Today is International Women's Day:

Do women have equal rights ?

WOMEN'S DAY: Under Thesawalamai or customary Tamil law, the woman on marriage passes from the guardianship of the father to the guardianship of the husband who becomes the sole and irrevocable attorney of the wife.

Every Tamil Woman requires her husband's signature to deal with property.

This is impractical and costly for those in the legal profession as well as for the client.

A qualified Tamil woman may, for example, deal with millions of rupees on behalf of her employer as an accountant or financial investor, however, to deal with her own personal investments she requires her husband's written consent.

Sharia (Islamic) Law

Customary Muslim law permits females to marry at the age of 12. At a time when there is great debate about the detriment caused to children when enlisted as child soldiers, shouldn't we be thinking of abolishing the above law?

Divorce Laws under the general law

Divorce laws in SL are archaic and obsolete; they were introduced by the British. There are only three grounds for divorce in Sri Lanka they are malicious desertion, incurable impotency or adultery.

Majority of the divorces brought before Sri Lankan courts as a result of incompatibility are brought under the ground malicious desertion.

Either party provides an address to show that one of the parties are not resident in the matrimonial home; as the laws don't evolve with the times people are finding ways to get around them. Therefore, it is high time we make incompatibility of temperament a ground for divorce.

Ironically, although it was the British who introduced these laws, in Britain, divorce is possible on the all encompassing ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage.

For those who would say this is a conservative society and we are not ready to embrace a "western" way of life, remember before the British arrived, Kandyan law applied to the whole country apart from a few coastal areas and the far north.

Robert Knox who spent 19 years in Sri Lanka in the 17 century, had this to say on Sri Lankan marriage, "The marriage ceremony, which, among nations with stricter ideas of chastity is looked upon with a degree of mystery and veneration, is a matter of small importance among the Ceylonese, and seems to be at all attended to only with a view to entitle the parties to share in each others goods, and to give their relations an opportunity of observing that they have married into their own caste."

Kandyan customary law recognized two types of marriage, "diga" and "binna".

These forms of marriage invested the women with an independent right to property in the event of break down of the relationship and were markedly disadvantageous to the man. He was 'tolerated' in the home as long as he pleased both his wife and her new family.

These customs were unpalatable to the misogynist Christian British Colonizer who introduced to Sri Lanka the notion that women are inferior to men.

Remember The Bible says woman committed the Original Sin and that woman was created from a rib of a man. In the 21st century, laws that originated with religion should be adopted to suit modern society.

Marriage is a complex institution that sadly may end in divorce for numerous reasons. Proving grounds such as impotence, adultery and desertion are a waste of money and court time.

Changes would not only benefit women but would equally benefit men. After all, there may be very few men, if any, who would appreciate a court publicly declaring him incurably impotent!

All the above recommended changes to the law are politically sensitive. The government is therefore, reluctant to make changes as the leaders of the relevant ethnic or religious groups, for political reasons, would incite the people into believing this is a blow to their culture or faith.

Effort should be made to initiate public debate, such that politicians and other interested parties would know the cause is genuine.

Singapore an Asian country similar to Sri Lanka, being a former British colony with a multi ethnic population, does not entertain customary laws.

The whole population falls under one law- the law of Singapore. Their system is more advanced and conducive to development. Let us be progressive and not petty minded and as Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, correctly identified, "Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind".