Dear Sonam Kapoor, open your mouth but don’t open it before knowing the whole truth first

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday stirred controversy by saying that the cases of divorce are found more in “educated and affluent” families nowadays as education and affluence brings arrogance along, which results in families falling apart, whilst addressing RSS workers in Ahmedabad. After his statement, controversial Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor Ahuja called RSS chief Bhagwat’s statements ‘regressive’.

Well, it might be a dicey topic to tread upon but we as rationale and reasoning human beings cannot refute what the RSS supremo said in one go. In India, the divorce rate is less than 1 percent (the reasons are both social and economic) and out of 1000 marriages, only 13 results in divorce as against 46 in the United States but the trend is on an upswing as there are more separate families than divorced families in India according to a BBC report. Indian marriage system has been traditionally strong and watertight compared to the Western world as the divorce rates comparison proves. Though it does not take away from the fact that country-specific contextual arrangements, particularly each country’s gender norms, policies supporting the economically weaker party in case of divorce, and the economic necessity for a second income largely differ from country to country. In India, the marriage happens between two families and not just two individuals and the whole matter is grandiose in itself.

Our entire socio-economic, cultural and political framework is built on the blueprint of the household unit. Consequently, whenever there is a rough situation or any sort of domestic, the families get involved and usually try to settle the matter amicably – contrary to the Western norms where families are not as close-knit together as here. It might be an unpopular opinion but with Western education, the baggage of Western culture has seeped into our society and given how moronically Bollywood tries to spin the marriage narrative in itself is a sham. Relationships are never perfect and not easy to say the least, especially marriages and no one gives a divorce just because of one issue (that does not justify any sort of violence, violence is a big NO! NO!) but now, in the name of Pseudo-feminism, women empowerment (Watch: Veerey Di Weeding, one of the worst example there can be of women empowerment and ironically Mrs. Sonam Kapoor stars in it) a sacred and strong institution called Marriage is defied and broken.

If you look at one of the research conducted at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany with the hypothesis being “Does divorce risk depend on spouses’ relative income?”(the study was conducted in Norway), it was interpreted that the wife’s high relative income increases the risk of breaking up by producing a non-traditional power structure in the marriage and in this way threatening the traditional division of labor and the breadwinner role if this is valued by at least one of the partners (usually husband). In other words, it lowers the barrier to when the spouse exits the marriage. Another research conducted in four European countries—Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Poland showed that women’s employment has a strongly positive effect on marital disruption in Italy and Poland, and no effect in Germany and Hungary. Again, the research study is different for different countries and both the research studies might have their fallacies but one cannot simply turn a blind eye to the fact that when a senior citizen tries to put forward his point of view which in fact is corroborated by various other studies, he is slammed by hobby feminists like Sonam Kapoor.

It is not to say that a person should not strive to earn more or for that matter try to imbibe more skills and education but yes, it certainly has a part to play in how the modern families and marriages turn out and at the end how they dissolve. Mohan Bhagwat might not have been entirely right, but he definitely caught a nerve right there.