Rise in divorces among Malaysian Indians: Survey

KUALA LUMPUR - The divorce rate among ethnic Indians and the Chinese has registered an appreciable rise in Malaysia, a survey has revealed.

The national rate has registered a 105 percent increase in the last seven years. The divorce rate is even higher among the majority Malay Muslims that form 82 percent of the total numbers, the survey said, attributing it to the couples’ “unrealistic, Western” mores.

In multi-racial Malaysia, ethnic Indians are estimated at 1.7 million, about seven percent of the 28 million population.

Ethnic Indian expert Anjli Doshi-Gandhi of the National Population and Family Development Board said the rising rates could signify a turn in the public’s perception of the marriage institution.

“Those days, being divorced was embarrassing and families lost face. Now, people are more open. Times have changed.

“Marriages must be strengthened. We don’t want what’s happening in developed countries, where divorce rates are very high, to happen here,” she said commenting on the survey.

The board she works for counsels 700 to 800 troubled couples a year.

Tey Nai Peng, associate professor at Universiti Malaya who noted the trend among the Chinese and the Indians, said: “The high ratio of divorce over the number of marriages is a cause for concern. The rising rate may be a contributory factor to falling fertility.”

In 2002, for every 9.6 marriages registered, there was one divorce. Last year, in every 6.1, there was one.

Marriages are breaking down faster than they are being built. The divorce rates in Malaysia are rising sharply, The Star newspaper said Sunday.

Researcher John Emmanuel Kiat said while the number of marriages had increased by 21 percent (153,318 to 199,586) from 2002 to last year, the number of divorces had gone up by as much as 105 percent (16,013 to 32,763) during the same period.

Kiat, a Statistics and Cognition tutor at HELP University College, described the jump as “statistically significant”. “The question is, would you consider this rise big enough to be regarded as a problem?”

Psychologist Charis Wong pointed out the challenges in marriages today.

In self-arranged marriages, many young Malaysian men and women adopt an unrealistic, Western-style conceptualisation of love strongly influenced by the media, she said.

These couples enter into marriage with intense, passionate feelings but without exploring their beliefs and values about marriage.

They focussed so much on the romantic aspect of love that they forgot that real love must be accompanied by commitment, which involved hard work by both parties, said Wong.

“The moment a marriage becomes challenging, they become disillusioned, frustrated and give up easily.”

She said she was saddened by the “long list of petitions for divorce, the majority of which were from young couples in their 20s or 30s”.

The National Registration Department registered 2,706 divorces among non-Muslims in 2002, which subsequently climbed to 5,647 last year.

Between 2006 and last year, the rates mostly stagnated at about 5,000 a year.

However, during the first seven months of this year, already 7,428 cases were registered.