Footnote 5 (marriage)

Lyudmila Fedchenko No condolences needed, we are happy couple with 2 grown grown up pit (teenage marriages) sounds terrible in the 2nd decade of the 21st century but was considered to be a norm in the mid 20th century in India, particularly rural India. Colonial rule had left India, de-industrialized, uneducated and pauperized. Karl Marx had thought that colonial rule in order to capitalize the country, would break the 'Asiatic mode' but contrary to his expectation it used that for plundering the country's resources. I am the first generation learner in the modern education and had just appeared in my 12th standard examination. At that age (17 minus) too I strongly protested against it but eventually succumbed to social pressure. The marriage was not my choice, but without knowing the person I was going to be married, living the marriage was my choice. If two people are victims of some social custom/evil, one co-victim must not further victimize the more co-victim and in patriarchy, the woman is more co-victim. This was the answer given to a fellow student, 37 years ago, I was living as a married 'bachelor'. She, a "feminist", was suggesting that as mine was a child marriage, I could get an easy divorce. One has to derive a balance between one's social conscientiousness and rights to the freedom of desires, including the desire to be in love. And every person, married or unmarried has right to be in love as long as there is no breach of trust and use of force. Family, the rule of man over women and children is means to maintain patriarchy. But then, as Marx writes in the 18th Brumaire of Louie Bonaparte, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."