India -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947; India -- Social conditions
The Hindu system of marriage reverses these considerations. There,
marriage is a form of vocation, a fulfillment of a social duty, it is
not the enjoyment of individual rights. In its ethics, designed for
the communal basis of life, individual desire and pleasures must be
subordinated to the interest of group morality. “Thus the social order
is placed before the happiness of the individual, whether man or woman.
This is the explanation of the greater peace which distinguishes the
arranged marriage of the East from the self-chosen marriage of the
West; where there is no deception there can be no disappointment.”[16]
In this manner the champions of the system justify the Indian method of
marriage, in which marriages are arranged by the parents or relatives.
But, however ably its partisans may defend the old system, and in
whatever glowing colors they may exhibit its spiritual values, it
must go sooner or later. With changing times the ideals that govern
Indian society have changed also. Men and women of the present day are
demanding their individual freedom after the fashion of their brothers
and sisters in the West. Rightly or wrongly, they feel a desire to
express themselves according to the spontaneous dictates of the
heart. Simultaneously with the industrialization of the country the
restraints put upon the individual from outside through the medium of
social and religious laws are fast disappearing. The younger generation
of the Indian nation appears more concerned for rights than for duties.
Those who care may lament over the past, but we shall welcome the
change with joy, because it brings new light and new hope into the
stereotyped and set system of Indian life. Marriage in human society is
after all nothing but a plunge into the unknown ocean of the future.
Its ultimate outcome alone can tell whether the entrants were destined
to sink or swim.[17] Marriage has been a lottery in the past, and it
will remain so in the future, unless our lives are so modulated as
to give to the forces of the spirit a larger and a freer scope. It
is impious blasphemy to seek to stifle the celestial senses, instead
of guiding and harmonizing them. It is hoped, however, that in their
new role as imitators of the West, men of India will not change their
attitude of tenderness, confidence, respect, and delicacy towards the
female sex; and that the women of India will retain the calmness and
dignity of their attitude, the self-respect and poise of their inner
life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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