{"id":1290,"date":"2010-07-25T07:04:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T07:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/2010\/07\/happily-never-after\/"},"modified":"2020-07-16T18:47:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T17:47:47","slug":"happily-never-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/?p=1290","title":{"rendered":"Happily – Never After"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"happily<\/a><\/p>\n

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By Miten Kana
\nNHSF Learning Team<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Summer time brings about much that is positive in life \u2013 sunshine, holidays, the melody of an ice cream van as it makes its way down your road and of course the definitive Indian Wedding Season. The Hindu wedding is a beautiful occasion. Celebrated with much pomp and joy, it symbolises the joining of not just two souls, but the unification of two families.<\/p>\n

Well, it should do. However we must remember that there are two sides to every story. Although everyone appears to be happy during the wedding procession, a growing number of marriages are ending prematurely. Why? From a small sample of people asked that have been subject to failed marriages, the underlying commonality is the pressure from parents to get married young. Tradition, not religion, dictates that children should be married at a young age. In our grandparent\u2019s time, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for families to arrange the marriages of children from a young age. In fact, Gandhiji\u2019s marriage to Kasturba was arranged when he was 6 years old! But as time has moved on, so have trends and traditions. The arranged marriage is now more of an introductory service and the age to get married has substantially increased. However, a percentage of families still insist on adhering to tradition, not religion, and constantly reinforce the notion that \u2018nobody will want to marry you after a certain age\u2019. Seldom is this the case for the son, but it is prevalent in the case of daughters.<\/p>\n

Nowhere in Hindu scriptures does it declare that a daughter must be married by a certain age. True, certain scriptures allow for daughters to be married at a young age, but there is no set law stating she MUST be married by that age. In fact, Dharma encourages us to adjust and adapt with modern day living, and in this case we have to understand that certain old village traditions are not feasible for life in the modern, western world. Long gone are the days of women being in the kitchen whilst men go out to work. Now both men and women are career-minded and wish to succeed in the working world before settling down. More often than not, girls are forced into marriage younger than their male counterparts, as they feel duty-bound by their parents to do so. Of course, obeying one\u2019s parents is paramount in fulfilling our Dharma, but so too should parents support and understand our need for succeeding in our respective fields.<\/p>\n

So this summer, when you come home from a wedding, and \u2018marriage fever\u2019 manifests, ask your children first; are you ready for marriage? If they say no, then respect their decision \u2013 after all, the future is in our hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  By Miten Kana NHSF Learning Team Summer time brings about much that is positive in life \u2013 sunshine, holidays, the melody of an ice cream van as it makes its way down your road and of course the definitive Indian Wedding Season. The Hindu wedding is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[740],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hum-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}