or strategy of his solutions. that too is ok.

however, i have a bone to pick on this particular article.

even if there is a part two coming, with part one, i do not follow what sundaram is getting at or where he is going. he is denigrating just about everything that is happening today in public life.

i do not know if he has children, who are gainfully employed in india. in our own community, we have our sons, daughters, nephews, neieces and extended ones, many of them in i.t. and whose earning power may be multiples of their parents incomes.

should this not be a reason to rejoice? our own have succeeded, where we have toiled, but yet to reap the rewards.

sometimes i wonder, as a community, with ingrained ascetism in our racial memory, we are uncomfortable with the concept of wealth, wealth creation, and enjoyment of wealth. particularly, these days, when it is pervading somewhat recklessly regardless of caste or creed.

poverty, anyday, is an easier garment to handle. i think.especially, when it garbs others, and not necessarily our own family.

sundaram is rambling like my 80 year old neighbour of yore. the man used to talk of good ole days when there was respect shown to him and rice sold at 2 annas per padi, and the lower classes knew their place in society (whatever that meant) !

there were days when my neighbour's wife and daughter in law ignored his ever persistently demanding need for attention, busy as they were tending to an extended family with a hoard of kids. and on those days, his vitriol against the current generation, matched those of sundaram's ramblings of today.

i will take sundaram, with a pinch, and a small one at that, of salt.

no less. no more.

i find sundaram, many a times, like the proverbial chicken little, running around screaming that the sky is falling.
 
sundaram is rambling like my 80 year old neighbour of yore. the man used to talk of good ole days when there was respect shown to him and rice sold at 2 annas per padi, and the lower classes knew their place in society (whatever that meant) !

there were days when my neighbour's wife and daughter in law ignored his ever persistently demanding need for attention, busy as they were tending to an extended family with a hoard of kids. and on those days, his vitriol against the current generation, matched those of sundaram's ramblings of today.
I know kunjuppu is a follower of the 18th century philosopher economist David Hume who put it, "every man ought to be supposed to be a knave."

For those to whom values are no matter, denigration comes very easily.

We have all kinds.

This is the prakrthi!
 
saab,

thank you. i was not denigrating you. you won't find me doing that. i wish you did not denigrate me either.

in fact, i was at odds to figure out the purpose of these several cut and paste posts - whether you were proposing, opposing or informing. in the absence of any preamble, i have always given the benefit of the doubt of freedom of expression, and have not commented on them.

i do like to comment on personally written postings, which i am able to relate and of which i have a comment. but also never pejorative on a personal basis. multiple viewpoints are what that makes this society lively and induces progress. i believe in that.

sundaram is a third person, who is not a member of this forum. there have been other postings of sundaram, which i have kept mum. this particular one, to me, atleast, appear to despise our young generation and finds fault with them for loss of values, which in my opinion, a learned and wise person, will refrain.

also, this article has only complaints. not one suggestive or positive method to solving any of the apparent shortcomings. i think the perceived shortcomings are in sundaram's mind.

if you feel like, go into detail of sundaram's comments, and give us the benefit of your wisdom filled comentary. then, we can have a dialogue. i stand by what i said, and it is nothing to comment about you.

personally, at one point, when i read that article, i thought you were showing us an example of a vague senseless ramble of an old man. this triggered my memory of my 80 year old neighbour, and hence my reminescence.

in the meanwhile, let us maintain decorums and decencies, and not throw around calling names, especially around something which is a cut and paste posting of a journalist, and that too without a preamble, as to what the poster's intentions are.

i am neither a knave. neither are you. pray let us be civilized and ornament this forum with postings, which reflect reflections of our erudity, experience and above all humaneness & compassion.

i wish to reiterate, no matter what you say about me, my regard for you will continue, and i will continue to hold you in high regard, based on your several erudite and intelligent postings, and on several topics, where we are in agreement.

i am not one to part ways, based on disagreement of a particular topic. that would, in my view, failing the human bond and contact which we have established, especially among us, who are of the same heritage, and many things have in common.

thank you sir.
 
It does not matter if a person is a member of this forum or not showing courtesy is fundamental.

It also does not matter if I make any personal comments on my posting. The inference should be that I agree with it. If I don't I will say so.

You started it and you had it. Now can we please move on?
 
Dear Sri Kunjuppu Ji,

I totally agree with your assessment of Sri V. Sundaram's article.

Now let us see. Sri Sundaram Ji, graduates in Economics from a premier institution in India, and becomes a TN IAS cadre. He only appeared and received his IAS out of his sense of serving the motherland, right?

But what made him think that serving as an IAS officer in TN during the successive regimes of the most corrupt administrations was a public service? So, he, as fresh graduate appeared for the IAS exam, which by the time he appeared for, was not to be confused with any great public service (I know, because I was there). It was about power, and not about money.

So, what is the difference between his motives and the motives of new graduates today? Do I smell a tinge of regret and self flagulation from Sri V. Sundaram Ji on account that a scrupulous public servant did not make anything close to a starting IT graduate employee in an IT company today? What is his problem? That people think only about service to other humans only after their needs are satisfied? (please refer to Maslow's theory of hierachy of human development).

The basic flaw in his argument is that the majority (or all) of our youth today are after money and 'things'. This is an utterly wrong supposition.

If this supposition is true, there will be pressure on upward buying, which we do not witness today. There will be always a small crowd that uses Capitalism to go after material things, but there is a larger crowd that knows that sheer materialism does not buy happiness (as is evidenced in the US).

I am at loss of words about such a declaration about today's youth from such a erudite economically trained person as Sri V. Sundaram Ji.

Wealth creation is a very important part of any society's function and to view such an activity as a wrong activity is simply foolhardy.

Pranams,
KRS
 
Wealth creation is a very important part of any society's function and to view such an activity as a wrong activity is simply foolhardy.

How true...they say a man cannot give up on wealth without having experienced it first. And therefore the fulfillment of Kama, dharma, artha and moksha in that order...just that the pursuit of moksha after artha has been given up (??).
 
Dear Sri Happyhindu Ji,

In vedic astrology, starting from the first house, it is in the order of Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, repeating the order three times.

During the four stages of a human being's life, Artha plays a very critical role - either for a human being to pursue it or to foresake it.

And the four stages follow a natural cycle - there is no need to consciously follow the four stages, as the stages only describe what is natural in a person's life.

We all mature spiritually through several births, and so it is to be expected that at a younger stage of a soul's journey in the physical world, it will go after material 'things'.

Regards,
KRS



Wealth creation is a very important part of any society's function and to view such an activity as a wrong activity is simply foolhardy.

How true...they say a man cannot give up on wealth without having experienced it first. And therefore the fulfillment of Kama, dharma, artha and moksha in that order...just that the pursuit of moksha after artha has been given up (??).
 
Dear Sri Happyhindu Ji,

I forgot to mention the 'Dharma' part according to the vedic astrology.

These houses are 1, 5 and 9.

The first house is you, your make up during your journey on earth this time. It reflects your physical personality and anchors you on this earth. By the way, through this, one can not tell one's Varna by birth, but can say what your proclivities may be, so can fix your lot among the four broad categorizations of a varna.

The fifth house denotes one's native intelligence as well as children.

And the nineth house denotes one's father and 'luck'.

Both fifth and nineth reveal one's karmaphala during the present life.

So, you can see that how 'Dharma' manifests itself through one's own being, his children and father. By the way, the fourth house represents mother, and is a 'Moksha' house.

Nowhere in this system there is even a mention of the varna system! 'Dharma' is a human dharma.

Regards,
KRS
 
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