A note on companionship

The motives of marriage are many. One may disagree with what dominates over the others, but most will accept that marriage serves as a way for:

1. Establishing a family commitment to enable care for the young, the old, and the weak,
2. Conveying legal and moral rights and duties relating to property and propriety, and
3. Allowing a channel for procreation that provides a stable identity to the offspring.

The dharmik fold often adds a fourth duty to these, which also trumps these in the scriptural sense. This is the function of performing dharma karyas.

Simply put, marriage enables the son to follow the yagyas. One cannot perform many rites without the wife present next to him. One may be inclined to force this into gender neutral terms. But fact is that most of these rites are defined with the man as the performer and the wife as the one which enables the act; unchallengeable in importance, but still largely passive (although certain offerings/ritual acts can only be done by the wife, and thus she isn’t a mere onlooker but very much involved).

The importance given to this fourth function comes from the core of dharma and so it is frowned upon to estrange one’s spouse, or get a divorce. I agrue against that because most marriages today are either just parties or just social obligations, given the largely aritualistic (antiritualistic?) lifestyles of present times. Nobody is doing the nitya naimittika yagyas today, and so their right to conduct those is moot.

If those yagyas have been replaced by more everyday forms of worship such as japa, murti puja etc, which do not require marriage except in some cases, then the question of parting or staying with someone should rest not on whether or not one is provided with a means of their dharmas, but on whether or not the relation between the parties is healthy and conducive to the attainment of those dharmas.

If at the core of marriage lies the enablement of the purusharthas, then clearly a bad marriage prevents the oppressed party in the relationship from their daily duties to their gods, parents, and guests. Conversely, a relationship that enables the attainment of the purusharthas should be treated as an exalted one.

What then should become of injunctions against divorce or even gay marriage, whether scriptural or born of socialised religiosity?

Clearly, they stand void given the lapse of the context they were spelled out in. No, this doesn’t justify taunts of the order “oh your civilisation is dead”, or “go fight with sticks and bows” or whatever. The central premise is that these laws shall enable people to make progress if their correct attitude is imbibed.

A married couple devoted exclusively to their bellies or genitals would get just those two benefits out of the whole exercise of marriage, whether that be when the samskara was first developed or in the present day. If a marriage cannot fulfil its objectives and becomes actually harmful to the parties in it, then divorce stands justified.

The four purusharthas are all important in their own right. Excess of all is equally bad. Excess of artha makes one miserable guarding wealth, tracking loans, keeping the books. Excess of kama makes one an addict. But excess of dharma? One wonders why Ajamila really chased a prostitute.