Prof. G.M.Athar
The institution of marriage is as old as the human society.The basic types of marriage are monogamy, polygamy and polyandry.There can be either an arranged marriage or a love marriage, but more often than not, there are one-sided love marriages in which either a man or a woman is in love and the other marriage partner just gives the consent to marry without being in love with the person.Thus love marriage in its strict sense is the kind of marriage in which both the partners are in love with each other. Such kind of marriage is very rare and uncommon.To understand properly the institution of marriage in general and the love marriage in particular, one needs to analyse the natural, economic, social, cultural, psychological and political forces that have shaped it in different regions of the world over the period of time.The institution of marriage is the product of human nature and the social propaganda.
To understand the role of natural force in shaping the institution of marriage in a better manner, one must make a keen observation of the reproductive life of plants and animals, as they have no propaganda mechanism, therefore lack the culture of hypocrisy, found in the human society. For example the male and female plants of peas have pollination with the help of honey bees as they sit on the flowers to collect the nectar from male and female plants.The Indian crane chooses just one life partner to live together, and lives alone throughout its life in case the other partner dies earlier. Similarly, the Turkish grey wolf lives throughout life with just one life partner. Contrary to it many birds and animals have the seasonal matting with their opposite sexes to have the process of reproduction and baby caring completed.The lioness for example is impressed only by the most powerful lion within the group to have matting with it. Many singing female birds sing to attract the male birds for matting.The colourful feathers of the Korean female pheasant attracts the male pheasant for matting.Thus, one can understand the role of natural strength, beauty, and talent in the reproductive behaviour of plants and animals.
So far as human beings are concerned, their body language is the true expression of their inner self but they have invented the dialects with proper scripts to develop them into proper languages not only for the purpose of maintaining the record of knowledge and information but also to hide their pain and pleasure, intentions, opinions and the actual realities of personal life. According to Dr Sigmond Freud, the instinct of sex is found among the human beings right from the stage of their birth, although its manifestation varies from infancy stage to childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Human beings are social beings so they can’t live alone like the beasts. For the fulfillment of their physiological, psychological, economic and social needs they are dependent on their respective life partners and children.Thus marriage and family life becomes very essential for human beings to live a satisfactory social life.
The beauty and youthfulness are stimulus and the love is the response in every romantic relationship. In every community there are some handsome men and beautiful ladies.
The men are universally attracted to the beautiful women and the women are attracted by the handsome men. Beautiful women have a vast choice to choose their respective love partners. Much like the beautiful women the handsome men also have enough choice to choose their respective life partners. In a significant number of cases the handsome men have multiple girlfriends and wives and the beautiful women have multiple men in their lives as a husband and boyfriends.The vast choice of love partners available with both beautiful women and handsome men creates a sense of insecurity about having a permanent life partner among both men and women. Personally, both men and women prefer to have as many as possible boyfriends or girlfriends but their respective love partners are expected to be loyal to just a single love partner. In some polygamous and polyandrous societies, a few life partners are socially approved.The sense of insecurity found among the men in the male dominated societies has been tackled in multiple ways, briefly discussed as under:
Firstly, to give birth to the children with the purpose of sustaining the relationship, and considering the father as the master of the children. Secondly, to confine the females to the home and deny them the opportunity to make boyfriends or have multiple husbands.Thirdly, impose the veil culture on the women so that the other males cannot see them. Fourthly, if they want to go outside the home to another neighbourhood or distant place, they should have their husband, father, brother or son with them. Fifthly segregate women from men in public places.These were the temporary checks on the women to keep them wedded to their respective husbands.
For the purpose of long term security and the permanence of the institution of marriage, the men introduced the concept of sin to forbid women from exercising their choice to have premarita and extra marital physical and emotional relationships. For men the relaxation of multiple wives was given and were promised the compensation in the heaven.Thus the propaganda of faith was made to link sexual behaviour of men and women with reward and punishment in an imaginary life after the death.The faith was used to an instrument to justify the demand the loyalty of women to their respective husbands. In order to give the physical and emotional relationships between man and woman the recognition of a social institution, the marriage was formally celebrated by performing different customs and traditions. The institution of marriage began to be regarded as a social reality that every couple was supposed to uphold and those who tried to break it had to face the social rejection. In many societies the marriage contract became a legal instrument defying which without valid grounds amounted to penalty.
Given the fact that in the orthodox societies the free mixing of men and women was not socially approved, therefore the formal marriage was the only way to have the everlasting love company of the love partner. More often than not, because of ethnic, lingual, cultural, class and sectarian barriers, the love marriage was difficult or impossible. Thus different love stories, real or fictional like William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Maulana Rumi’s Laila-Majnoon, Central Asian folk tale Shireen-Farhad, and Punjabi Sony-Mehwal and Heer-Ranja etc. were written with the purpose of gratification of the heroes and heroines of love and romance against the prevailing taboo attached to the love and romance. As a consequence of gratification of the heroes of love and romance the younger generations have made the characters of the love stories as their role models.The loving couples expected the loyalty of the fictional characters in their practical lives as well. However, practical life has always been different from the life of the role models portrayed in the folk tales and love stories written by different poets, novelists and short story writers.
The myth of ideal loving couples who could not marry each other, because of different reasons gets blasted after the marriage as the actual reality gets unfolded. The extremely beautiful young girls lose their charm after the marriage and the fantasies nourished in the mind by the boy and girl evaporates with the passage of time.The personality defects of the couple come to fore and the beauty of the wife fades away. Similarly a smart and handsome husband loses his youthfulness and charm with the passage of time. It is an empirical reality that both men and women after living together for a few years are tempted to find a better love partner, with the result of which the secret or open-secret extra-marital relationships develop in almost every society.
Apart from the aspects of love and beauty the economic dependence of the wife on the man sustained the marriages in the past. However, the present women have liberated themselves from their economic dependence on male members of the family. In the liberal societies of the developed world the divorce rates are very high and the long term successful marriages have become exceptions there. Many men and women don’t prefer to go for a formal marriage because neither they want to shoulder the family responsibilities nor are they interested in having a permanent life partner. So living in a relationship without a formal marriage has become a culture of metropolitan cities in many parts of the world.
The author can be reached at ghathar@yahoo.co.in
