Marriage breakup in India these days takes lesser time than it takes to complete six balls in a cricket match. ‘Over’ says the Umpire in a cricket game; his decision is final, no appeals, no reviews. But in an Indian divorce, the real match begins for players of the game. Prenuptial agreements or contracts as seen in the Western world are supposed to minimize the litigation for the warring couples, and to ensure that no party uses divorce for the express purpose of financial profit. However, in India, it is a different power play altogether.
There have been several news reports informing the public that the Women & Child Development (WCD) Ministry is proposing the legitimization of pre-nuptial contracts in India. Sounds just like cricketing rules. Sounds fair and square? After all cricket is supposed to be a gentleman’s game overseen by gentlemen umpires. Some would say that’s patriarchal oppression of the stadium! But if we allow the dust to settle and allow the playground to become visible once more, we will find that the WCD has no mandate to create rules of the marriage game on its own. Remember, in a past issue the WCD famously responded by saying “Protection of men is also not the mandate of Ministry of WCD”.
By definition any heterosexual Marriage involves the union of a man and a woman, then it can be said with reasonable authority that WCD has no mandate for drafting any law involving marriage. In reciprocation, and in all fairness, we the men of India recognize the fact that we do not have any mandate for marriages involving woman and woman. If at all WCD is burdening itself with heterosexual marriage laws, then a partner-body of Men and Child Development (MCD) Ministry must be immediately constituted to allow reason and logic also to be clinically injected into the draft. Provisionally, till the formation of an MCD, Men’s Rights Groups must be allowed to put in their representations to the law making body.
The WCD is a Ministry which has time and again shown itself to be anti-male for adults as well as children (witness the anti-male child remarks by the current Minister). If it is the official stated position of the WCD Ministry that “all violence is male generated” then logically speaking WCD should not entertain any sort of contact between men and women. So if Honorable Minister Maneka Gandhi’s views on males as generators of violence is to be taken at face value, then by proposing a prenuptial law then the WCD, by its own admission is directly contributing to the violence.
Besides any one-sided prenuptial law, being unrepresented by the side of men, is the same as a dowry demand, which is illegal & prohibited by the Dowry Prohibition Act.
Also like in the past, WCD is more suited to propose new laws and amendments for encouraging breakup and post-breakup scenarios like dowry cases, Domestic Violence Act which is applicable only for women and matters involving incentives for divorces for women, as opposed to Domestic Harmony law proposed by men’s rights groups. Therefore it can be said that till now as far as women and men are concerned, in the context of a family, the WCD has been working purely on divisive lines.
Marriage is a unifying concept, performed for the purpose of harmonious cohabitation and the growth of man, woman and children. Marriage is not a platform for unleashing male hatred, property division and making children the property of the State. The WCD, therefore having no experience or mandate or any intention of drafting unifying laws is uniquely disqualified from making proposals for the creation of any sort of draft outlines in any context remotely concerning marriage. We therefore summarily oppose any lab experimentation on the institution of marriage by any unscientific body. The WCD is advised to rediscover fire and reinvent the wheel & also clean itself of misandry before it even thinks of reformulating the rules of man-woman relationship of marriage. In case the government and public still think that a law on prenuptials are required, then we suggest that WCD and Mens Rights Organizations sign a prenuptial agreement first to sit together and draft a prenuptial law. Hows that for equality?