Seldom do husband and wife in England mean it when they utter the vow, ‘till death do us part’. Divorces can be sought on flimsy grounds, husband complaining of the wife’s cooking and the wife complaining that her husband wears her dresses. It is happening in England as says an eminent British female divorce lawyer. Another such case where the husband applied for divorce was on the ground that his wife tampered with the TV antenna and threw out his cold cuts. The situation in India is at the other extreme. It is not necessarily a good thing to avoid divorce proceedings even in the Indian social ambience. In most marital disputes in India, the stress is on the need for adjustment. In a book edited by Shobha De and Khushwant Singh, a psychologist suggested that marriages could be saved by experimenting with sex. This is hardly a sensible approach. One of the reasons of marital disputes is that the husband’s mother resents her son submitting to what she considers wifely guiles. The result can be not only verbal but physical abuse. The average Indian woman is persuaded not to go to court and somehow adjust to her plight. In a joint family, she has to give in to the mother-in-law’s tyranny. In some cases, women have to give up bright career prospects and turn into mindless housewives. They have to conform to a conservative dress-code to please the elders.
Of course, while the permanence of marital ties may not always be advocated, efforts should be made to preserve the home at least for the sake of children. But in some cases, enough may be enough. The Supreme Court has taken some progressive steps. Division of assets is one of them. This may make a couple ignore minor oddities. Adjustment is a good thing if possible. This also applies to matriarchal societies in a few tribal pockets in the Northeast.
