We also encourage that men who are married to women not capable of living in harmonious, happy and satisfied married life, should make bold to come forward to marry again women of their own choice and liking. Because only then the difficulties of the spouses which result from “divinely ordained” marriages without mutual pre-introduction and consent could disappear. Why human beings are born and why indeed they die are different matters. But as long as they live, what they have right to enjoy are, satisfaction and happiness. And in this, the male is important source of such satisfaction and happiness for the female and the female is so for the male. Within such a primary source if harassment and miseries develop, the rational human being’s first duty is to remedy them. Those who labour to promote human compassion end happiness should do this first. On the other hand, oneself enduring life-long dissatisfaction and misery and also compelling others to so endure merely because something called marriage has taken place and hence there could be no option but to put up with it whatever be the consequence, certainly go against human goodness and self-respect. It is not also rational way of organising one’s life. This is our opinion.
V. Remarriage is not wrong
On the question of whether a man having a wife can enter into another marriage several doubts have been raised by many. Opinions and doubts concerning such re-marriage as being wrong are prevalent even among those participating in the Self- respect Movement also. Among the general public however, many clearly hold the opinion that re marriage while the spouse is alive is opposed to progressive principles.
Before we start studying this question, it is necessary to understand what marriage actually is. We for one, consider marriage as a mere contractual agreement entered into by a couple for the purpose of their own life-comfort. We also consider that in such an arrangement there should be no place for any external intrusion constraining them either singly or together in their autonomy. It is in the course of considering whether such a view of marriage is right or wrong, that we may arrive at some solution to all our doubts.
First of all, it has not been possible for us to ascertain, if either in terms of natural feelings, or in the experience of orderly living or even in the religion followed by the Tamils, remarriage has indeed been prohibited. Not only this, it is not also known that in the plethora of social laws and regulations followed in the matter of marriage, or according to any religion-related prescriptions that remarriage is prohibited. In Hindu religion one could marry up to sixty thousand women, in Islam up to four, and in Christianity limitless, that is, no number is prescribed as to women one could chance to marry. In Christianity alone, the prescription is that a man or woman should cancel the marriage first and then remarry, and that such a cancellation could take place only under specified conditions. This arrangement is made in such a way as to make it clear that it is so made on account of social and security concerns and not any absolute principle. And that is all there, by way of difference between the Christian and other religions in this matter of remarriage.
Therefore if one looks at it from the point of view of religion, the differences are only in the area of concrete conditionalities and actual arrangements; it does not appear that any religion has objected to the idea of remarriage itself. Besides in the Hindu religion, on the basis of the scriptural sources, the very gods themselves are projected as having married many times, and it is these gods with their several wives and concubines are worshipped by the Tamils, the so-called Hindus, through the celebrations of god-marriages and other forms of worship, In Islamic religion also it is accepted that Prophet Mohammad had lived with more than one wife at a time. Therefore those who deny this or those who find fault with the gods and prophets cannot claim to so oppose remarriage in the name of religion or religions prescriptions. (To be continued)
