India divorce just got easier — for some

Responding to more marital breakups, the government is trying to make divorce easier under Hindu and civil law.

Hanna IngberJune 26, 2010 07:45Updated June 26, 2010 07:45

Hindu brides sit during a mass wedding ceremony of 101 couples in Noida, Dec. 26, 2009. A new proposed amendment in India will make is easier for people to get divorced under Hindu and civil law, but will likely not impact those married according to Muslim law. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

MUMBAI, India — Irrespective of class or caste, a fundamental aspect of Indian society remains: marriage is a must. Children are seen as giving women value, and uniting with a husband in order to produce those children is still often seen as the only option, say gender specialists.

And yet, as more women become better educated, financially secure and independently minded, their ideas and expectations as to what marriage should look like are changing.

While it is hard to make generalizations about a country as vast as India, “there is definitely a churning and a change that is taking place in the realm of marriage,” said journalist and columnist Kalpana Sharma who covers developmental issues and gender. “Women are not willing to put up with stuff that their mothers were willing to put up with.”

Women’s ideas and expectations are changing, often faster than Indian society can keep up, and an inevitable clash has arisen. As a result, more Indian couples are deciding to divorce.

The Indian government has responded to a rise in marital breakups and a backlog in court cases by proposing an amendment this month to make it easier to get divorced. In the past, couples have had to prove mutual consent, adultery or abuse. If, as expected, parliament approves this amendment to what is known as the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and Special Marriage Act 1954, couples must only show “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage or "incompatibility."

It can currently take couples anywhere from six months to 20 years to obtain a divorce, Supreme Court advocate Kamini Jaiswal told AFP. There are 55,000 divorce cases pending in courts across the country, according to Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily, as reported in the local press.

Despite the rise in number, divorce continues to be rare in India as it carries with it tremendous social stigma against the couple and families involved. Experts say 11 in every 1,000 marriages in India end in divorce, whereas the rate in the United States is about 400 in every 1,000.

While the stigma of divorce appears to have decreased in some communities, the woman is still almost always blamed for the breakup, journalist Sharma said. “There's a feeling that the woman should 'adjust.' You have to adjust, which means basically you have to accept all kinds of crap,” she said.

Leena Joshi, the director of Apnalaya, an organization working with women and families in Mumbai’s slums, said the women she works with are more likely to put up with husbands who are abusive, adulterous or alcoholics than go through the public humiliation of getting divorced. “Divorce is the the the the the last resort,” she said.

Society is unsympathetic to single women, whether they are unmarried, divorced or widowed. In some communities, widows are not allowed to attend wedding ceremonies because it is believed they would bring bad luck.

“If married, [women] have more security, and society respects them,” Joshi said. When people meet a married woman, they think, “‘She’s married, she’s somebody’s property, so treat her respectfully.’”

There are also practical realities that make divorce for poor women close to impossible, Joshi said. The women likely have no place to go as they had been living with their in-laws, and their own parents are unlikely to support them if they disagreed with the divorce. There are also few homes or affordable housing options in Mumbai for single women, especially those with children.

“A lot of women stay in marriage because they have nowhere to go,” Joshi said.

Furthermore, while the change in the law will make it easier for those who married under Hindu or civil marriage law to get divorced, it will not impact women who had another type of marriage such as a Muslim one. For those women, it is almost impossible to get divorced, Joshi said.