Prabhupada: Child Marriage Highly Unpractical In The Western Society

by Radhaballabha I was in Mayapur with Srila Prabhupada and I had just brought him a Sanskrit prayer written by Gopavrndesa which Srila Prabhupada liked very much. He was reading the Sanskrit and praising him, how he had done it very nicely. At the same time I asked Prabhupada a question about Gopavrndesa. He had made a plan to marry a very young girl. He was nineteen and she was twelve. This had never happened before in our Society, so I told him that before he went ahead with such a thing I should ask Srila Prabhupada about it, because at that time he was under my supervision, being a member of the Sanskrit department in the Press.

I mentioned to Prabhupada that the same boy who had written this prayer also wanted to do this type of marriage and that I wanted to present it to him, because I didn't think it had even been done in our Movement before. As soon as I started to ask Prabhupada questions about it, the first thing he said was, "Marriage. They do not stick. That is the disease in your country. There is no objection, nineteen-years-old boy, twelve-years-old girl. It is a very good combination. But the culture is so bad that after a few days they will separate. To stick to one husband, one wife is very good. Even a man can marry more than one wife. That is allowed in the Vedic system. The difficulty is no one remains as wife, no one remains as husband. That is against Vedic. Otherwise man can have more than one wife. But women cannot marry more than one husband. But the system of boys and girls intermingling so freely in your country, there is no restriction. Naturally it becomes adulterated. That is the danger."

So I began to ask Prabhupada, "So he wants to know...," and then Prabhupada interrupted me. "Knowing or not knowing, they will not do it. So what is the use of consulting me?" Then he shouted, "They will break." He shouted angrily again, "They will promise and they will break. How can you maintain it standardized? They will break." So I told Prabhupada, "They will have to be responsible people." And he said in a disgusted way, "They will never become. So what is the use of consulting me? They will never become. Almost impossible. They will not keep standardized. What is the use of consulting me? They will promise and they will break."

So then I told Prabhupada, "All right, I'll tell them that." Then he paused for a minute and said, "Otherwise there is no objection. I married, my wife was eleven years old." I told Prabhupada, "You were responsible, though.'' And he said, "Everyone is, in India. That is Indian culture still." So I asked Prabhupada, "When they agree at this young age, they should wait until they get older, right?" and Prabhupada said, "Yes." Then he said, "Generally, a girl attains puberty at fourteen years. Thirteen years in India because it is tropical climate." In other words, he said thirteen or fourteen in India. Then he said, "I think in America they attain puberty not before fifteen, sixteen years. So although a girl is married before puberty, she is not allowed to go to the husband until she has attained puberty. Formerly, in our days also, after attaining puberty, there is another, second marriage. Then the husband and wife mix."

I asked Prabhupada, "Is there a minimum age for the man?" He said, "No. Minimum age means generally the husband must be older than the wife. At least five years' difference." Then I asked Prabhupada, "What is the most amount of years they can be different?" Then he said, "Man has no maximum. Even an eighty-years man can marry a sixteen-year-old girl," and he was laughing while he said this, and he got me laughing quite a bit too. That's when a devotee who had a twelve-year-old daughter that wanted to marry her to a man twenty-six, and we thought that too much difference. Dvarakanatha had mentioned it to me, but we both thought it was too much difference so I figured I would ask Prabhupada anyway, and Prabhupada said, "Yes, that is too much difference." Then Prabhupada said, "But eight years, ten years (either he said "is best" or "at most"), that is healthy. In no case the girl must not be older than the boy. That's not good at all."

Then I asked Prabhupada, because there was some misconception, these devotees that were getting ready to do it, "At the time when they agree but are not yet old enough, they don't associate at all, do they?" Prabhupada said, "No. Even they can be married, but no association." I thanked Prabhupada and told him that I just wanted to make sure they weren't doing anything un-bona fide and I'd pass on the message. Then of course, as Prabhupada predicted, they promised and they broke. Prabhupada knew. So he realized that this system, at least for those who were brought up not from birth in Krsna consciousness, is highly unpractical. Right from the beginning when Prabhupada heard it was going on he was very doubtful. Once again, his transcendental vision proved itself out.