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Hinduism

17 October 2023

7 min read

Re-defining marriage: how India slowly changed its mind

As India sought independence a long struggle to re-define marriage was culminating. Rahil Patel tells the story of the Hindu Marriage Act and its Christian influences.

Rahil Patel

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

A close-up of a bride groom holding the brides hand. Her hand is henna tattooed and bears gold rings and bracelets.

Bride and Groom hold hands during a Hindu wedding.

Photo by Jayesh Jalodara on Unsplash.

During the last few months of the United Kingdom’s 200 year rule in India, the British Government in London wanted to establish its last legacy on a majority Hindu land. Britain had shaped the Indian Subcontinent not only through the establishment of democratic institutions, free press, nationwide infrastructure, a robust stock market and so on but with radical social reforms that brought well-needed equality, dignity and fairness at every level across The Raj’s 300 million citizens. This seminal legacy was the sanctity of the Christian marriage. One husband, one wife. However, it was not the colonial administrators who delivered the legacy, but Indian campaigners, reformers and lawyers. This is their story.

The idea of one husband, one wife was cautiously presented to the lawyer turned activist Mohandas Gandhi in 1946 which the Mahatma turned down vehemently and bluntly told the British not to interfere in this area. The British were always careful when suggesting social and cultural change and so they recoiled without any further pressure. But this attitude surprised many as Gandhi was significantly influenced by the Christian faith to the point where he not only believed that the Sermon on the Mount was a profound spiritual document but the greatest political document of all time.

Heroes and husbands

It was seen as a sign of power and status to have more than one wife in Indian society and likewise for a woman to have many husbands was a sign of strength and not submission. This wasn’t at the princely or aristocratic level alone but the merchant caste and village leaders as well. Why? It was a practice that followed in the footsteps of two powerful incarnations of God in the Hindu world. Ram and Krishna.

There are two great epics in Hindu culture which are etched into the minds of most of the one billion Hindus across the globe.

The first being the Ramayana scripture which was written across a span of 400 years between 200 BC and 200 AD. In this popular story (inspired by the Iliad) the incarnation of the Supreme Brahman is Lord Rama. He incarnates as a righteous king and is married to Sita and defeats the evil king Ravana (which is the central theme of celebration for Hindus during Diwali).There are approximately 300 versions of the Ramayana and some state that this much admired king had 8,000 wives including Sita.

The other great epic is the Mahabharata scripture which was written over a period of 800 years between 400 BC and 400 AD (which inspired the Latin poem Aeneid by Virgil). The Mahabharata contains two very important aspects of Hindu culture. The first is the Bhagvad Gita scripture within its battle riddled story (which the father of the atomic bomb J.R Oppenheimer quotes after seeing the impact of the bomb, “I am become death destroyer of the worlds...”) and the other is the most prominent and pivotal incarnation of the Supreme Brahman in the Hindu world whose name is Krishna. Krishna had 16,108 wives. Draupadi is a strong and feisty woman in the same story who has five husbands.

The influence starts

So where does the battle for the Christian marriage in the Indian story begin? With 19th century social reformers.

Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar was born into an Orthodox Hindu family in Bengal (Eastern India). He was raised as a devout orthodox Hindu but was later in life influenced by the eminent organisation, Brahmo Samaj. Much of the way in which Hindus practice their faith today both individually and as a community is largely due to the influence of the Brahmo Samaj in the 18th and 19th century. It was established by another famous Bengali, Raja Ram Mohun Roy who is known today as ‘The Father of the Indian Renaissance.' Roy believed firmly in his heart that in order to transform Indian society one needs to transform Hinduism, and to transform Hinduism for the better one needs Christian doctrine and practices at the heart of the Hindu framework. He campaigned against Sati (the burning of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband) and fought for women’s rights in general. The Christian idea that all were made in the image of God (and equal) was engraved deeply into his worldview.

Ishwar Chandra saw from Roy’s perspective the need and power in emancipating women in Indian society. He began to pushback and campaign against deeply entrenched Hindu customs which wasn’t easy. After great efforts his vigorous campaign to allow widows to remarry was signed into law (The Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act, 1856).

But pushing into law the Christian sanctity of monogamy was far beyond his reach.

It was the ardent social reformer and critic of the Christian faith Keshub Chandra Sen who would later get the ball rolling in a significant way. Born in Bengal to a devout Hindu family as well.

Keshub publicly criticised the Christian faith in his early years until he came across a book written by the French diplomat and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville. Alexis had spent some time in America studying American democracy and his work, Democracy in America was published in 1835. Towards the end of the second volume Tocqueville states that the growth and strength of America’s democracy stems largely from the sanctity of the Christian marriage.

Reading this powerful argument transformed the understanding of Christianity for Keshub Chandra Sen. It was also a popular question amongst Indian social and political reformers of the time as to why and how a tiny island and a few thousand British civil servants managed such a vast subcontinent. “What is their spiritual gift?” was the running question and Keshub realised it was the nature of a family based on Christian beliefs.

He followed in the footsteps of Roy and as one of the most influential thinkers of his time campaigned to introduce Christian doctrine and ideas into Hinduism. After all his painful efforts he managed to pass the Special Marriage Act in 1869 for those who were members of the reformed Hindu organisation Brahmo Samaj but failed to introduce it into law across the wider Hindu population due to immense push back from the Orthodox high caste Hindu Brahmins.

But this idea of a Christian marriage and the strength it can bring to a society stayed very much alive in the Indian intelligentsia for years.

A constitutional approach falters

It was the brilliant economist, social reformer and political leader, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar who finally took one husband, one wife across the finishing line.

Ambedkar studied at the London School of Economics (where a bust of him can still be seen in the Atrium of the Old Building). With his incredibly well-furnished mind he knew the pitfalls of Hinduism when it came to democracy. He believed they were not compatible due to the unfair and rigid caste system and so, later on, when as a lawyer, Ambedkar was assigned the crafting of the Indian constitution he ensured it was embedded with Christian principles of equality.

It was during this time in the 1940s that Bhimrao came across the masterful work of Joseph Unwin Sex and Culture which reveals the importance of sexual restraint and its profound impact on society. Unwin’s work made an impression on Ambedkar and revealed to him the weakening hole within the Indian marriage.

Ambedkar was in tune with the likes of Keshub Chandra Sen whilst equally unraveling the flaws of Gandhian politics and economics using his razor sharp intellect . Although he took Buddhism as his faith he introduced the Christian idea of marriage to India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948 whilst drafting the final articles of the Indian constitution. He told Nehru that it was vital to put into law the idea of one husband and one wife. Again, the Constituent Assembly rejected the idea without a second thought. So, Nehru told Ambedkar to leave the idea for a while and get the constitution passed as it was. Then, after the new Indian government was formed they could bring the idea back to the cabinet. This battle took a very long time…

Tenacity triumphs

In 1952 the ruling party of the newly formed India, along with India’s first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad, tore the proposal apart once again. Nehru threatened to resign if the party did not pass the Christian idea of marriage but the cabinet called his bluff. Nehru knew that even if his party passed the law the President would not sign on it and so he gave up all hope. Ambedkar by now was furious and fed up with his friends and so he applied his brilliant mind and tenacity to writing articles in the Indian press attacking the ruling party and his friend the Prime Minister - with incredible style, substance and affect.

Ambedkar had a significant amount of social and political clout across the aisle, and with the general public, so eventually after years of pushing, pressing and penning his arguments the Hindu Marriage Act was passed in 1955. At last, the biblical idea of one husband and one wife came into law after a battle that took over 100 years.

Growing up in England and that in an Orthodox Hindu family I often heard my parents complain about the divorce rates in western societies. Divorce is not condoned in any Hindu scripture as per my reading over 20 years as a Hindu monk and yet the sanctity of marriage in Hindu communities in the west is still fairly strong in comparison to most other communities. It’s helpful to remember the roots of that strength.

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Loneliness

23 June 2023

6 min read

The curse of loneliness and the hope of kindness

The tend-and-befriend response is present in many species, but it reaches a particular level of genius in ours, explains Roger Bretherton.

Roger Bretherton

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

A person stands in a road under misty street lights.

Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash

Loneliness kills. I’ve known that for a while. It dawned on me when, as an undergraduate, I first read the anthropological studies of the so-called ‘voodoo death curse’. An admittedly politically incorrect name for a horrifying phenomenon that has haunted me ever since. The studies, reported in the early twentieth century, attempted to account for the highly effective way in which shaman in tribal cultures were able to pronounce death on aberrant members of their community. Often within days of coming under the curse, the hexed individual was dead. It looked like magic.

Psychologists studying anxiety became interested in this phenomenon as an illustration of the connection between social stress and physical health. On closer examination, they noted that those on the receiving end of a death curse, not only came under the opprobrium of a powerful spiritual authority but were consequently entirely isolated from the community that gave them their identity. The moment the curse was decreed they became a non-person. They ceased to exist in the eyes of the collective. They became a ghoul, a wraith, an abomination to their people. They experienced a social exclusion so absolute and catastrophic that the stress of it killed them. Physical death swiftly followed social death.

When we fall foul of the charismatic leader of a workplace... we may for a moment shiver in the chill breeze of the death curse.

But the death curse is not confined to stone age tribes and agrarian collectives. It is a ubiquitous artefact of human social life. In subtly disguised form it continues to stalk the industrialised societies of the West. We see it in any social situation that terminally frustrates our hardwired biological need to belong. When we are cast out of employment through redundancy, retirement, or sickness. When a social faux pas leaves us persona non grata. When our social media presence is more of a toenail than a footprint. When we fall foul of the charismatic leader of a workplace, a neighbourhood, a family, a church. We may for a moment shiver in the chill breeze of the death curse. We wonder briefly if the silence and the cold shoulders will kill us.

We don’t often think about the all-too evident connection between belonging, stress and health- but we should, because social connectedness is the primary way we as a species have made it this far. Most of us are familiar with the physiological responses to acute stress. There are only a few of them. It’s like a multiple choice test, take your pick: a) fight, b) flight, c) freeze, d) faint, or e) some bespoke combo of all of the above. We probably also have some recognition that those of us living in information economies tend to spend too much time in these stressed states of mind. They are designed for short-term threats (like predators), not long-term projects and serial deadlines. The cortisol coursing through our veins designed to deliver us from danger now stops us sleeping at night, and lurks behind all the major killers of our culture: cancer, heart disease, and depression.

But before we get to all that stressed-out running and punching and standing still like startled rabbits, there is a more common everyday way that human beings deal with stress. Our primary way of navigating a challenging and threatening world is our equally hardwired ability to reach out to others- the social engagement system. This tend-and-befriend response is present in many species, but it reaches a particular level of genius in ours. Our capacity to form groups that can coordinate action through a sense of unified purpose is what allowed our ancestors to take down woolly mammoths and survive ice ages. Our principal strength comes not from our ability to make fists, but to join hands.

To fall out of connection with others is an existential threat.

No wonder then, given our history as an eminently social species, that loneliness- the perceived shortfall between desired and actual social contact- is experienced as a menace to our survival. It once was, and still is. To fall out of connection with others is an existential threat. Clinical research has been reporting for decades that social support, or rather the lack of it, predicts and maintains pretty much every form of psychological distress we can bring to mind. In a small-scale way I repeat that finding with my own students every year. We annually distribute a 19-item well-being survey to several hundred university students. Most of it asks about the good stuff, happiness, quality of relationships, sense of purpose and so on. But one question asks them to rate, simply on a 1-10 scale, how lonely they are. Every time we run it on campus, this single lonely question predicts levels of depression, anxiety and stress, better than any other demographic.

So, it is good that loneliness is back in the news. Only last month the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued a report on the devastating health impact of loneliness. It affects a large proportion of the population- he cites 50% in the US, but UK estimates tend to be more conservative. It is apparently as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and twice as risky as downing six alcoholic drinks daily. Public health officials are partial to measuring mortality in fags and booze. But Vivek Murthy did something very un-like a public health official: he spoke about his own loneliness. How his very success in office had severed ties with friends and family, leaving him isolated, lonely and having to learn to re-connect. He proposes six pillars for addressing the societal scourge of loneliness, but as yet no government funding has been allocated to the initiative.

It is when we give to others that we know we are known- we matter.

When the experts are asked what we can do about loneliness they tend to advocate a multi-level approach. As individuals, we should Get Out. If we are lonely there are things we can do about it. Volunteering, exercise, singing, therapy, reconnecting with old friends, Counter-intuitively, we are more likely to benefit from activities in which we give something, in which we care or contribute. It is when we give to others that we know we are known- we matter.

As groups we should Look Out. Not everybody is able to overcome the barriers to social contact. Some people through physical or mental disability need others to look out for them. I witnessed a heart-warming example of this recently. There is a notorious character who lives locally. He dresses in black, has wild hair, walks with a limp, and speaks in grunts. He’s harmless, but he scares children. I don’t know what trauma or substance reduced him to this state, but he staggers past us twice a day on the way to his allotment. A few weeks ago thieves broke into his shed and stole all his gardening tools. He was pitifully distressed. But within hours the entire neighbourhood had mobilised through social media, and equipped him with every trowel, fork and hoe, that could be spared. I can’t help feeling that there is something in us as people that wants to act kindly like this, and cultivating this instinct gives me hope that we as a society can beat back the spectre of loneliness.

Loneliness it seems may not be just a bug in our software, it may be encoded in our cultural firmware- part of its operating system.

Which leads us to the third level of action, we need to Sort Out the dehumanising trends of our culture that inevitably generate and enable the pandemic of loneliness. As Mother Teresa famously observed, loneliness is the price we pay for wealth in the West, it is our true poverty. There may be something inspiring about the ruggedly individualistic, materialistically motivated, hyper-competitive, ideal of success that presides over our culture. But the studies of psychological wellbeing unanimously conclude that every one of those motivating values leads to misery, distrust and isolation. Loneliness it seems may not be just a bug in our software, it may be encoded in our cultural firmware- part of its operating system. Perhaps that is why most government-led attempts to alleviate the problem (in the UK and US at least) smack of tokenism. As the old organisational mantra goes: our social system is perfectly designed to bring about the outcomes it produces. So, what do we need? Nothing much. Just a completely transformed society. If only there was one of those knocking around, somewhere.