Anish Sharma (name changed), 49, had proposed divorce early on in his marriage. It didn’t happen then but 22 years after they got married, they have filed for divorce. Sharma and his wife, who is 42, had a difficult marriage from the beginning. “Ours was an arranged marriage and there was not much bonding between us,” says Sharma. He had been in a relationship before that had not worked out. To make matters worse, Sharma, who used to work in the army then (now retired) would be posted in remote areas away from his family. Whenever the couple met, there would be bitter altercations.

Sharma’s wife would constantly accuse him of infidelities, an allegation he says is unfounded. Things came to such a pass that early on in their marriage, though they had two daughters by then, Sharma had suggested divorce. His wife had turned down the suggestion, saying she was not financially capable of looking after herself. Sharma also felt that he didn’t want the kids to grow up in a broken home. But things changed down the years. Sharma’s wife started an event management firm with a partner in 2006. The marriage, meanwhile, continued to worsen. This time, Sharma’s wife suggested an end to their marriage. Last year they filed for divorce on mutual consent and are waiting for the final annulment next month. They have one comfort: the daughters are grown up.

SPLITSVILLE COUPLES: (From top) Former US Vice-President Al Gore and Tipper Gore, cricketer Md Azharuddin (seen here with his second wife Sangeeta Bijlani) and Naureen, and film actor Aamir Khan and Reena Datta split after long years of marriage

Ladies first

The Sharmas are not alone. Increasingly couples, who have been married unhappily for many years, are opting for divorce. The rate of divorce has been going up in the recent decades in the country. Contrary to popular belief, divorce is not only an urban phenomenon. Couples from the districts and small towns of India in significant numbers are taking recourse to law to end their marriage even as divorce loses some of its taboo. Contrary to popular belief again, divorce is not restricted to younger couples who find the going tough for five or seven years and decide to end things as was the trend even 10 years ago, lawyers stress. City lawyers claim that around 10-15 per cent of long-term marriages, which have lasted for more than 15 years, are ending in divorce now. “The number is growing fast,” says public prosecutor Asimesh Goswami. Sharma’s lawyer Maitrayee Trivedi Dasgupta claims that there is always an immediate cause that prompts one to end a long-term marriage. In the case of the Sharmas it was the wife’s economic independence.

Dasgupta adds in many cases relationships suffer because of the presence of another person in the spouse’s life.

As with divorces in general, a large number of the late divorces are being initiated by women, especially women who can take care of themsleves. Financial independence attained at any stage in life can inspire the desire to break free. Anita Saha (name changed) says she was bored with her marriage, for decades. The boredom, which was bad enough, was compounded by the fact that her husband was not exactly easy-going. She couldn’t go on.

“My husband and I had our happy years but we drifted apart. My husband is a difficult man to live with. Besides, as a marine engineer, he would sail for months so even if we had a misunderstanding just days before he left for the sea, we could not sort out our differences. Phone calls were rare while he sailed,” says Saha, who is in her late-40s. Those days phone calls were not easy from the ship. Besides long-distance calls cannot replace conversations. After the initial years, Saha did not want to sail with her husband.

“Then my son started going to college and had a girlfriend. It suddenly dawned on me one day that he did not need his mother as much now and I did not need my marriage. Since my divorce I’ve taken up a job in another city and I am enjoying my freedom, both economic and personal,” adds Saha, a resident of Mumbai now.

She split from her husband after 25 years, but claims they are on cordial terms. She and her husband parted with dignity, like many other older couples, choosing divorce by mutual consent (Section 13B of the Hindu Marriage Act and Section 28 of the Special Marriage Act). They felt that even if years of bitterness have piled up, they owed it to each other to be pleasant for the sake of the years spent together.

Sometimes it is just a desire to be free. “A woman waited till her daughter was settled abroad before she opted out of a 25-year-old marriage. The couple in fact seemed quite fond of each other. There was no bitterness between them,” says advocate Pratik Prakash Banerjee. The wife claimed she wanted her space. She had missed that all her married life. She had enough money. “Nothing could stop her from doing her own thing now,” says Banerjee. What perhaps started as a trend from the West has become assimilated deeply into the Indian social fabric. “The social taboo attached to divorce is fading. People now have the option of walking out of a bad marriage and starting life afresh, often with a new partner,” says Malini Bhattacharya, the chairperson of state women’s commission. “Some older women are also ready to live alone rather than in a bad marriage. Maybe it was the welfare of the children that was stopping them in the initial years,” she adds. Grown-up children, too, can sometimes encourage their warring parents to split. “A 25-year-old who approached me, says he wanted his parents to separate rather than fight all their lives,” claims Shibaprosad Mukherjee, an advocate of the high court.

Money matters

The financial independence of women plays a part in the “peaceful” divorces too. “If the wife is not financially secure, she may oppose the split. Settlement of monetary issues between couples is not always pleasant, and those are the times when they fight tooth and nail in a long-drawn legal war,” says public prosecutor Goswami. Many women start their careers late and achieve financial independence thereafter. Even if they had wanted to split early, they had to wait. But not all couples part peacefully, even if they have lived with each other for years. Sharma is still bitter, though he and his wife parted on mutual consent. The most-cited reason for divorce remains incompatibility, followed by financial complications.

“A man sought permission from all his grown-up sons before he filed for divorce after nearly 35 years of marriage. The couple had never bonded, but like many old-timers they did not want their children to grow up in a broken home. But the wife was opposed to the divorce and soon a bitter legal fight ensued,” says Chandreyee Alam, a high court advocate. Perhaps for such couples the recently proposed bill by the UPA government, which provides “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” as a ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act or the Special Marriage Act, can come in handy.

Touted as a step towards making contested divorce cases less time-consuming and in line with the no-fault divorce of the West, the new Bill (when enforced) seeks to empower the judges of lower courts with discretionary powers when a fight reaches a deadlock. Previously this right rested only with the Supreme Court.

“Irretrievable breakdown of marriage”, in fact, seems more prone to be happening over a long period of cohabitation than a shorter one. Prasun Ghosh, senior advocate and partner of Sanderson Morgan, speaks of a septuagenarian who wanted a divorce. “One of my clients was a 76-year-old man who wanted to split from his wife, who was 68, after more than 30 years of marriage,” he says. The couple had been settled for years in London. Four years ago they returned to Calcutta to file for divorce. They were childless and over the years had been drifting apart. The wife would accuse the husband of not spending enough money on her, specially as she was “always” ailing. The husband felt that the wife feigned illness to attract attention. He could not tolerate her nagging and she his indifference. “Thus, even after 30 years they decided to split,” says Ghosh.