What a shame!

[pavalamani pragasam]

'not harmful to anyone' is a very deceptive, dangerous term. Why do we have a government? Why do we have traffic rules? Why do we have railway stations, signals, stationmasters? Why do we have district collectors? Why do we have ration shops? why do we have police stations? why? Why? Why? Because we want to be governed/guided/ protected into smooth system of life. Just like our civic laws there are basic moral laws to ensure smooth, happy life with meaningful relationships.

Why do you think a person's private life does not affect the society in general? How do you conclude the prevalent customs do not affect the mindset and social behaviour of growing children? Children ape what they see- are we not responsible to teach them loyal, binding, lasting relationships? Teach them to live guilt-free, happy life? Want them them to cherish, relish warm familial feelings? No rules, no regulations, no discipline, no control, no norms mean chaos, utter disorder. The argument of not harming anyone is fallacious. Let us not encourage our posterity to shirk their duties. No human being is free from 'duties'!

[NOV]

among the why's, why isn't there a "why do we have a brain?"

a happy warm family is usually an exception, not the rule. millions of women stay in a marriage not because of happiness or warmness but because of their helplessness.
children of such families are by no stretch of mind, "healthy" children. ask them what they have learnt from seeing their parent's marriage and most likely they will tell you they want to be different.

hey, I cant believe this: I am arguing for independent women while PP madam is arguing for keeping them trapped.

[pavalamani pragasam]

This is exactly the the trend I'm up in arms against: that all marriages are failures; all women are drowning in tears of marital woes; marriage is a shackle; women need to be emancipated from a desperate trap and so forth. The media and a host of 'liberationists' are crying hoarse for freedom for fettered women! They are shouting from every platform they can get on! Highly ridiculous and absurd to say all marriages are failures, all married women are just enduring their bondage without happiness; all households are battlefields making children grow up into perverts and misfits; warmth of the hearth is a myth etc etc. Atrocious falsehoods! Height of cynicism and pessimism. Happy families are not not exceptions, but unhappy marriages are. Do we cut our nose to spite our face? Do we do away with a wise system just because there are a few misadventures? The sensible thing will be to improve the system and not to abolish it.

Wrong priorities and mischieous propaganda about feminine emancipation are the main reason for increasing marriage woes/failures. Once discontent creeps in it is difficut to make a woman see sense. She is being a puppet in the hands of self-seeking charlatans. Poor woman! And poor man!!!!

[pavalamani pragasam]

What is independence? No responsibilities? No duties? No maternal cares? No cooking, no washing, no nappies, no night vigils, no mentor, no master- this is the lure the modern is falling in for! Huh! What an independence! No pain, no gain. Life is give and take.

[NOV]

PP madam, life is more grey than white or black.

In the past you would have recalled the meaning of "culture" from your own knowledge or looked up a dictionary. Today, you just googled and came up with more than enough information.

You can adapt to technology because you have opened your mind to it.

That's all there is to it.

[pavalamani pragasam]

What has open mind to do with this? aattukkallum ammiyum pOkalaam, dictionary will be replaced by google; but it is a woman who bears and delivers the baby unless some unimaginable, abominable scientific invention makes man do it!!! What I mean is certain things can and must change; certain things cannot and must not change- for the good of mankind.

[Shakthiprabha]

As long as we live in a society, for harmonious living, reasonable moral responsibility is MUCH NEEDED. That is why India still has family values and happy children around. Agreed that every moral value comes with right parental guidance....and LAW NEED NOT, CANNOT AND SOUNDS ILLOGICAL to intervene into personal affairs of any xyz.

But such OPEN announcement as a judgement, need to be checked, cause many young minds are vulnerable and increasingly not guided in right path. Mind control is increasingly difficult for man, when no check is had, then it is bound to be let loose. What is let loose today as 40 percent (assuming) would become 60...and more... Harmony would be COMPLETELY lost at what cost? Definitely most ethical and moral guidelines are inscribed for happy living.

Also like what pp maam said, amongst many sections of individuals today high mis-conceptions about "dividing our roles" in society as men and women and one role is sadly UNDER ESTIMATED to be a submissive role (by women themselves) . Woman should take up her role proudly, definitely it does pave well for healthy society, balanced society. This DOES NOT MEAN keeping quiet on alarming issues and giving up one's right totally and live a life of puppet.

Law cannot and should not intervene, it is INDIVIDUAL MAN AND WOMAN who is gonna decide about pre or post marital sex or who they are gonna live iwth or change partner etc. However declaring it openly AND PASSING IT as a judgement or verdict is bound to have its ... effect.

Yeah...nothing can be done...times change...values are bound to change..What was there prevelent 200 years back is no longer in vogue...so...lets wait n watch

ps: an after thought:

Extreme sensitivity of our "cultural folks" finally results in making every issue with utterance of word "Sex" as taboo and against culture! They dont mind taking such issues to court and talking, evaluating commenting and disucssing NUMEROUS times! What would have been dismissed as a normal hear-say comment now every boy n girl in most street corners talks discusses and opines.

[podalangai]

Law cannot and should not intervene, it is INDIVIDUAL MAN AND WOMAN who is gonna decide about pre or post marital sex or who they are gonna live iwth or change partner etc. However declaring it openly AND PASSING IT as a judgement or verdict is bound to have its ... effect.

Shakthiprabha, what should the courts have done? People filed criminal charges against Khushboo on the basis that she was instigating criminal behaviour. Instigating criminal behaviour is a crime. Should they have let Khushboo go to jail so they could have avoided pronouncing on the question of whether pre-marital sex and living together are criminal? Would that have been just? If the courts were to find her innocent, the only way open to them is to hold as they did.

Once the case was brought against her, the courts were literally left with no choice but to pronounce - in the form of a judgment or verdict - on the issue of whether consensual pre-marital sex is a crime. They said that it isn't. And indeed it isn't under Indian law - Indian law does not criminalise consensual pre-marital sex between people above the age of consent (and, arguably, the constitution would prevent its criminalisation). That is literally all the court said in this case.

[podalangai]

stongly condemn SC saying pre marrital sex

acceptable and not unlawful

The Supreme Court was only pronouncing on the issue of whether pre-marital sex is criminal or not. Does anyone here seriously think that two teenagers who have sex before marriage should be branded criminals, go through a criminal trial in the Magistrate's court, and have criminal sentences passed against them? Why all this hue and cry about the judgment then? Whether pre-marital sex is a good thing or not is an entirely different issue from that of whether criminal law is the right instrument to reduce its incidence in society.

But this is the same SC which allowed gay marrige also

Sankara, the Supreme Court has not allowed gay marriage. They've only said that people cannot be sent to jail for being homosexuals. That's it.

[PatchyBoy]

Pre-marital sex is nothing new to Indian culture. It has existed from the days of Kunthi and Karna. We can argue till we are blue in the face that Kunti was still a virgin and Karna's birth was not a result of sex. That reminds me of a passage from Dr. Abraham Kovoor's book, where he states that making young children believe that the birth of a divine personality was the result of God rubbing his toe against the mother's navel and not as a result of sex, only results in the child believing that the navel needs to be protected to remain a virgin. I cannot understand why we are kicking up a fuss about it now.

There seem to be a number of people here who condone pre-marital sex and none of what they say has been taken to court. Then why should the SC waste its time with what Kushboo said? This in a country, where, if a common man commits a grave crime, it probably takes years to get a judgement. Is Kushboo's statement so world-changing that it has to be treated such?

One integral part of Indian culture seems to be hypocrisy. By the very act of making sex a taboo subject and portraying it as a evil thing, aren't we subtly piquing the curiosity of our children? Wouldn't we be better off educating our children about sex? By holding on to history in the name of culture and heritage, we are only hampering our own progress.

Rajan