LONDON: Forget long walks and calorie-controlled diets, the sure shot way to live a longer life is: get a second wife.
That's the conclusion of a new research, which has suggested that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.
After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.
The latest research might solve a long-standing puzzle in human biology: Why do men live so long? This question only makes sense after asking the same for women, who - unlike nearly all other animals - live long past the menopause.
One answer seems to be a phenomenon called the grandmother effect. For every 10 years a woman survives past the menopause, she gains two additional grandchildren, Lummaa says.
It seems that doting on and spoiling grandchildren aids their survival, as well as furthering some of their grandmother's genes. Men, by contrast, can reproduce well into their 60s and even 70s and 80s, and most researchers assumed this explained their longevity.
But Lummaa and colleague Andy Russell wondered whether other factors explained the long lifespan of men, such as a grandfather effect. To test this possibility, the team analysed church-gathered records for 25,000 Finns from the 18th and 19th centuries.
But the grandfather effect was soon ruled out. Lummaa and Russell next wondered whether the constraints of human physiology explain male longevity. If female survival is the main explanation for male longevity, then monogamous and polygamous men would live for about the same length of time. Instead, it seems that fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity. Men, then, live long because they're fertile well into their grey years.
Bigamy: An issue of one too many
The Law Commission recently recommended a good way to prevent a married Hindu man from taking another wife: Deeming such a marriage illegal even if he converted to Islam before he wed a second time.
That Law Commission report, 'Preventing Bigamy via Conversion to Islam', essentially highlighted an important and little-known truth - namely that more Hindus than Muslims commit bigamy.
This has been true for more than a quarter of a century. In 1974, a government survey found Muslims to account for 5.6% of all bigamous marriages and upper-caste Hindus accounting for 5.8%. The difference may appear to be small but it is big, in real terms. The 1971 census records 45.3 crore Hindus and six crore Muslims. Allowing for women and children to make up 65% of each group, as many as one crore Hindu men had more than one wife in 1971, compared to 12 lakh Muslim men.
The trend continues, says sociologist Asghar Ali Engineer, head of Mumbai's Institute of Islamic Studies. "The survey was conducted on a large sample in all parts of India and the report wasn't made public. Further, polygamy was higher in South India than in the north, and more so among rich and middle-class Hindus than the poorer sections."
Go back still further – to 1961 – and the census records polygamy to be highest among adivasis, Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus, with Muslims right at the end. Engineer says the law matters only up to a point. "With both survey results coming out after the Hindu Marriage Act was passed in 1955, it shows that bigamy is basically a problem of a male-dominant culture than religion."
Bigamy disadvantages Hindu women more than Muslim, says Chandigarh sociologist Nirmal Sharma. This, because a Hindu man will desert his lawfully wedded wife to live with another, while the multiple wives of Muslim men are entitled to equal legal and social rights. "Closet bigamy in Hindus is worse than open polygamy among Muslims," he says.
Fiza alias Anuradha Bali, who married Haryana's deputy CM after the pair converted to Islam, says, "Our laws were far more liberal in ancient times. Most kings and many of our mythological figures had more than one wife." Though Chand has converted back to Hinduism, Fiza insists she remains his "customary wife while the first one remains the legally-wedded one. There is no way to get out of a dual marriage in spite of a legal ban."
Supreme Court lawyer Praveen Agarwal cautions that Hindu bigamists often go scot free because "the courts can do little until there's a formal complaint." And this is not always possible because in many cases, the two wives don't even know of each other's existence, says Agarwal. He adds that it is relatively easy for a Hindu man to remarry because temples don't hold records. "However, if the matter goes to court, the second marriage is declared null and void."
Take the case of K Suryanarayana, the Indian engineer killed in Afghanistan, who left behind a second wife and daughter. Though she laid claim to compensation from the government, the court ruled in favour of the first wife.
Agarwal suggests that stringent and time-consuming Hindu divorce may force many men to resort to bigamy. "Instead of going in for long-drawn-out and financially debilitating divorce procedures, men simply desert the first wife and marry again."
Engineer says that bigamy is not as rampant among Muslims as believed. The Quran only offers conditional permission for a man to take four wives: in times of war or a crisis that sees women outnumber men. "The 2001 census found 935 females for every 1000 males in India. Among Muslims, it was 930: 1000. So it would be difficult to find even one wife for every man," he says. Engineer says polygamy will never cease to exist. Perhaps it's better to regulate it, he says
Polygamy is secret to longevity
LONDON: Forget long walks and calorie-controlled diets, the sure shot way to live a longer life is: get a second wife.
That's the conclusion of a new research, which has suggested that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.
After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.
The latest research might solve a long-standing puzzle in human biology: Why do men live so long? This question only makes sense after asking the same for women, who - unlike nearly all other animals - live long past the menopause.
One answer seems to be a phenomenon called the grandmother effect. For every 10 years a woman survives past the menopause, she gains two additional grandchildren, Lummaa says.
It seems that doting on and spoiling grandchildren aids their survival, as well as furthering some of their grandmother's genes. Men, by contrast, can reproduce well into their 60s and even 70s and 80s, and most researchers assumed this explained their longevity.
But Lummaa and colleague Andy Russell wondered whether other factors explained the long lifespan of men, such as a grandfather effect. To test this possibility, the team analysed church-gathered records for 25,000 Finns from the 18th and 19th centuries.
But the grandfather effect was soon ruled out. Lummaa and Russell next wondered whether the constraints of human physiology explain male longevity. If female survival is the main explanation for male longevity, then monogamous and polygamous men would live for about the same length of time. Instead, it seems that fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity. Men, then, live long because they're fertile well into their grey years.
Bigamy: An issue of one too many
The Law Commission recently recommended a good way to prevent a married Hindu man from taking another wife: Deeming such a marriage illegal even if he converted to Islam before he wed a second time.
That Law Commission report, 'Preventing Bigamy via Conversion to Islam', essentially highlighted an important and little-known truth - namely that more Hindus than Muslims commit bigamy.
This has been true for more than a quarter of a century. In 1974, a government survey found Muslims to account for 5.6% of all bigamous marriages and upper-caste Hindus accounting for 5.8%. The difference may appear to be small but it is big, in real terms. The 1971 census records 45.3 crore Hindus and six crore Muslims. Allowing for women and children to make up 65% of each group, as many as one crore Hindu men had more than one wife in 1971, compared to 12 lakh Muslim men.
The trend continues, says sociologist Asghar Ali Engineer, head of Mumbai's Institute of Islamic Studies. "The survey was conducted on a large sample in all parts of India and the report wasn't made public. Further, polygamy was higher in South India than in the north, and more so among rich and middle-class Hindus than the poorer sections."
Go back still further – to 1961 – and the census records polygamy to be highest among adivasis, Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus, with Muslims right at the end. Engineer says the law matters only up to a point. "With both survey results coming out after the Hindu Marriage Act was passed in 1955, it shows that bigamy is basically a problem of a male-dominant culture than religion."
Bigamy disadvantages Hindu women more than Muslim, says Chandigarh sociologist Nirmal Sharma. This, because a Hindu man will desert his lawfully wedded wife to live with another, while the multiple wives of Muslim men are entitled to equal legal and social rights. "Closet bigamy in Hindus is worse than open polygamy among Muslims," he says.
Fiza alias Anuradha Bali, who married Haryana's deputy CM after the pair converted to Islam, says, "Our laws were far more liberal in ancient times. Most kings and many of our mythological figures had more than one wife." Though Chand has converted back to Hinduism, Fiza insists she remains his "customary wife while the first one remains the legally-wedded one. There is no way to get out of a dual marriage in spite of a legal ban."
Supreme Court lawyer Praveen Agarwal cautions that Hindu bigamists often go scot free because "the courts can do little until there's a formal complaint." And this is not always possible because in many cases, the two wives don't even know of each other's existence, says Agarwal. He adds that it is relatively easy for a Hindu man to remarry because temples don't hold records. "However, if the matter goes to court, the second marriage is declared null and void."
Take the case of K Suryanarayana, the Indian engineer killed in Afghanistan, who left behind a second wife and daughter. Though she laid claim to compensation from the government, the court ruled in favour of the first wife.
Agarwal suggests that stringent and time-consuming Hindu divorce may force many men to resort to bigamy. "Instead of going in for long-drawn-out and financially debilitating divorce procedures, men simply desert the first wife and marry again."
Engineer says that bigamy is not as rampant among Muslims as believed. The Quran only offers conditional permission for a man to take four wives: in times of war or a crisis that sees women outnumber men. "The 2001 census found 935 females for every 1000 males in India. Among Muslims, it was 930: 1000. So it would be difficult to find even one wife for every man," he says. Engineer says polygamy will never cease to exist. Perhaps it's better to regulate it, he says