This post is a sensitive one. Still, I thought of expressing my own thoughts and show where my sympathy is. The recent events of Dharmapuri, inter caste love marriage couple Divya & Ilavarasan, creating lot of sympathy among the many good hearted people, including politicians. Many are underlining the necessary of inter caste marriage as a solution to the caste problem.
Death of a young boy is a great loss to his family and to his community/villagers. It is very hard to see an young boy just victimised his life. It is an unfortunate situation for Divya for loosing her father, husband and the opted love marriage life. Some facts show the real evidence of victimizing of these young couple. Firstly, by age factor, Divya was 22 and Ilavarasan was 20. It seems Divya had done a crime of eloping a minor boy. I am not sure, how the police and courts allowed them to live together for 9 months now. Prohibition of Child Marriages Act 2006 does not endorse boy to marriage if he is less than 21 years.
Both the lovers seems to be immature, as they became victims for following the motivations and suggestion of people surrounded them. In fact, it looks, eloping was supported by close friends. To my opinion, good friends should have stopped the boy not to get elope as he was just 19 by then. On the other side, Divya’s should have been told that it is a wrong thing by her to marry a minor according to the Indian Marriages act..
This is not the only one that ended in such tragedy, there are many eloped love marriages those mostly end up at police stations end up in suicides and divorce.
I came up with few questions how to analyze this issue.
– Do a love affair really need to end only in marriage. At any/what cost?
– In our society/country do the parents accept love marriages. Even within same caste?
– Is it good to elope by ignoring the parents?
– How much of a role, friends play in motivating elope marriages?
– What is the percentage of success and failure of such marriages.?
– Do the inter caste marriage’s are the only solution/tool to end caste system in India?
Though, i am not an expert to all of the questions above. From personal experience, I can answer few of them.
Do a love affair need to end only in marriage. At any cost?
Whether it is affectionate love, mature love or a sex love, it is not necessary that, love ending up with marriage is the only solution. ha ha.. I always say..the moment love falls in marriage means the love literally fails.
In our society/country, do the parents accept love marriages. Event within same caste?
Our traditions never allowed us to entertain love marriages, as the parents feel they are the only one, who have rights to decide the children’s partner. They do feel that decision making could become fatal if it is not handled by aged/experienced elders. Even, if within the same caste, they take into account many factors like the sub caste system, the traditions, culture, economy, age and body physic etc. These major factors never allow the parents to allow or accept love marriages.
Is it good to elope by ignoring the parents?
Personally, it is not a good move to neglect the parents and elders in the family. In simple, happy life is the one, which is surrounded by lot of family members and jointly celebrating festivals and functions. The moment one decides that they can ignore the parents and the family, that itself proves a wrong decision. Even if it is true love, it is the solidarity and maturity that can/should really convince the parents to accept the love partner.
How much of a role, friends play in motivating elope marriages?
I think, most love affairs are mediated by the brokers called friends, even if the lover’s don’t, these useless friends guide them wrongly without taking account of many factors. The actual maturity level of the lover’s, their mental strength, their ability to mutually agree in terms of misunderstandings etc. These are essential factors for starting a family life. Many neglect the close relation’s, because friends fill the gap and guide them wrongly. Mostly, friends are the one who help to elope create a first isolation. Getting isolated from the own family can be a fatal for lovers who have weakness of being loneliness.
What is the percentage of success and failure of such marriages.?
In my personal opinion, may be around 90+ % love marriages end up in suicide or divorce within 3 years of such love marriages. Out of these failures, mostly the women partner commit’s suicide. May be due to their realization of a mistake, un-tolerance to the new characters those evolve from the lover, as a husband role which is different from the love days, difference of opinions and the parents ignoring to contact even. As moral support becomes a problem. Only those who have a mature attitude, independent and egoless do succeed in such marriage life. It seems to be rare of rare cases.
Do the inter caste marriage’s are the only solution/tool to end caste system in India?
I think, In indian society before looking at the caste differences, everyone should look at the dominance of parents and their role in deciding the partners for their children. As they work hard for the children and do everything for the children, they still own the majority of the rights here, hence it is an important barrier that need to be broken first. If we need to go western system, children should fly away from home after 18 years, make their own way and dont be depend on the parents like the western. But our Indian culture does not recognise such attitudes.
It is a also a fact that caste based political systems doing both the kind of propaganda’s as their political vision and mission to the young teen boys. May be just to promote the inter caste marriages, but not for promoting the real love or not even proposing a arranged inter caste marriages.
There are many accepted inter caste marriages, because the lovers are very generous and their parents are. But not everyone can be such generous, because every other human being has a possessiveness to the self and to other’s in the family. Possessiveness is the killer at both the ends.
Love marriage is not a successful solution and eloping is way to get trapped. My deepest condolences to Ilavarasan for falling victim of a women love at an young age.
