The word ‘Polygamy’ has an inquisitiveness associated with it to the extent that a mere mention of it raises eyebrows and draws snide remarks, and more often than not, any discussion involving it ends up with resentment-filled and anger-fueled reactions. The prime reason for such behavior is because we behave as irrational emotional beings and get offended easily rather than trying to understand the matter at hand objectively and rationally. So if you are reading this peace, I would humbly request you to keep aside your preconceived notions and biases and approach this topic with an objective mind.
Polygamy is generally referred to the condition or practice of having more than one spouse (or entering into a ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’) at one time. It is important to understand that there is a slight difference between ‘marriage’ and ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’. When a man and a women choose to enter into a ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ and it is recognized by the state and covered under the legal framework with economic and financial consequences, it is called ‘marriage’. In the case of just ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’, either of the individual involved in the relation can walkout of it at any time without consent of the other individual and without having any economic and financial consequences to deal with.
Hence, the practice of polygamy does not necessarily entail plural-marriage. For e.g. I could be in multiple live-in relationships simultaneously. Legally, I will be considered single or singly-married, but effectively and in practice, I would be practicing polygamy. The opposition to polygamy that we see around us today is more towards polygamy when practiced inform of ‘plural marriage’ rather than polygamy practiced in form of multiple ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ (or a combination of single-marriage and ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ outside the first marriage). People (and societies) do express their dislike and disapproval to the latter form of polygamy but it is much milder in intensity than the former form (and in some cases people are completely comfortable with the latter form).
This phenomenon is evident if we look at the societies (and states) where plural-marriage is illegal but at the same time having extra-marital affairs or engaging in multiple ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ simultaneously is perfectly fine and acceptable. The state legally recognizes the first relation (i.e. marriage) but they have strong objection to bringing the second (and further) relation under the legal framework and thereby detaching it from any economic and financial consequences. The point that needs to be paid attention here is that such societies are only against ‘legal recognition’ of second (and further) relations but not against the ‘existence’of second (and further) relations. Let us peek at some of the statistics.
The ‘Ethnographic Atlas Codebook’[1], derived from George P. Murdock’s ‘Ethnographic Atlas’ recorded the marital composition of 1231 societies, from 1960-1980. Of these societies, 186 societies were monogamous and 1045 were polygamous. Based on works[2]of Laurel Richardson, professor emeritus of sociology at the Ohio State University, and other sources[3], estimates show that between 23-50% men and 13-50% women in the US had an extramarital affair during their lifetimes. More than 15% of all husbands say they have had a series of affairs, and nearly 70% of married men younger than 40 expect to have an extramarital relationship. Moreover, all over the world, we know that prostitution is practiced (either legally or illegally), there are strip clubs, female escorts and other similar avenues. Now who are the customers of these avenues? Undoubtedly it includes lot of married men (and men already in‘relationship in the nature of marriage’). So what does these arrangements suggest? Is it not also a form of polygamy (in disguise)?
So if you were under the impression that those societies where plural marriages (or say legalized polygamy) is prohibited are doing better, unfortunately, the ground realities speak otherwise. The only thing that has been achieved in such societies is that we have skewed the legal rulings such that on papers it makes us feel good about it but in reality things remain unchanged (whether this is for good or bad, I will discuss it later in the article). I mentioned above statistics to give a taste of ground realities. If you are really interested in digging into polygamy (as it exists today) apart from the mainstream notion of it, you might find interesting works of Phillip Kilbride (professor of anthropology at Bryn Mawr College), Audrey B.Chapman (a family therapist, author, trainer, and nationally-known relationship expert), Adriana Blake (women’s rights activist & former attorney) etc.
Polygamy could be practiced as polygyny or polyandry or a combination of both. Out of these three, it is polygyny that is predominant in practice. The de facto opinion about polygamy (actually polygyny) is that it is immoral and is a sign of degradation of women and therefore it carries a ‘bad’connotation with it in popular opinion. The association of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with a particular ‘value’ or ‘practice’ of human society has to do with ‘Morality’. ‘Morality’in itself is a separate (and vast) field of study and it is out of scope of this article to touch upon whether moral values should be anchored on (or derived from) the existence of God (or a notion that transcend human subjectivity) or ‘total collective goodness of humanity’. However, I will briefly mention the basics of it that will suffice for the purpose of this discussion.
Moral values can be broadly classified into two buckets;‘Objective moral values’ and ‘Subjective moral values’. Objective moral values are like axioms and are accepted universally without any difference of opinion. In other words, they are encoded in our innate disposition as humans. For e.g.‘honesty’, ‘humility’, ‘helping others’ etc. are accepted universally as ‘good’ values and no one will ever argue against it. Similarly ‘dishonesty’, ‘cheating’, ‘rape’ etc. are accepted universally as ‘bad’ values.
On the other hand, associating ‘subjective moral values’ with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on many factors like social experiences, rational arguments for or against it, human psychology and behavior patterns, social consequences (that will follow its adoption) etc. And hence it varies from society to society and with time. Values like modesty (in regards to what constitute a modest behavior), extent of clothing in public, extent of public display of affection, racism, consumption of certain substance (like liquor & drugs) etc. fall under the bucket of subjective moral values. We all know that what constitutes a morally good behavior vary from one society to other. In fact, our Indian society itself is very heterogeneous in terms of moral values. Just look at the stark difference at the ‘behavior that are accepted as morally good’ between a metropolitan city like Delhi or Bombay and any other average Indian city. Historically we have seen that it was socially and legally acceptable in the Nazi Germany to persecute a Jew or even in our history we once had the practice of ‘sati’ socially and legally acceptable.
By now it would be obvious to you that practice of ‘Polygamy’ is a subjective moral value. Also you would agree that ‘polygamy’is more of a human phenomenon and not exclusive to Islam or Muslims. Yes that’s true. Some of you might be wondering that till now so much has been spoken about polygamy without any mention of Islam. That is mainly because we are not used to it. As soon as polygamy is mentioned, one way or the other Islam gets dragged into the discussion. However, the statistics and studies that I have mentioned above shows that polygamy do exist outside of Muslim societies. Hence, for now let’s forget about Islam and put it on the backseat. I will cover polygamy in context of Islam and Muslim societies in next part (2 of 2) of this article. For now let us continue with our discussion with objective point of view and try to see what arguments we have on the table (for or against polygamy).
It is indeed true that for most of women (and men), it is emotionally unacceptable to share their spouse with other women (and men). So does that mean we should declare polygamy as immoral and illegal for absolutely everybody? What about those women and men who are comfortable in a polygamous setting (yes there are such people. Just that they are a small minority.) and choose to enter into such relation with their own consent and understand the economic, financial and emotional impact of it? Remember that a grown up adult has the right to ‘freedom of choice’ to lead his/her life and no one has the right to take it away from them. Is it not then akin to depriving them of their ‘freedom of choice’ to lead their life?
Here is the thing: if a woman wants to marry a man or vice-versa, that’s great. If she wants to marry another woman (or a man wants to marry another man), that’s great too. We are perfectly fine with these arrangements. Now if she wants to marry a man with ‘N’ other wives or vice-versa, why all of a sudden this becomes immoral and reprehensible? Is it not her choice?
On the other hand, Jillian Keenan on slate[6] counter-argue “The earnestness of these arguments is touching but idealistic. Men in monogamous marriages can’t be spread too thin? Children in monogamous families don’t rival each other for the attentions of their parents? Two-parent families are not the reality for millions of American children. Divorce, remarriage, surrogate parents, extended relatives, and other diverse family arrangements mean families already come in all sizes”.
She further states “We have a tendency to dismiss or marginalize people we don’t understand. We see women in polygamous marriages and assume they are victims. ‘They grew up in an unhealthy environment,’ we say. ‘They didn't really choose polygamy; they were just born into it.’ Without question, that is sometimes true. But it’s also true of many (too many) monogamous marriages. Plenty of women, polygamous or otherwise, are born into unhealthy environments that they repeat later in life. There’s no difference. All marriages deserve access to the support and resources they need to build happy, healthy lives, regardless of how many partners are involved.”
We can see that these caveats (regarding health of marital relation, impact on children and individuals involved) are not exclusive to polygamy but also applies to monogamy. If it can be ensured through legal framework (and social grooming) that individuals involved in marriage (singular or plural) are of right age, have given their consent, their economic, financial and emotional interests in the marriage are secured and they understand the consequences of their choice, we cannot argue that there is some inherent problem with polygamy which is absent in monogamy. Hence, prohibiting polygamy (for everyone) on the grounds—that polygamous marriages are inherently degrading to the women (or men) involved—cannot be an appropriate stance.
Now let us consider few real life situations that a singly-married couple can encounter.
Situation 1: A man/woman discovers that his/her spouse is barren and he/she at the same time aspire to have kids. In a situation as this,the man/woman can go for one of following options: (a) Suffer the deprivation of fatherhood/motherhood for life. (b) Divorce his barren spouse and get married to another woman/man who is not barren. (c) Adopt a child (d) Surrogacy (e) Marry another women/man if all the three individuals involved agree out of their will and understand all the consequences.
Now we cannot say that the first four options here are objectively better or have more merit than the last one. In fact, it can be argued that,surrogacy, effectively reduces a women to a baby making machine rather than a human being with emotions.
Situation 2: A man/woman whose spouse becomes chronically ill would have one of possible alternatives: (a) He/she may suppress his/her instinctive sexual needs for the rest of his life (b) He/she may divorce his sick spouse at the time when she/he needs his/her compassion most and get married to another woman/man (c) He/she could compromise by keeping his/her sick spouse, and secretly take for himself/herself one or more sex partners(which does not have any legal consequences for individuals involved in second relation) (d) Polygamy with consent and understanding of all individuals involved.
Again we cannot say that the first three options here are objectively better or have more merit than the last one. There could be many more such real life situations. The point to be noted here is that, in such situations, polygamy could be one of viable options and we just cannot outright reject it as immoral (because there is no objective argument for it). And definitely, declaring polygamy as absolutely illegal for everyone in the society does not seem to be the most appropriate stance.
Another point, which I previously mentioned in the article, which needs to be looked at in detail is that the popular opposition to polygamy that we see, is really an opposition to plural-marriage (i.e. legalized polygamy) and not to the polygamy as a whole i.e. polygamy which involves multiple ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’ is ignored and people seem to be comfortable with it. This is a problematic and hypocritical stance. Taking a second spouse, even with the free consent of all individuals involved, is reprehensible. On the other hand, cheating on the spouse, without his/her knowledge or consent (by keeping mistresses, visiting prostitutes etc.), is an ok thing to do legally.
Such stance does not protect women, but the men who exploit her (and vice-versa). This stance rather opens more avenues for a man/woman to enjoy extra-marital affairs without obligatory economic and financial consequences, leads to unnecessary abortions on part of women, single motherhood/fatherhood if a child is born and the list continues. This arrangement allows a man/woman to “play around” without taking responsibility for his/her sexual conduct. The point to keep in mind is that we need to avoid hypocrisy and be fair and just in our stance. And we need to actually work to protect women (and men) from possible negative impact of polygamy, if any, and not just play a game with ‘legal rules’ and feel good about it.
Finally to conclude this first part of the article, I would like to mention that my purpose behind writing down this article is not to pass a verdict on polygamy. As previously said, polygamy is a subjective topic and will naturally lead to different opinions (but it should be an informed opinion :)). Polygamy, like many other topic is complex and definitely more complex than what meets the eye. I only wanted to bring some of the points to the table that needs to be considered while seeking an objective point of view on Polygamy (rather than having an irrational and emotional outburst and taking extreme positions). Our stance on Polygamy (or other such issue) should be driven by an intent to ensure individual freedom, building a healthy society and actually solving the problems of society where all types of people (with their eccentricities) are embraced.
In the next part of this article I will delve deep into polygamy in context of Islam and Muslims. I will also cover the issue of gender demographics in relation to polygamy. I did not covered it in this part to avoid repeating it again in next part. Until then, may peace and joy forevermore be yours. Cheers :)
References
[2] Laurel Richardson, “Another World; More and More Single Women Are Opting for Affairs with Married Men, and the Trend Is Diminishing Feminist Progress,” Psychology Today, vol. 20, February 1986.
[2] Laurel Richardson, “The New Other Woman: Contemporary Single Women in Affairs with Married Men”, 1985
[3] “Extramarital Affairs Are Not So Common”; USA Today(Society for the Advancement of Education), vol. 126, May 1998.
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