I am sure you will say this is an untimely piece, but
humbly, yet firmly I disagree with you. I know you are busy discussing the
national calamity and abhorring people and the governments for their insensitivity
in times of chaos, crisis and catastrophe. You are heartbroken, you are woebegone.
Yet, people will forget this soon and the nature will continue to nurture its spitefulness
and as long as we don’t love her, respect her and stop ill-treating her. Yes, hell
hath no fury as nature scorned!
But then, my ‘untimely piece’ will remain relevant forever,
as the topic is sex and that too premarital sex! The day The Hindu carried a
big report, ostensibly misinterpreted, about Madras High Court’s ruling on
premarital sex, an old friend of mine (she is of course young!) called me and
threw this question. “Hey, did you read the report? How can a court of justice
make such a judgement? If this is the case, all young men and women have many
wives and husbands!”
Yes, I understood the undercurrent. You can’t say when sex
happens and how. Though the Firstpost carried a detailed report on the context
the court had made this ruling, social networking sites were abuzz with
discussions, for hours together. Youngsters were apparently angry. They have
all reasons to be angry.
Let me clarify. The Madras High Court’s judgment conceived premarital
sex as a mode of solemnising a marriage. But what was the context? A Hindu
woman and a Muslim man were living under one roof and had sexual relations. The
woman gave birth to two children between 1994 and 1999. Documents proved that
the man was the father of the second child and that he had applied for a family
card for himself, the woman and the two children. The marriage was not
registered in the Islamic marriage register. The woman was deserted by the man
in 1999 and the woman in 2000 filed for maintenance for her and the two children
from the man.
When the case came up for trial, Madras High Court Justice
CS Karnan said, “A ‘valid marriage’ does not necessarily mean that all the
customary rights pertaining to the married couple are to be followed and
subsequently solemnized. Solemnization
of marriage is only a customary right and obligation and not a mandatory one.
In the instant case, both man and the woman lived together as spouses and
therefore the relationship between them cannot be termed as ‘illegitimate’. If a
woman aged 18 or above has a sexual relationship with a man aged 21 or above,
and during the course of such relationship, if the woman becomes pregnant, she
would henceforth be treated as the wife and the man would be treated as the husband.
Even if the girl does not become pregnant after having such sexual relationship
with a man but if there is a strong documentary evidence to show the existence
of such relationship then also the couple involved would be termed as wife and
husband.”
And that was it. But newspapers and television channels did
their best to blow things out of proportion. Their over-creative sub-editors
worked overtime to come up with flowery headlines. Good job for aspiring Mehtas
and Nayars and Khushwants!
Human relations are strange and beyond any definition. Man-woman
attraction cannot be judged and defined by any court of law. It has been pre-destined
by the Maker. If a man, or a gang of men, assaults a woman… or if a woman or a
gang of women assaults a man, let the law take its own course, but if two grownup
human beings, man and man, or man and woman or woman and wo
