It is true that the divorce rates are low in India and mostly the norm is one man has one wife. But, is it due to our old culture? If you read old epics, except the case of Ram, most of the epic characters had multiple spouses/affairs including gods. Draupadi, Kundhi, Arjun, Bhim....When I visited some palaces in India there were 10s or 100s of rooms for king's wives. So, polyandry has been a norm in old culture. When did all this change? When did the existing family values come into place? A few hundred years ago? How? I have visited palaces in Europe and I didn't see rooms for multiple queens. So, is it possible that the western system disposed the existing wife before getting a new one and Indian culture allowed cumulative addition. Could it be a reason divorces are popular in western world?
You really put me to think how did we get this culture of one wife??? I dont have much knowledge about this. But one thing i remember queen was always one and rest were others not the main.. none of the kings had multiple chairs next to him for all his wives.. there has been only one throne for the queen. Not only kings had multiple wives but rich affluent men used to have multiple wives and they too used to have many rooms. This is not only in India. Many counties had cultures like this.. there may not be many rooms for their wives as everyone had one queen but kings had the mistresses always. even though kings and Gods had multiple wives but Lord Rama was worshippend as maryada purushottam Ram and this is what our society followed. Leaving behind about Gods and kings if we look towards the social structure... Every society has to follow some norms. We have a norm of single wife. If a man have to get a second wife they have to divorce first one otherwise marriage is nullified with second wife. Divorce is not slow in India too. Divorce is now a very common term in our society.. you can find more thousands of pending cases of divorce.. One thing i couldn't get about "cumulative addition" allowed... i dont think we have any culture like that. Indians can have only one wife legally there cant be any "cumulative addition" of wives.. western people have higher divorce rate not because that they have to dispose their first wife... They are divorcing their wife due to their personal lack of interest of living together not mere to dispose and get a second one. Reason for divorce is never a society... reason for divorce is the two people living together are themselves or some catalyst making them to divorce but no society encourages divorce.
Hi! Even though the Indian King have multiple wife, the one they have married first will have the legal right of wife and the first wife son will become a prince not the others. Western culture have live together without marring, may be that is the reason the king have only one room for queen, here in india even the king has to marry a girl to live with him(not always but most of the cases). In earlier time also we can only see some Indian celebrities(live king, minister, etc.,) have multiple wife not a ordinary citizen/farmer.
Hi this is the fact. Our kings took it as a prestige factor. A person, who is able to manage lot of ladies was considered to be brave and strong. That's why Polygyny was so famous in ancient India. The marriage of one to one had become the norm only in the recent years, not more than 300 years probably. As a matter of fact we also had Polyandry, where a femal marries several males at the same time. Dhraupathi in our epics is one such example. The principle of one man for a woman is a result of us getting civilized. So let's be happy
