(O) India is known in the world for its Joint Family Culture. Many other societies look at it with respect and some people, especially the youth of marriageable age, envy Indians since we can enjoy its economic and mental support. A joint family consists of at least three generations living together enjoying the benefits of togetherness, as well as coping with their differences. This prepares them for interacting with different people and sections of the society. This system is mainly seen in the agricultural and business classes, where living together has more benefits than advantages.
However due to urbanization and industrialisation, small families have become the norm in these areas. The small families have gained some advantages like more freedom of doing anything of their personal choice and also enjoying personal space for self development. However they have also lost some advantages of the joint families like financial and emotional support and comradery and richness of relationships. Thus some fault lines have creeped into them.
The Anti India forces have always been active, eager to divide and break our society and family system so as to take malafide benefits. These forces took the form of Feminism, Misandry (hatred against men), hatred against the family culture and patriarchy. These forces widened and deepened the existing fault lines. These harmful forces are in fact the creations of vested interests in the western values of capitalism (commercial exploitation of people and their lives) and individualism.
Our political class is Compelled by our electoral voting system (the highest vote getter gets elected and others are defeated ) to adopt vote politics. This makes them divide the electorate (society) into various groups based on religion, castes, languages and more. The men vs women divide has become the most popular one and siding with women and making more and more women centric and anti men laws has taken roots. The media finds it profitable to keep the anti men(misandrist) fires burning. This further makes it impossible for the politicians to take a pro-men stand. The judiciary also seems trapped in this and finds it difficult to take a pro-me stand however justifiable. All this been slowly but surely stifling and killing our family system and culture and thereby the society and justice. Men and women are either committing suicide or killing one another and also children. This needs to be addressed and corrected in a sane and proper manner.
Steps necessary to make our family systems Healthy and Happy again
To make our family system and culture strong and responsive and also make people happy and contented in their family lives, the following steps are required to be taken (1) All the family related laws which are discriminatory and punitive in nature, should be either scrapped or modified forthwith, some examples are
(a) The Bigamy laws where only men are held responsible and punished. The pre-hindu code bill provisions should also be available for men and families to choose.
(b) Second example is the provisions whereby the wife is given property rights immediately after marriage. This has given rise to a new category of marriage “black mail marriage”, wherein the wife marries with the intention to blackmail the husband and his family, using various laws, to extract cash and even immovable property if possible.
(2) The government and the judiciary should be kept out of the family matters and disputes, as well as the lives of individuals as far as possible, by decriminalising disputed matters.
(3) Grievances redressal mechanism should be created for family, individuals and society related matters. These should represent the will and wisdom of the family culture and societal harmony. These mechanisms should use counselling advisory guidance in their working and conciliatory in nature and have limited powers of implementation. If these mechanisms fail to resolve the grievances, then these should go to the govt. laws and courts which in turn should compromise of elements representing the will and wisdom of the family culture and societal culture.
(4) The present system of making the marriage permanent in the very first step, with all its bindings, is the root cause of the problems that we see today. Hence the marriages should be made in more than one step as follows –
(a) Step One – The desirous couple should first enter into a Live In Relationship, with or without sex which must be consensual. It should give freedom to the partners to break away from the relationship at any point of time, without having to give any reason and without any responsibility. The responsibility of child bearing should be optional for both partners, which should be decided by mutual consent. This should be time-bound with a minimum period of three months to a maximum period of one year.
(b) After this stage is completed satisfactorily, a temporary marriage should take place, wherein sex will be inherent but the child bearing will be controlled by the wife and the responsibility of the child will not be compulsory for the husband.
(c) After the satisfactory completion of this stage, a regular marriage should take place with the consent of both the partners. A contract agreement mentioning various conditions of marriage should be mentioned properly. This agreement should be duly registered, which should make it legally binding on both the partners. In case of disputes, this agreement should be made the foundation on which the courts should decide the matter. However the disputes should first go to the family mechanism and then the societal mechanism. If both of them are not able to resolve the disputes, then only it should go to the court of law.