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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER S DIARY
a Western perversity. As reply to the European criticism of undeniably shameful social practices still prevalent in this country, Indian apologists of those practices point an accusing finger at the frequency of divorce in some of the Western countries. It does not occur to them that forced sexrelation is no better than rape. To prohibit divorce is to sanction rape committed en masse with religious sanction. In his latest work, a renowned authority on the subject writes that the frequency of divorce is a sign of the strength of marriage. With a carefully collected and critically sifted mass of statistical data, he shows that divorce is not so frequent as the alarmists picture it to be. In the United States, for example, there is only one divorce to every six marriages. The ratio is not higher in the U. S. S. R. where marriage and family are generally believed to have disappeared.*
The Hindu prohibition of divorce is all the more immoral because it is one-sided. Since a man can take as many wives as he wishes, for him, the prohibition is entirely formal and ineffective. A freedom given to man is denied to the woman. The discipline also is obviously one-sided. For women only, marriage is a religious sacramentan indissoluble bond. In the case of men, it is a picnic, a business proposition which, in a feudalpatriarchal society, is very profitable. Where were
*E. Westermarck, "The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization."
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