Divorce laws made easy

Amendments have been made to divorce laws giving the women half of the share of the husband’s residential property even if the property was acquired before the marriage. But other movable or immovable property of the husband will be, arbitrarily, given; or it is up to the judge to decide on that. This big step—giving women property rights. Being patriarchal culture, Indian women do not have property rights in their parental home. Although law gives rights over inherited property of parents, culture does not allow women to hold parents’ property. And at their husband’s home, their sons take custody over father’s property and the women are denied rights here also. Since divorce is new to Indian culture, clear laws giving rights to half of husband’s property will empower the women. Just restricting to residential property is unfair, some immovable property should be given to the divorced women; but the law is not clear about this. It is up to the judge to decide on this. These divorce laws or Marriage Amendment Bill seek to end the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and Special Marriage Act 1954. The couple are given six months to decide, if they want to decide against divorce, but if both agree, this six month ‘cooling period’ is also not needed. These are the ways, divorce is made easy legally. And this is detrimental to the strong ties of the family in the traditional Indian homes.The hold of culture, and strong sacred tie of the bond of marriage is diminished by quick divorces.Since the Indian society is changing fast, we cannot hold on to culture any more,neither now nor forever.The security that strong family bonds give to the individual comes  with the first bond--marriage.If marriage is dissolved easily, then the strong emotional bonds of the Indian family is weakened greatly. The individuals belonging to Indian culture benefited from the strong family ties, but that is changing now.Teaching the next generation and communicating our culture will become more difficult now. May be if the framers of the divorce laws were women, it would be different.Indian  women would not help make a legislation for an easy divorce because they still respect tradition greatly.