CHAPTER VI MARRIAGE REFORM

1. BRIDEGROOM PRICE

A gentleman named Mr. V., who was an earnest disciple of His Holiness but had some leanings towards what is called the social reform movement, once approached him and, in the course of the conversation that ensued, remarked as follows :

V.: Even in these hard times when the Brāhmaṇas find it difficult to eke out a livelihood, money is being spent extravagantly on occasions of marriage. Such expenditure has ruined a large number of well-to-do families and can be minimised if the marriage ceremonies are performed in a single day and not dragged on through four or five days.

H. H.: I quite agree with you that a lot of money is being unnecessarily wasted in the name of marriage functions. But what has that to do with the ceremonies lasting for four or five days ?

V.: The longer the ceremonies are performed, the greater is the expenditure.

H. H.: Certainly not. You are evidently confusing the ceremonies with the tamasha which the people choose to have on occasions of marriage. The religious ceremonies cost little. Only a few handfuls of rice and a few samit twigs are required. If you confine yourself to these you can have the ceremonies for any number of days without the least demand on your purse or on your energy. If you choose to arrange for costly music parties, grand dinners and fireworks, it is certainly not the fault of our religion ; and there is absolutely no justification for seeking to curtail the innocent and inexpensive religious ceremonies.

V.: Possibly the ceremonies by themselves may not be costly, but the fact of having to entertain friends and relations for all the days till the ceremonies are over is certainly taxing both to our energy and our purses.

H. H.: If you feel so, extend your invitation to them for only the first day. For the succeeding days only the bride and the bridegroom are indispensable. You may send off the others on the morning of the second day.

V.: It will not be polite to do so.

H. H.: I suppose you intend to do it anyhow, if you decide upon a one-day function.

V.: Certainly, but then they will go away of their own accord, when they know that there is to be no function on the second day.

H. H.: Similarly, they will certainly go away of their own accord, if they learn that they are not expected to stay on from the second day. I am sure no decent man will care to trouble you with his company when he knows that he is not wanted. But, after all, is the feeding of your relations and others such a costly affair that you should be so afraid of it ? On the other hand, if you analyse the expenses of any modern marriage, I am sure you will find that the vaidika expenses and the feeding expenses are very low indeed when compared to the other items of expenditure. I do not understand why you want to further curtail these items when there are very many other items which are far more costly and also quite unnecessary and can therefore be safely cut out. Our religion does not ask you to buy expensive cloth for your relations ; it does not ask you to invite all and sundry and give them costly dinners ; it does not ask you to have grand musical entertainments ; and it does not ask you to pay fabulous ‘prices’ for the bridegrooms. The last item is indeed a very deplorable phenomenon.

V.: Somehow this evil has crept into our society and I request Your Holiness to use the weight of your influence to combat it.

H. H.: Certainly, I am trying my best ; but I fear that the ‘weight’ of my influence is negligible when compared with the weight of influence of that one who brought this evil and is sustaining it.

V.: Who is he ?

H. H.: Who else than the demon of desire variously called kāma and lobha ? As long as the Brāhmanas continued to be under the influence of their religion and their religious teachers, no such evil was to be found among them. Once they allowed their inherent peace, born of contentment, to be disturbed and made room in their hearts for greed and avarice, a host of evils, this evil of vara śulka or bridegroom-price among them, came on. As long as these evils reign in their hearts, no amount of advice or preaching from me or from any other is likely to be heeded, for the powerful kāma is all the time making effective counter-propaganda.

V.: It may be that the bridegroom’s people are actuated by greed or avarice when they demand large sums ; but the sufferer is the bride’s party.

H. H.: I can not agree with you when you say that it is only the bridegroom’s party that is obsessed by kāma. The bride’s party is equally so obsessed.

V.: How can it be when that is the party to pay ?

H. H.: Will you please tell me if a girl’s father will prefer a vaidika boy, who is prepared to take her without a dowry, to the son of an officer who demands two thousand rupees as a condition precedent to accepting the girl ?

V.: I fear not. He would rather sell away his lands, if necessary, to secure the officer’s son as his son-in-law.

H. H.: Can you tell me why ?

V.: The reason is evident. Even at some personal inconvenience to himself at present, he would like to have his girl’s future happiness secured.

H. H.: Quite so. To put it more clearly, he is coveting the riches of the officer for his own daughter.

V.: Plainly speaking, it is no doubt so.

H. H.: The coveting is therefore not on one side only.

V.: But certainly it cannot be wrong to try to secure the future happiness of one’s own daughter even at some inconvenience to oneself ?

H. H.: Certainly not, but it is wrong to assume that her happiness is secured if her husband or her father-in-law is rich. Whatever may be the views held by others, a Brāhmaṇa must know, both by his training and by his experience, that wealth and happiness are not related to each other as cause and effect and that the attempt to secure happiness by securing wealth is as futile as it is absurd. He must also know that when his daughter came into this world the quota of pain and pleasure to be enjoyed by her in this life had already been determined and it is not within his competence, or anybody else’s, to add to or take away from that allotment. When he thus forgets himself and incidentally forgets the Supreme Dispenser of all karma and when he allows himself to be swayed by the mean desire for mere wealth as an end in itself. he begins to suffer.

V.: But what is the remedy which Your Holiness proposes for getting rid of this evil of vara śulka ?

H. H.: The only hope lies in the Brāhmaṇas’ re-gaining their old peace and contentment.

V.: I fear that it may not be possible in the present condition of society.

H. H.: Then the only alternative remedy is the Brāhmaṇas’ being reduced to a state of abject poverty, when nobody will think of asking another to pay, because none will be able to pay.

V.: I fear that there is every chance of such a sad state of affairs prevailing in the near future.

H. H.: I hope it is not so bad as that and that the Brāhmaṇas will recover their senses before it is too late.

2. EARLY MARRIAGE

V.: Some of us think that the insistence on the marriage of girls being performed at an early age, in any case before maturity, is mainly responsible for the evil of vara śulka or bridegroom-price.

H. H.: How can that be ? Early marriage has been in vogue from the dawn of Hindu society and this system of bridegroom-price is only of recent date. How then can this evil be attributed to early marriage ? There is absolutely no connection between the two. But some interested people, who prefer late marriages, wantonly discredit early marriage by attributing to it ever so many evils which have not the remotest connection with it. It is only a pet fad of the social reformer and has no foundation at all in fact. It seems to me, on the other hand, that if the girls are married late the bridegroom-price is very likely to go higher.

V.: Now that we have touched upon early marriage, may I know Your Holiness’ opinion on the recent legislation passed about it ?

H. H.: It is not for me to pronounce an opinion on a matter about which the Śāstras are positive. In fact this is not something about which anybody’s opinion has any value or relevancy. The Śruti and the Smriti, which alone are our guides in religious matters, are above all the temporal governments and the latter have absolutely no right or justification to interfere with them on any account. The present Government has done the greatest blunder in seeking to make such a law by simply counting the number of votes.

V.: But the Government has interfered and has also made the law. What are the people to do ?

H. H.: That is a matter which each man has to decide for himself—whether he prefers to suffer the penalties mentioned in the Śāstras or to suffer the penalties threatened to be imposed by the Government.

V.: In either case, he has to suffer. Will not the fact that he is violating the Śāstras only under the compulsion of the Government excuse him in the eyes of God ?

H. H.: Certainly not. Even in your secular law, the fact that you were compelled to commit a crime by another stronger than yourself will not entitle you to an acquittal. If you choose to avoid a present inconvenience and risk a greater inconvenience in the future, it is purely an act of your volition and you must be prepared to take the consequences. There is no justification for throwing the blame on others.

V.: The persons who are responsible for this legislation sincerely think that it is necessary in the interests of the people themselves.

H. H.: It may be so. I take it then that impliedly they think that the Śāstras which enjoin on us early marriage are not in the interests of the people.

V.: They may have been useful formerly but are not useful now. They have to be changed.

H. H.: That is, in their opinion, the Śāstras (which word means ‘those that command’) are really śāsyas (‘those that are to be commanded’) at the will or whim of the legislator. That is a proposition which we, who believe in our Dharma being sanātana, i.e. eternal, and therefore immutable, can never assent to. Further, no government, howsoever powerful, has any right to compel the people to break their religious laws by threatening them with temporal punishment.

V.: The majority of those responsible for this law do not believe in the immutability of the Śāstras and some of them do not believe in the Śāstras at all.

H. H.: Then they have no right to call themselves Hindus nor can they assume the right to legislate for the Hindus.

V: Though some attempt was made to show that the Śāstras themselves sanctioned late marriages, it was not seriously pressed. Their main justification was in the temporal happiness of the people.

H. H.: It is extremely doubtful if temporal happiness is at all secured by such means. Assuming that it is secured, is it worth doing in view of the risk to their higher happiness in future lives ?

V : They ignore this aspect altogether, either because they do not believe in such states of existence or because they do not believe in the Śāstras which point out what acts lead to happiness or misery.

H. H.: Even for this reason they have no right to call themselves Hindus, much less to assume the right to legislate for them.

3. THE WIDOW PROBLEM

H. H.: Apart from this, how do they expect to secure the temporal happiness of the people by this legislation ?

V.: It is a fact that there are in India, especially in Bengal, a large number of child-widows who became widows before they knew what marriage was. This legislation will certainly put a stop to any increase in their number.

H. H.: Evidently the reformer has more pity for these child-widows than for those women who become widows after knowing what marital life is.

V.: It is so.

H. H.: Will you tell me which is more painful, not to have a particular kind of enjoyment or to have it for a time and then lose it ?

V.: Certainly the latter.

H. H.: Why does our reformer friend ignore this principle in the case of widows ? Those who have known what marital happiness is and have lost it, are really to be pitied more. Further, which is the more poignant pain, to lose a thing which you have seen for a single day or to lose a thing which you have loved and owned for years together ?

V.: The latter, no doubt.

H. H.: The sorrow of a woman who loses her husband in the prime of her life must therefore be more intense than that of a girl who loses her husband soon after she makes his acquaintance. It would seem therefore that such widows have a better claim. to our pity. But the reformer does not choose to concern himself with them.

V.: He has pity for them also and that is why he would encourage the marriage of widows, young and old.

H. H.: Evidently, the word widow jars upon his ears and so he wants to reduce the number of widows in this country.

V.: It is so.

H. H.: Why should he take all this trouble to reduce the number of widows ? He can as well get a legislation passed that there shall be no more widows in India.

V.: But that is an impossibility.

H. H.: Why ?

V.: We cannot stop husbands from dying.

H. H.: But you can stop women becoming widows.

V.: How can that be done ?

H. H.: It is only a wife that can become a widow. Why not stop marriages altogether, so that no girl can ever be a wife, much less a widow ?

V.: Perhaps they are attempting some such step in the advanced countries of the West. God forbid that such a phase of social reform ·be introduced into our land !

H. H.: What else is your reformer driving at ? You have told me that it is impossible to stop husbands from dying. I may take it also that it is equally impossible to increase the number of men who are fit to be husbands.

V.: Yes.

H. H.: Your legislation therefore does not and cannot affect the number of eligible husbands. That number remains more or less constant.

V.: Yes.

H. H.: Your reformer wants some of them to take elderly widows for their wives and a large number of them to take young widows for wives.

V.: He does.

H. H.: The remaining men only will be available for the marrying virgins.

V.: Quite so.

H. H.: The number of persons who are available for marrying the virgins has therefore decreased.

V.: Yes.

H. H.: But the number of virgins available for marriage has not decreased ?

V.: Certainly not.

H. H.: By saving so many elderly and young widows from leading lives of widowhood, through this legislation the reformer has now increased the number of virgins available for marriage.

V.: It seems so.

H. H.: Thus by this legislation and allied endeavours he has lessened the number of persons available for marrying virgins and at the same time increased the number of virgins available for marriage.

V.: It is so.

H. H.: The only consequence will be that in future many more virgins will have to remain unmarried than now.

V.: I see, it must be so.

H. H.: Again, as the number of husbands remains more or less constant, the number of husbandless women must be equally constant.

V.: Certainly.

H. H.: Therefore this so-called reform cannot possibly increase the number of the married couples. It may decrease the number of widows but will increase the number of unmarried girls. In any case therefore, the number of husbandless women remaining unaffected, what does it matter to him whether they are vidhavās (widows) or kanyās (unmarried) so long as both are adhavās (husbandless) ? Further, by reducing the chances of virgin girls finding husbands. he is depriving them not only of the chances of conjugal life but even of the opportunity of the obligatory samskāra of vivāha (marriage sacrament). As upanayana is obligatory on the boys of the twice-born castes. so is vivāha obligatory on the girls of all castes, especially of the twice-born castes. Even a child-widow has had at least that samskāra performed for her and she has attained full caste status. But an unmarried girl cannot attain that status unless that samskāra is performed for her at the proper time. By reducing the chances of that samskāra being performed, the reformer is denying to a large number of girls, who are born in caste, the opportunity of attaining full caste status and is therefore disqualifying them from taking part in religious functions. To go without the necessary samskāra is a great calamity in the eyes of our religion and the reformer is forcing that calamity on a large number of innocent girls. Before his advent, there was no girl throughout the length and breadth of India who went without that samskāra. Every one of them had her spiritual interests safeguarded. Now they are deliberately ignored and neglected in the so-called interests of widows.

4. THE REAL REMEDY

V.: I am sure Your Holiness is next to none in your sympathy for the pitiable state of those young girls who lose their husbands. But, is it your advice that we must let things alone and not attempt to find any remedy ?

H. H.: Why do girls become widows ?

V.: I suppose Your Holiness means that it is their karma and that they must suffer for it.

H. H.: I have purposely refrained from making any reference to karma and I do not want you to mention it in a purely secular discussion. Leave karma alone and answer my question.

V.: The question, why do girls become widows ?

H. H.: Yes.

V.: How can such a question be answered ? They become widows as their husbands happen to die, I suppose.

H. H.: Quite so. That is the only right answer. Now answer my another question. If you are earnest about seeing that there are less widows in future, what is logically the only means of ensuring it ?

V.: Evidently you want me to answer—‘We must see that less husbands die.’

H. H.: Certainly. No other effective solution is possible.

V.: But is it possible to prevent people from dying ?

H. H.: Why not, if we leave out of account any considerations of karma or fate ? Do you not take measures to reduce mortality and do you not take measures to ensure sanitation and healthy life ? Why don’t you exert yourself equally to save husbands from premature death ?

V.: I suppose that late marriage for boys is itself a preventive against premature death.

H. H.: It cannot be, unless it is also preceded by a strict life of healthy brahmacharya. If you marry your boys late without removing the great strain which you unnecessarily impose on them in the name of modern education ; without seeking to correct their bad habits, which every moment sap their life-blood and without any attempt to regulate their pre-marital life on pure healthy lines, physical, mental and spiritual, you will not really be saving them at all. Further, even in married life there are various rules of conduct the observation of which is necessary and which also go by the name of brahmacharya. Leave alone therefore the cause of the young widows and espouse instead the cause of the poor boys who become husbands and meet with premature death. It is really they that call for your sympathy and active help. Take them on hand and help them to be healthy and strong in all respects. If you save them from premature death, the problem of young widows gets automatically solved. There is absolutely no need to find fault with the Sāstras or to seek to alter them. You will find on the other hand that it is the disobedience of the Sāstras that has brought all this evil. Restore them to their rightful throne of authority. All will be well.