The Issue of Divorce

DIVORCE IN ISLAM for many years he had neglected to pay, now fell to me to settle.” (Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, [London, 1978], pp. 563-564). Such a law had been passed to ensure justice for women who had to resort to divorce. But when people began to realize that divorce inevitably led one into financial straits, the marriage bond began to be dispensed with altogether. Men and women started to live together without going through the formality of the marriage ceremony. Now, more than fifty percent of the younger generation prefer to live unmarried. It was only natural that a reaction should have set in against a law that so patently disfavoured men and brought corruption, perversion, and all kinds of misery in its wake. Children—even newborn babies—were the greatest sufferers. Now, take the situation prevailing in Hindu society, in which the extreme difficulty of divorce acts as a deterrent. This was a bid to reform, but this has only aggravated the matter. The ancient Indian religious reformers held that separation was illegal: they even prohibited women from remarrying so that they would be left with no incentive to seek divorce. The laws were made so that once marriage ceremonies were finalized, a man could not divorce his wife, nor could a woman remarry after leaving her former husband. However, such reformations were unnatural and have