Of marriage and the imperative of morality By Randeep Wadehra

Relationship by Nayantara Sahgal & EN Mangat Rai
Harper Collins. Pages: xvi + 316. Price: Rs. 395.
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.

Sammy Cahn, US songwriter. Our Town, ‘Love and Marriage’

Extramarital affairs invariably invite salacious comment. This thought floats around one’s mindscape as one begins to read this unusual book, which comprises love letters exchanged by the two public figures who were already married but not to each other. However, as one continues with the reading one has to struggle with one’s own conservative worldview even as one tries to understand the two protagonists.
Nayantara Sahgal, a talented author and niece of the late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and daughter of Vijaylakshmi Pandit, was married to a well-off businessman, Gautam Sahgal. The couple had three children, but their married life turned out to be a stormy one. Mangat Rai, a brilliant ICS officer with impeccable credentials, was married to a Bengali Christian lady doctor who is merely referred to as “Champa” in this volume. Obviously his marriage too was not exactly a happy one. The two get inexorably drawn towards each other.

Their correspondence reveals initial tentativeness before the ardour grips their senses. Even as their relationship progresses one notices the contrast in their attitudes. She is torn between her duty as a woman to preserve the health of her marriage and her own values that make her rebel against the limitations imposed by traditions. He, on the other hand, is a self-confessed non-conformist whose approach to extra-marital relationships is amoral. This reminds one of the late British writer Harriet Martineau’s words, “Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry”. And, Mangat Rai did love many a married woman while Nayantara sought male company other than that of her husband’s.

Understandably, both of them have not much good to say of their respective spouses. Gautam is painted as a possessive and jealous husband who is given to dark moods and even violence. He has been shown as someone who is incapable of understanding his wife’s need for friendship with other men. But, what she ignores is the universal truth as pointed out by the French poet Margaret of Navarre, “A father will have compassion on his son. A mother will never forget her child. A brother will cover the sin of his sister. But what husband ever forgave the faithlessness of his wife?” Similarly, Champa – in Mangat Rai’s letters – is someone who never really makes an attempt to communicate with and understand her husband. If she emerges as a faceless, one-dimensional and indifferent spouse then Gautam fares only slightly better as a two-dimensional wife-beating ogre.

But this book is much more than a mere airing of spousal perfidy or revelation of frivolous love-talk. It gives us an insight into the minds of two persons who, by any standards, are mature and responsible human beings caught in a clash of values that causes hurt all around. More importantly, it raises the issue of morality. Our society doesn’t approve of spousal infidelity, yet it has failed to come up with a universally acceptable solution for unhappy marriages – we know how messy and excruciatingly time consuming divorce cases can be. Again, morality is both multi-dimensional and dynamic as a concept. With the passage of time, as the society becomes more complex, old value systems are coming increasingly under the scanner. For example, today, virginity is not as sacrosanct as it was a few decades back. Live-in relationships have started gaining acceptance in the urban India, albeit with certain reservations.

But while old morality appears to be on the way out new morality has yet to take a concrete and practicable shape. But morality is essential for a cohesive society and the individual good. After all even the two “non-conformist” lovers had to eventually marry each other after a stint of live-in relationship. As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had observed, “Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately...This imperative is Categorical...This imperative may be called that of Morality.”

Period.

SWAGAT