In defence of divorce

An interesting statistic was bouncing around the Internet the other day. According to a 2017 report by Unified Lawyers, a Sydney-based law firm, India has the lowest incidence of divorce in the world — a mere 1 per cent. Luxembourg tops the chart with 87 per cent and Spain comes up second with 65 per cent. While developing countries do exhibit lower divorce rates, Indians seem to have the toughest, the most iron-clad, bonds of matrimony in the world. It’s enough to make the sanskaari amongst us cut capers and rub their hands in glee.

Of course, Twitter wits were soon linking India’s rock-bottom divorce rate to its lowly status in the World Happiness Report, 2018. We are 133rd on the world happiness index — not very far behind Burundi, which, at 156th, is the least happy. Soldiering on in your joyless marriage takes its toll — no wonder Indians were a gloomy, unhappy lot, went the joke.

But jokes apart, India’s minuscule divorce rate — the 2011 Census pegs it at 13 out of 1000 marriages — must be viewed in the context of other social indicators. It would be disingenuous to assume that our divorce rate hugs the bottom of the scale because our marriages are happier than those in other countries.

There is, in fact, a raft of data that testifies to the contrary. According to the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16), 30.1 per cent of married Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 years experience violence at the hands of their husbands. Moreover, data from the National Crime Records Bureau says over 113,000 cases were filed under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (on the charge of “cruelty by husband and relatives”) in 2015 — up from 63,000 cases in 2006. You could argue that the huge spike owes more to an increase in the number of cases being reported than to an increase in the incidence of the crime. However, there’s no denying that a staggering number of married women continue to be assaulted in their homes.

Or, take the grim statistics of dowry deaths. In 2015, 7,634 women were either murdered or forced to commit suicide because of dowry-related issues. That translates into 21 dowry deaths per day for the year.

India’s suicide rate too is telling. It is higher among women than men, which is opposite the global trend where more men than women commit suicide. According to a study by Lancet published last year, 37 per cent of the total number of women in the world who commit suicide are Indian. And get this— most of them were married.

One can never fully fathom the triggers that push a person over the edge and make her take her own life. But given the high number of suicides among married Indian women and the violence and repression that many of them face in their marital homes, it’s clear that for vast swathes of women in this country, marriage is not exactly a safe and protected state of grace. Then why do we have a negligible divorce rate? Well, the simple fact is that even today, a majority of Indian women cannot walk out of unhappy, incompatible or abusive marriages because they don’t have the social and economic capital to do so. Divorce continues to be a dread word for Indian women and their families. It’s a word that reeks of social stigma and financial rootlessness. How many young brides might have been saved if their parents had not told them to “adjust” and endure the torture in their marital homes? How many might have ended a marriage that came with serial beatings if they hadn’t been brainwashed into believing that their lives would be terrifyingly empty as single women? How many might have stopped short of suicide if they felt there were other ways out of an impossible marriage?

Worldwide, divorce rates have typically gone up with the rise in women’s empowerment. That’s because the moment a woman finds her voice, the moment she has economic independence and demands equality and respect in her marriage, she is on a collision course with patriarchy.

Sure, 99 per cent of Indian marriages do not lead to divorce. But at what human cost?