A wonderful Wife
Who invented Marriage?
Virender kapoor
Human relations are very complex and most of them require commitment for them to last. Marriage is a relationship which exists across religion, caste, color and creed. It is a ‘culture
Universal’. It is one of the oldest institutions, dating back to 2350 BC. Which means, marriage is a ritual around 4,350 years old?
Pan faith affair- blood relation
Roman Catholics started recognizing marriage around the eighth century and the blessings of a priest were necessary for its sanctity. The Hindu marriage system is even older. For all religions it is now considered godly, spiritual, pure and binding. Hindus consider marriage sacred and so does every religion. The institution of family, bloodline and inheritance stemmed out of marriage or wedlock. It acted as ‘binding glue’ between couples, gave their offspring legitimacy, certain rights, privileges and something around which a home was created. A home is made of emotions and people, where as a house is a mere brick and mortar shell. The idea behind the institution of marriage in Hinduism is to foster not self-interest but love for the entire family. Practice of self-restraint is the ideal of marriage in Hinduism. It is the love and duty cultivated for the entire family that prevents break-ups.
It is similar for Christianity and others too. Love and bonding is like God. ‘If you believe it, it is there; you don’t, it doesn’t exist.’ A family bond was the ultimate thing. Even the dons of Sicily
gave family the first priority over anything else. One would be even prepared to die for brotherhood and family name. ‘Blood is thicker than water’ this saying did not come about just like that.
‘Blood relatives’ cannot be ignored as they are linked with our
very existence. Both these have a deep-seated link with identity, loyalty, commitment and sacrifice for your own kith and kin. It was the raison d’être, an ecosystem for emotional bondage and
living in harmony with a sense of belonging. Kings followed a family bloodline, the concept of blue blood existed and the Vedas and shastras of castes and gotras which all came into existence by
way of the ‘union’ between a man and a woman. Marriage was a structured way of living which made us different, different from any other species on the planet. That is why when man realized the need to move from a ‘free for all’ society, to a saner, controlled living which would provide sanctity to the family system, almost 5000 years ago, he came up with marriage as an answer.
Society has changed drastically over the last few decades and the institution that lasted for centuries is possibly losing its sanctity.
Modern bug
American society was the first to be bitten by the hedonism bug (maximize pleasure without pain), where people became very individualistic, somewhat selfish and started talking of personal
freedom and rights rather than collective existence as family. ‘I’ became more important than ‘we’.
Until 1970, live-in-relationships were not legalised in the US.
The women’s liberation movement started with a bang in the late seventies. It was described as a revolution that would affect every one, and it finally did. Gradually the storm of individualistic
freedom; I, me, myself became so strong that by 1990 more than fifty per cent couples started having live-in-relationships before marriage. Some never got married and had children. This may
have given freedom to the parents, what I call ‘plug and play’ relationships. But it had a devastating effect on the children.
What came to be known as broken homes or devastated families, surged in numbers across the western world.
The western world looked at the East to learn about family bonding and lasting marriages. They started exploring India to find peace and understand spirituality. Indian Canadians and
Indian Americans came back to their homeland in search of a bride, ‘who would last’.
In the last few years or may be a decade, we are moving towards the western way of thinking as far as marriages are concerned. Divorce rates have shot up and ‘live in’ arrangements are in fashion. People
who go through a divorce, in the East or the West, describe it as a ‘traumatic’ experience, with spouses often ending up in depression when the bond would be broken. That is enough to prove that men
or women are more emotional than rational. And marriage still has a lot to offer on the emotional front.
In the Americas, people started looking at marriage as a ‘contract’,where as we in the East looked at it more as, commitment, devotion, duty, love, caring and most of all supporting each other in the time of crisis.
‘If a soldier looks at his work to kill the enemy as a contract then he is not a soldier- he is a contract killer. Patriotism is emotional not contractual’
It was ‘Sanjha Choohla’ or a common hearth. There was nothing like mine or yours. Everything that belonged to the two was just for the two of us. Therefore, contract is synthetic and commitment is at an emotional level, which is at the core of any human relation.
When the man of the house goes through ups and downs in life,he finds a strong shoulder, in his wife, to lean on. He can discuss with her what he cannot speak to others and pour his heart out.
Similarly, a wife looks at her husband as someone she can depend upon through thick and thin. More importantly, children look at their parents who are theirs for a lifetime. They keep the nest strong and warm for their children. Let us not forget the grandparents who are an important part of the family. It is a family tree and not just the ‘two of us’.
“Marriage is not a plug and play affair”
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