It appears that there is growing a tendency of living together in our society that is very unfortunate. Such immoral tendency will definitely shatter the moral fabric of our society and the collective life will be full of immoral vulgarity devoid of peace and happiness. I regret to mention here that a singer of our country once said that she preferred living together to marriage though she withdrew it soon afterwards because of the social pressure. And there may be some few other people who think like that. In fact such notion about life is against the teachings of all religions as it is against the social values of Bangladesh. If people begin to lead a reckless life without marital bond, it will be harmful for a long-term relation. Family life will definitely be broken. The children and the women will be the most affected ones. Because in that case men will have little sense of responsibility to rear the children nor to maintain the family and such relation is bound to broken in course of time and ultimately the offspring will be helpless and will fall at the mercy of society. And the woman will be abandoned as the man can desert her at any time and begin to practice "living together" with another woman.
It is a serious threat to our social and religious values. There are few people who are freely mixing with the opposite sex and there are some other who are supporting it. Such tendency of free mixing may contaminate the whole society. In this regard it should be mentioned here that the definition of punishable sexual crime as it is given in article 497 of our penal code is very much fallacious and repugnant to the spirit of our religion. It is said there that if someone has sexual contact with a woman who is a wife of another man and if he does it without the consent of the husband then it will be considered adultery and the accused man will be given punishment. According to this definition if the person commits adultery with the consent of the husband of the woman concerned then it will not come under the definition of sexual crime. Moreover it seems that sexual contact outside marriage is valid for the unmarried according to this section. So this definition of punishable sexual crime is obviously inconsistent with the teachings of all religions and the moral values of our country as well. Such provision in our penal code is very much alarming as it may lead our society to a permissive one. In fact, this article is one of the legacies of the British colonial regime and this must be corrected to bring all kinds of sexual contact outside marriage to book. It is the strong hold of religion and strong social values that people are not taking the opportunity of the breach of such provision. As the social context is changing, the Govt. should give attention to the matter and amend the article with the shortest possible time. Any sexual relation outside marriage should be defined as punishable crime and given a reasonable level of punishment.
by Md. Mahmudul Hasan