Why were child marriages advocated in Vedic scriptures?

From: Puri Ashishkumar

Please enlighten why were Child Marriages advocated in Vedic Scriptures whereas IPC considers even consensual union with a legitimate wife below 15 years as Rape.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
A question from Ashish Kumar Puri Prabhu. Please enlighten why were child marriages advocated in Vedic scriptures, whereas IPC considers even consensual union with a legitimate wife below 15 years as rape? Answer. The driving values of Vedic society and modern society are radically different.
And because of this, various aspects of culture are perceived differently. So, in Vedic culture, it was understood that the adolescent years are phases of great turbulence for both males and females. And the best way to stabilize an individual’s journey through those turbulent years is by removing that force which causes the greatest uncertainty during those years.
And that is the force of sexual attraction. It is in the teenage years that, generally speaking, the sexual drive becomes awakened and not just awakened, but also becomes dominant. And as the body starts giving rise to new sensations, a daredevilish desire for exploration and enjoyment emerges in a person, and whether male or female, and that feeling can propel, impel, compel people on immoral and even antisocial pathways.
And we do see in society today that the teenage years when a person discovers sexual enjoyment are the times when often the most depraved and degraded actions happen. So, in the Vedic society, it was understood that if before a person enters those stormy years, the nupital nod is tied, then the person’s mind becomes stabilized. It’s okay, this is going to be my spouse, husband or wife.
And with that, although they would not have sexual intercourse unless both the male and the female were adequately sexually mature, but the very fact that marriages had happened before would ensure that the mind would be stable, the mind would not be hunting for compatible, enjoyable partners. Of course, this implies what was true in Vedic times, but what is not necessarily true in our times is that people who are married understand that now they should not look for any other form of sexual gratification outside the marriage relationship and therefore that check becomes a protection because that check is understood to have religious sanction and divine ordainment behind it. So, in this way, the child marriage would avoid the instability of the mind that comes to people when they enter the turbulent adolescent years and it gives them a stable face, it’s okay.
So, gradually the relationship would develop, say when the boy and the girl, the marriage would be arranged by the parents and other elders who would often consult astrological charts and otherwise also observe carefully both the children and see their natures and accordingly evaluate their compatibilities. Nowadays, the only compatibility that is evaluated is the looks and the pockets. That’s all that matters to most people today and actually looks and pockets are both superficial beyond the external beauty and the financial capacity of individuals, is their psychology, is their nature, their likes and dislikes and if these are incompatible many marriages survive somehow as cold wars or a fracture and rupture as divorces.
So, that’s why the whole marriages would be arranged and they would be arranged before the adolescent age. Now, in our society, there are various kinds of, unfortunately, because of the over excessive and intensive infatuation with sex that is there because of the media and the culture, there is unfortunately the tragedy of child abuse which includes child sexual abuse that happens and because the child is not adequately mature, so the child may out of intimidation, out of ignorance, out of just submission to an elder, submit to an elder’s sexual advances. So, therefore, the government needs to have regulations to prevent this kind of abuse.
So, with a child to determine something whether it is consensual or not is very difficult and that is why to some extent we can say in the current cultural context, that sort of law is valid. So, of course, even in Vedic culture, it would not be that if the spouse are married, the boy and the girl are married, it’s not that they would have physical union prematurely. Actually, before the physical union, there would be the emotional bonding that would happen.
So, the boy would come to the house of the girl and the girl would, the mother would train the girl to cook the food and serve him and in this way under the watchful eye of elders, they would slowly interact and then the relationship would gradually develop in this way. So, in general, love is not just a feeling, it’s also action. So, by acting in a mood of service, one develops love.
So, now the distorted version of this is in the form of dating that we see in today’s society, where a boy and a girl without the knowledge or sanction of their parents and often in defiance of their parents, have a period of courtship during which they try out various things to see if they will work. Actually, the male-female relationship is so volatile that without commitment, by trying out, things never work. There has to be a sense of, there has to be compatibility, but along with the compatibility, there has to be commitment because ultimately there cannot be any perfect compatibility between two souls.
The only perfect compatibility is between the soul and Krishna. So, of course, one needs to strive for a match that has minimum incompatibility, but beyond that, because there is always going to be compatibility, incompatibility to some extent, there has to be commitment to continue the relationship. And in cases of trying out, which involve dating, and nowadays there is also the fashionable idea of live-ins, the statistics from researchers in America, they’re documented in various books, for example, Stephen Mayer, David Mayer documents it in his book, The American Paradox, Spiritual Power, Hunger in an Age of Plenty.
He says that in general, people who have had live-ins, they, even if they get married after their live-ins, the relationship doesn’t last. But traditional marriages last longer and live better than marriages done by people who have had live-ins before, either among the spouse or with other partners as exploration. Because once the whole overwhelming force of sex is allowed freedom for exploration without any regulation through commitment, then that force just dominates the mind.
And a person who has explored before marriage, when things don’t work out as well as they had been hoped for before marriage, when things after marriage don’t work out so well as one had dreamt for before marriage, then that force again takes over the mind and one wants to explore further. So the whole idea of this, all the dangers that are courted by an unregulated, unrestricted exploration of the sexual impulse is avoided through the system of child marriage in Vedic culture. So now, even in traditional Indian society, it is possible that the abuses can occur, but they are very rare.
Ultimately, it is a human failing. And because of certain human failings, which have often been highlighted, the child marriage is often portrayed as a great evil of Indian society. But in Western society or in westernized society, which considers itself to be morally superior by banning child marriage, what we have is child sexuality.
Because of the excessive bombardment of sexual images, even in cartoons for children, children become or try to become sexually active even before they attain puberty. And there are examples of people who, boys and girls who have sex and they become mothers and fathers when they are barely 11 or 12 or 13. Or even younger at times.
So the whole childhood and its innocence and its gradual growth that comes in it gets lost by that. And what to speak of the children that result from it. So especially if we look at it that way, which is better, childhood pregnancy outside wedlock or child marriage and gradual bonding and then pregnancy and then delivery within the safe sanctuary of proper marriage.
So of course, Shri Prabhupada did not necessarily recommend child marriage in modern society because of the changed socio-cultural realities today. And the idea is that what is given in the Vedic culture has its own profound purpose and meaning. And we need to understand it and we need to see how best the same purpose and meaning can be applied, achieved in our society in modern times.
But just because certain activities in Vedic culture don’t make sense from our perspective, that doesn’t mean that we just join the chorus of condemnation about them and also not only throw out the dirty water but also throw out the baby with it. There are many people who feel that a culture which encourages child marriage is uncivil, is uncivilized and often condemns the culture. No, the Vedic culture was far far more civilized by having its child marriages than having child pregnancies that happen in modern society.
So that was the logic behind it. Thank you.