Why are divorce rates in India so low??

Divorce rate in any group is usually measured in terms of "number of divorces in a year per 1000 married women". We do not know however if the available data on "divorces" in different countries has indeed been calculated according to this standard definition. In USA, (the world's divorce "capital" - if I may call it so) this rate is measured in terms of percentage of new marriages that end up in divorce in the first three years. Whichever way you look at it the rate of divorces in India is the LOWEST.

Against 54% in USA, the rate of divorces in India is just 1.4%.

It is 37% in Canada, 39% in Germany, 43% in UK, 43% in Russia & 55% in Sweden. In Japan however it is only 2%. Does it then have something to do with Eastern vs the Western culture? I think it does.... though I am not sure if it is going to remain so...

Culture: In India, marriages are expected to last a life time. Ceremonies like karvaa chauth (करवा चौथ) or worshipping the banyan tree (वड सावित्री पूजा ) are supposedly powerful prayers to GOD to ensure that the couple remains married to each other in this and seven subsequent rebirths. It is a different matter though that both these rituals are meant only for women - does it mean that we Hindu men have a lurking desire to seek another partner in another birth (isn't variety the spice of life?). Though the attitude is gradually changing, divorced people are still looked down upon by the society. Divorce is undoubtedly looked upon as absolutely the last resort (especially by women) and there are still couples who would rather stay apart without divorcing than obtaining a legal separation.

Financial empowerment: Since India is such a male dominated society and since women (especially rural women) are rarely financially independent, I feel many of them choose to continue suffering bad husbands (and hence don't get included in the divorce statistics) instead of facing the "outside world", which for a single woman, could be even worse. In the western world, women are equally literate and financially sound as men and therefore have much lesser hesitation in dissolving a bad marriage. In the next fifty years or so, Indian women are expected to "catch up" (the urban ones already have) with males and I predict that divorce rates would then shoot up. If in spite of empowering our women, the divorce rates remain lower than in the west, then surely we could ascribe this to our strong family based culture.

Importance of a family: In recent years the church has often been reminding its followers in the West that the "family" is an important social unit and must be preserved. In the western society, most children leave their parents around the time they pass out of high school. Thereafter parents have virtually no role to play in major decisions in the life of their offspring. Parents do not expect their children to take care of them in their old age (because these parents had not shouldered this responsibility for their parents). Since divorce rates are above 50%, there are good chances that parents might get divorced and marry new spouses - the children themselves in the meantime could have married and divorced. The original family could thus be in tatters -unrecognizable and sometimes impersonal. Add to this concoction, live-in relationships & multi racial marriages and you could see why so many people have a number of half and even one-fourth (though they are never called so) brothers and sisters
& cousins (President -elect Obama for example has many half brothers and sisters). The Indian family (though under tremendous strain with increasing industrialization) is still a comparatively cohesive unit on which members can fall back upon in difficult times. It is ironical that while we are blindly aping the wrong western practices, they are looking up to our strong family ties as a role model.

Importance of having children: The birth rate in India is 24.8 per 1000 (death rate is 8.7 per 1000) while that in USA is 14.2 per 1000 (death rate is 8.9 per 1000). In some European countries there has been a net decline in population because there are more deaths than births in any given year. Governments there offer incentives to citizens to produce more children (In a lighter vein, I often wonder why they don't outsource this to India). Indians look upon children as a "support in their old age and a son is even today more valuable than a daughter. I do not know of another country (I may be wrong here) that makes it legally mandatory for children to take care of their old parents. As long as India continues to produce more children per 1000, it will also automatically strive to preserve the family system (which nurtures children) and this would keep the divorce rate low.

Attitude towards 'SEX' : In India, marriage is still a socially approved licence to fulfill this biological need. Various surveys have however concluded that this assumption has "crumbled" in urban areas. The average age for the first sexual experience in India has apparently come down to 14 in metropolitan cities - but I would still venture to say that pre-marital sex though on the rise has still not become as fashionable and therefore rampant, as in the west. Youngsters who have grown up in an environment where pre marital sex is not unduly frowned upon, cannot suddenly change their mindset after marriage. Westerners therefore look at 'sex' more "biologically" and less emotionally than their eastern counterparts. A society that has more of this biological attitude (feel thirsty - quench it) is bound to have a larger number of strained marriages due to higher infidelity. So until India continues to societally frown on pre marital sex and sex -outside marriage, its divorce rates are likely to remain lower. Increasing prosperity will of course increase personal independence and an independent person will be less afraid of "societal" or even "parental" frowning that we are talking about.

In conclusion, I am sure that increasing prosperity (GDP per capita), increasing women empowerment (higher literacy and incomes) and crumbling of the traditional family system is bound to increase divorce rates in India - societies react similarly to similar situations and we are bound to follow what the westerners went through during their upward economic march. It is then that the great Indian culture will face its most severe test.