Marital Signs -Game, shame or Crime?

 

After a very long time getting a opportunity to write about something which I have been waiting to write!! But this time I feel is the right moment for writing on this topic.

In the recent past when I had chances to interact with a couple of married women, I found a shocking similarity among lot of them – They are not interested in wearing mangal sutras (mangalyam / Thali), their leg rings (metti) and kumkum in the top of their foreheads (This may not be a custom for few communities). When I enquired about the reason for the same, probably the reasons were one among the follows:

1. Are men wearing any of these? Why women alone are forced to wear them?

2. I am same even after a marriage and I want to be the same for ever and not interested in changing the way I look.

3. When the relationship is based on mutual love and affection what is the necessity for symbols like this?

4. It does not go with my dress and lifestyle

Though these seem to reflect intelligence, I felt that people are ignorant and decided not to comment on them thinking that it is their life and their discretion.

My patience was tested when I was participating in a debate where my opponent who was a lady spoke that “These signs of marriage are imposed on women and empowerment of women can never happen if this continues”

Though this statement was completely ignorant,  I was terribly shocked to see that this attitude and culture (So called modernity)  is spreading like a disease everywhere. Not just women but lot of men adhere and advocate such acts of the so-called modernity.

Here are my questions to these modern thinkers:

1. Marriage brings ample changes to every individual specially for every women. A woman who is married is given due respect in the society that we live, the places she visits.  Even the friends and her social circle sees her in a completely different way with dignity. More than everything her parents treat her with due respect when she visits her home where she lived for yeas before marriage.How can you say that there is no change in a woman’s life after marriage?  Does a change necessarily be negative always? Why to ignore these positive changes occur solely on account of marriage?

2. Our culture and tradition gives more sanctity to women who is married.  According to our shastras a man is not complete without his spouse.  A man cannot perform many Vedic rituals without his wife. Even Rama witnessed it without  Sita Devi. Now how are woman becoming or treated inferior after marriage?  What will you call these sanctity that is given to woman solely on account of marriage?

3. Apart from the spiritual and social significance,  there are also science involved in all these customs. For instance wearing a metti in the leg gives adequate pressure to a nerve that connects the uterus, which in turn is good for pregnancy. For those who claim that men is not wearing these, I ask a simple question – How is this significant to men?

I can bring hundreds of arguments here. My intention here is not to change individuals who are not adhering to these customs in the guise of modernity.  My work is not that.

On the other hand, any individual who loves to be a part of this valuable tradition will never stay quiet seeing people atrociously spreading myths in the guise of modernity and misleading innocents who are unaware of such things.

This is just one thing out of which I have spoken just less than 50% of the issue. There are huge number of incidents that are trying to kill our customs and culture.

Every one of us in some way or the other are responsible for preventing such diseases spreading all over the country. And we owe duty to work towards it.

Thanks for the read!