(For those coming back to this page for latest on IrBM law. The latest news is, this marriage bill presented by Congress government in Rajya sabha has lapsed as it could not be tabled in Loksabha. Now the new BJP government under Mr. Narendra Modi is keen to bring it up afresh. Law minister Sadananda Gowda is allegedly working on it with other cabinet ministers )

What is IrBM Law - Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage or IrBM law is the upcoming “Marriage Law (Amendment) Bill” in India.

The IrBM law is an evidence of the growing misandry (male hatred) in the society and how the society treats men as disposable entities. Even in this modern age when we talk of Gender Equality, the stereotypical patriarchal notion that the financial responsibility of a family should lay on a husband still prevails in the society, and this pervert social mindset is the root cause of abuse of men, especially husbands in a marriage.

As per Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth”. IrBM law will further violate the rights of Men, like other Anti Men laws such as 498a and DV. In such a situation, where men are already burdened with so much of load, another law which makes divorce extremely costly for them is bound to worsen the situation of Men.

Major drawbacks of the IrBM law in the latest form:

1. This marriage bill recognizes “Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage” as a ground for divorce by wife only.

2. While IrBM law empowers the wife to oppose the divorce at any point of time, if the husband has filed for divorce, it restrains the husband from doing so when the wife has filed for the same.

3. The IrBM law also contains a clause by which courts will be empowered to snatch away the property/assets of husband and give it away to wife. Already there have been many instances where husband has been asked to provide maintenance to wife more than what he earns or even if he is not earning.

4. IrBM law only talks about women’s rights and has no considerations whatsoever for men’s basic human right to live with dignity and have his own shelter.

5. Developed countries like China have already realized the drawbacks of such a law and have taken remedial action to revoke this kind of law. But Indian government is not ready to accept the truth in its fascination with giving freebies to one gender at the cost of other, making is a zero sum transaction instead of win-win situation.



Brief Background:

This bill was introduced by the Govt. of India by way of the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010 which sought to amend the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act. However, the bill contained clauses that facilitated financial extortion of men.

The bill read that courts would have power not to grant the divorce unless the wife was paid adequate amount of money under the cute name of “Financial Security of Woman”.

In case there are certain exceptional cases of financial insecurity for women, they do not warrant division of property or alimony. Rather, they can be very well handled by providing them with interest free educational/vocational through gramin/cooperative/nationalized banks.

And the IrBM bill also mentioned about special powers being given only to wives to oppose the divorce if the wife was unhappy with the money she received from the husband.

Such clauses being outright anti-male and gender-biased in nature were vehemently opposed by various men’s rights activists and organizations, who even deposed in front of the Standing Committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice. The panel, chaired by ShriSantaramNaik, was presented with the objections raised by men’s rights organizations who sought to make the bill gender-neutral and ensure that no man faced any kind of financial hardship because of gender-biased clauses in the bill.

The common Man has been let down on 26 Aug 13 by Rajyasabha members of parliament, when they passed Marriage bill / IrBM bill for amendment of marriage law in spite of opposition of Men right activist. Next the bill will be presented in Loksabha.

Oppositions ignored:

However, the objections raised by men’s rights organizations regarding the provisions of IrBM law have been conveniently ignored by the standing committee panel, that has gone ahead and recommended the very clauses to the Govt. of India for the bill to be tabled, to which the men’s rights organizations has raised objections against.

IrBM law in other countries

The current marriage bill is highly biased against men and their family, it’s provisions have been cherry picked from different countries, without any check and balances to make it unbiased. To explain my point I have created a table at the bottom of the blog, showing the comparison of the provisions of the last marriage bill draft with respect to similar law in other countries.

Bad effects of the law a reason to stop marriage bill

1. Husband purchases a property just 6 months after marriage out of his hard-earned savings earned before marriage and his marriage breaks and he loses money and assets due to IrBM law. In that case the husband will be doomed.

2. Men start fearing this law and stop buying real estate which adversely affects the economy of the country.

3. Husband has dependent parents and owns a single property and if that goes to wife post-divorce, how will the husband take care of his old parents? Is the concept of family restricted to only husband-wife in the Indian context?

What, if the family is a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) owning a single joint property? Will the wife get all of that? What about other sibling’s share in it?

Major pain areas in IrBM law:

1. Marriages are tumultuous for men. This fact reflects in the suicide statistics that are published year-over-year by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and it’s the married men who top the list of suicide. Suicide rate of husbands’ increases 4 times the rate of wives’ and 6 times the rate they are born. Every 9 minutes a married man commits suicide. This fact clearly proves how bad marriages turn out for men and if divorces are also made costlier by way of such laws, this will lead to further increase in suicides by men. Is the Government of India trying to facilitate the suicides of men?

2. There is one more law in the pipeline – Matrimonial Property (Rights of Women upon Marriage Act), 2012 – which talks about making wife the co-owner of husband’s properties right at the time of marriage; then, why this IrBM law? Why is the Government hell bent on making redundant anti-male laws and convert marriage into an extortion industry thriving on men?

3. In a democratic law making process, objections raised by a particular group or individual cannot be ignored without any proper justification. The panel has failed to give any just and proper reason as to why the objections raised should not be considered.

4. As per Dowry Prohibition Act, any demand of cash/kind in relation to marriage is “Dowry”. Is not this law legalizing dowry to be paid to wife from husband under the cute name of “Financial Security of Wife”?

5. Right to Equality is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution of India and cannot be disrespected under any circumstances. Current bill thoroughly violates it, as far as men are concerned.

6. Feminists are claiming that nearly 80% of women do not have a place to live post-divorce. This is completely false because no such study has ever been conducted. India does not have any standard data collected as to how many divorces are happening, of those how many own a house and how many do not, how many are nuclear, joint and HUF families. Without any such data in place, any claims made are just airy claims without any data. Formulating a law on airy data is dangerous.

7. Though IrBM law is being presented as a law that will relieve the problems in divorce, but actually it will ruin the peace in marriage due to biased provisions.

The Real need of the hour is to gather all the support and educate people to stop marriage bill IrBM :

1. Marriages and Divorces should not be made a property-transfer-bureau.

2. If property division is to be done then wife’s property and her share in her ancestral property must also be considered and then division must be done equally irrespective whether the husband or wife gains.

3. Duration of marriage must be a crucial factor of consideration. The difference between a 2 month marriage and a 20 year marriage must be clearly understood.

4. Property division must take into account contributions made by both the spouses and also the fact that the property was acquired from wealth earned post marriage and not from previous savings.

5. Any and all outstanding financial liabilities on the property like loan for property, loan against property, mortgage etc. must also be equally divided and wife must be made to be equally paid for it. If she is not working then she should get her share from her ancestral property.

6. Both the partners should have equal and unbridled right to oppose divorce and there should be no gender-bias in this.

7. There should not be any power wrested with the courts to decide upon property transfer or stalling of proceedings as the Indian judiciary is highly incompetent and has not shown positive trends favoring men when it comes to disposing cases. The Indian judiciary is highly anti-male and does not consider twice before ordering a man to either “sell his kidney” or “beg, borrow or steal” just to pay maintenance to his estranged wife. What is the guarantee that the same judiciary will make judicious decisions when it comes to this law?

Institute a National Commission for Men, that can systematically collect issues, concerns and problems of men, study them and recommend to the Govt. about measures to be taken to address those problems.

If passed in its current form, it will lead to a lot of chaos and will adversely affect the property market of India that can have a lot of effect on the economy of the country.

At a time when modern countries like China are realizing the serious drawbacks and are withdrawing it http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8714097/China-tries-to-stop-women-marrying-for-money-rather-than-love.html Indian government is proposing such archaic law which is not a good sign for equality.

Request all my readers to take steps to stop such biased archaic & draconian law that will destroy men & their families. TO stop this MAD bill you can do the following activities

1) Sign the online petition objecting to IrBM law https://www.change.org/p/narendra-modi-prime-minister-of-india-sadananda-gowda-law-minister-of-india-amit-shah-bjp-national-president-roll-back-unconstitutional-sections-in-amendments-to-marriage-laws

2) Send SMS, WhatsApp message etc to all men in your contact list, informing them about this draconian law that can make them homeless. Inform all the men you know and all the female you know who care for men in their life (Brother, father friends etc) about the dangerous provisions in this law that will benefit one woman (wife) while making two or more woman (man’s mother & sister )homeless

3) Talk to your ministers, politicians, bureaucrats etc, ask them to stop the IrBM law in its current form. The contact details of current Member of parliament are available on this link - http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/Members/membercontactdetail.aspx

4) Participate in social media campaign like Face book, Twitter etc using tag #IrBM law or #StopMarriageBill send message to the Prime minister Mr. Narendra Modi & Law minister Mr. Sadananda Gowda to create gender neutral laws not anti male laws.

5) Participate in the protest march which are taking place globally and organized by modern Indians who want Gender equality in rights and responsibilities

6) Take whatever steps you can to stop this law without worrying about the impact you make, as even a little impact by your effort is better than no impact due to no effort.

7) Create awareness among the people, on what is IrBM law and what are its repercussions for them and their family. Each man who owns assets and each woman who has a brother, son or father will get affected when they suffer due to this law.

Every Indian has to oppose this marriage bill in the current anti male form as the repercussions shall be very bad. Parents of Men having single home can be kicked out of home after IRBM law when the court gives the rights to stay in the home to the wife, without giving a thought to the parents who will become homeless. Husband murder and groom burning will increase exponentially. Just for your reference society does not care about rights of Men and atrocities on Men always go un noticed example there are millions of cases like Missing activist Ramcharan Ram’s whose bones were only could be found, his wife had killed him for money and property http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Missing-activists-bones-found-wife-killed-him/articleshow/20963903.cms his wife Janki Devi (45) and her brother-in-law Vinod Kumar (35) have been arrested. Men who fall victim to groom burning rarely get justice http://www.lifenstory.com/user914/groom_burning Such news of male victims are easily ignored by biased society. If IrBM law gets passed woman will marry only for getting rich by divorce through IrBM law.

Men everywhere will rethink property purchase after IrBM law passes. Same will reverberate across http://www.dnaindia.com/pune/1669289/report-pune-men-may-have-to-rethink-on-property-purchase

Another law which is heavily misused is rape law. I have shown the drawbacks of this lopsided law in one of my other article http://lifenstory.com/gospel_truth

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