divorce and remarriage
Saja reports rising rates of divorce and remarriage in India.
LOVE/MARRIAGE: Divorces on the rise in India, and re-marriage
Two recent articles address divorce in India: how its a growing phenomenon, and how it's becoming, in certain respects, more acceptable.
According to India's Times News Network, for every 5 weddings registered in Mumbai and Thane since 2002, family courts have received 2 applications for divorce. Read excerpts from the article below.
Exactly 104,287 marriages were registered in Mumbai and Thane between January 2002 and October 2007. During the same period, the family courts in the two districts received 44,922 applications for divorce. Figures for 2007 bear out the trend. Mumbai and Thane registered 17,221 marriages between January and October last year. There were 7,813 applications for divorce within the same time span.
The statistics have alarmed psychiatrists and sociologists. Mumbai, say sociologists, is increasingly time-stressed with many couples doing about 80 km of commuting every day in addition to eight- to ten-hour jobs. “Even longstanding, stable matrimonial relationships may eventually crack under severe pressure,” a Tata Institute of Social Sciences sociologist said.
“There is no shame or stigma attached to a divorce now and even parents often back their daughters who want to separate if things do not fall in place,” psychiatrist Harish Shetty added. The increasing numbers corroborate what they say. Last year (until October) saw 4,138 divorce applications in Mumbai. This is an increase of 47.5% over the 2002 figure of 2,805.
Somini Sengupta of The New York Times looks at how there are far more listings for divorced people in the matrimonials these days. From "As Mores Evolve, India's Divorced Seek Second Chance":
Marriage is still, by and large, socially compulsory. But in a measure of the slow churning of Indian social mores, divorce and remarriage are slowly gaining acceptability. “In general, it’s no taboo these days,” Mr. Raina said gamely, and went on to praise the anonymity that big cities in particular offered to those who wanted a fresh start. To get away from clucking tongues and wagging fingers, a divorced man, as Mr. Raina put it, “just has to change his house. From East Delhi to South Delhi, he is a new person.”
The work of Mr. Raina’s agency, called the Aastha Center for Remarriage, is not all that countercultural anymore. The matrimonial sections of Sunday papers carry advertisements from other marriage bureaus specializing in second-timers. An Internet portal was created six months ago, called secondshaadi.com — shaadi being the Hindi word for marriage — and already has a database of 25,000 clients.
Even conventional marriage portals, like shaadi.com, are beginning to see listings from people who want to tie the knot a second time. Sunil Gangwani, who runs a shaadi.com branch in Nagpur, a small provincial city in central India, said about 5 percent of his clients were divorced.
For some of those interviewed, re-marrying is treated as a "purely practical consideration." But one hopeful, Inderbir Singh, says that as a divorced man, he's regarded as an "outcast" by his family and friends.
He sees his society in conflict with itself. “People are O.K. with divorce. Nobody forces you to stay in a marriage and torture yourself for the rest of your life,” he said. “But the attitude towards a divorcé is still the same. They’re outcasts. They think divorce won’t happen if the person is a good person.”
LOVE/MARRIAGE: Divorces on the rise in India, and re-marriage
Two recent articles address divorce in India: how its a growing phenomenon, and how it's becoming, in certain respects, more acceptable.
According to India's Times News Network, for every 5 weddings registered in Mumbai and Thane since 2002, family courts have received 2 applications for divorce. Read excerpts from the article below.
Exactly 104,287 marriages were registered in Mumbai and Thane between January 2002 and October 2007. During the same period, the family courts in the two districts received 44,922 applications for divorce. Figures for 2007 bear out the trend. Mumbai and Thane registered 17,221 marriages between January and October last year. There were 7,813 applications for divorce within the same time span.
The statistics have alarmed psychiatrists and sociologists. Mumbai, say sociologists, is increasingly time-stressed with many couples doing about 80 km of commuting every day in addition to eight- to ten-hour jobs. “Even longstanding, stable matrimonial relationships may eventually crack under severe pressure,” a Tata Institute of Social Sciences sociologist said.
“There is no shame or stigma attached to a divorce now and even parents often back their daughters who want to separate if things do not fall in place,” psychiatrist Harish Shetty added. The increasing numbers corroborate what they say. Last year (until October) saw 4,138 divorce applications in Mumbai. This is an increase of 47.5% over the 2002 figure of 2,805.
Somini Sengupta of The New York Times looks at how there are far more listings for divorced people in the matrimonials these days. From "As Mores Evolve, India's Divorced Seek Second Chance":
Marriage is still, by and large, socially compulsory. But in a measure of the slow churning of Indian social mores, divorce and remarriage are slowly gaining acceptability. “In general, it’s no taboo these days,” Mr. Raina said gamely, and went on to praise the anonymity that big cities in particular offered to those who wanted a fresh start. To get away from clucking tongues and wagging fingers, a divorced man, as Mr. Raina put it, “just has to change his house. From East Delhi to South Delhi, he is a new person.”
The work of Mr. Raina’s agency, called the Aastha Center for Remarriage, is not all that countercultural anymore. The matrimonial sections of Sunday papers carry advertisements from other marriage bureaus specializing in second-timers. An Internet portal was created six months ago, called secondshaadi.com — shaadi being the Hindi word for marriage — and already has a database of 25,000 clients.
Even conventional marriage portals, like shaadi.com, are beginning to see listings from people who want to tie the knot a second time. Sunil Gangwani, who runs a shaadi.com branch in Nagpur, a small provincial city in central India, said about 5 percent of his clients were divorced.
For some of those interviewed, re-marrying is treated as a "purely practical consideration." But one hopeful, Inderbir Singh, says that as a divorced man, he's regarded as an "outcast" by his family and friends.
He sees his society in conflict with itself. “People are O.K. with divorce. Nobody forces you to stay in a marriage and torture yourself for the rest of your life,” he said. “But the attitude towards a divorcé is still the same. They’re outcasts. They think divorce won’t happen if the person is a good person.”
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