Essay

Change

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.

Article

Change

Death & life

Mental Health

Psychology

29 November 2024

4 min read

Letting go and welcoming in

Your new life will cost you your old one. It's OK.

Mica Gray

Mica Gray is a wellbeing practitioner working in adult mental health. She is training to be a counselling psychologist.

A family with a mother holding a small child, look up and to the left.

Eduardo Fernando on Unsplash.

Last week my family laid my great-grandmother to rest. A few hours afterwards, we celebrated my cousin's birthday.

It felt strange to go from a place of death to a place of life in the space of a day. One minute I was throwing flowers into the open grave of a woman whose earthly life has come to an end and the next I was in a restaurant handing flowers to a girl whose life as a woman is just beginning. The contrast was a bit surreal, but much of life is like that; beginnings and endings flowing into each other. The transition between the two events was made easier by the fact that the funeral did not really feel like one. In alignment with my great-grandmother’s spiritual beliefs, the ceremony was very simple. It was over in less than four hours and featured a short reading of spiritual texts and quiet, reverent reflection. There were no solemn looks, no songs of lament, no dirt shoveling, no loud wailing or aunties and uncles dancing to Beres Hammond at the reception. Instead, there was just the quiet nod of acknowledgement that her spirit has journeyed on.

Though I missed the eulogies and shared tears that usually detail funeral services, I appreciated the simplicity of the ceremony. I appreciated the way death was described as a transition of the spirit into a new kind of life, the way it was treated as something so normal. Which in fact it is. Death is happening around us every day yet as a society it is something that we struggle with - whether it’s the death of a loved one, a career, a relationship or a part of ourselves. Our attempts to curate eternity with anti-aging procedures and technological permanence betray how deeply uncomfortable we are with the inevitability of endings in our modern world.

And to be honest, of course we are. The loss of loved ones shakes entire worlds. Job losses throw our lives into instability and leave us feeling unsafe. The loss of youth and power challenges long held ideas of identity and invites existential anguish. Divorce carries with it its own special grief. The pain of these experiences makes it hard for us to embrace when things are ending in our lives and make it hard for us to let go, even when we need to.

And we do often need to.

What fears, habits, thoughts or behaviours need to be given to the earth? What cycles or patterns do we need to bury and mourn so that we can usher in new and better ways of being?

Lately I’ve been thinking about the saying ‘your new life will cost you your old one’ and how true that is in many areas of our lives. In my own life, I recently started a new role at work that has cost me the comfort of my old one. I have had to give old versions of myself to the ground and shed skin so that I can continue to grow into the space of it. This new year of doctoral study has cost me Saturdays spent lazing around with friends, new relationships have cost me old patterns of behaviour and new depth in old relationships have cost me pride and ego.

At each point of transition, I have been asked to leave something behind to experience something new and it seems like so many of us at the moment are being asked to do the same. People are moving houses, leaving jobs, leaving seats of power, churches, ending relationships, wrestling with friendships, forming new ones and experiencing ego-deaths.

Like my cousin, some people are exchanging adolescence for adulthood. Others, like my great-grandmother, are exchanging their earthly bodies for their spiritual ones.

In this moment individually, politically and spiritually - it seems like we’re collectively being asked the question: what are we needing to let go of? and then what do we need to welcome in? What fears, habits, thoughts or behaviours need to be given to the earth? What cycles or patterns do we need to bury and mourn so that we can usher in new and better ways of being?

When life asks us questions like this it can feel overwhelming or intimidating to confront, but it is always necessary. I have found that when you do not allow yourself to grow out of old skin you will suffocate within it. The times of transition that we find ourselves in ask us to trust that something greater is unfolding. They ask us not to resist change but to flow with it. Not to forsake the present or the future by holding on to what has gone to the grave, but to be open to what is next.

As strange as it was last week to celebrate a birthday after a funeral, it was a reminder that though endings are painful we can embrace them because they usher in new beginnings. It was a reminder that funeral clothes can be exchanged for dancing shoes and that mourning can be exchanged for joy.

Overall, the day was a reminder that if we make room for it, life can follow death, both in this earthly life, and into the next.

Selah.

This article was first published on Substack. Follow Mica there.