Door opened for understanding of women’s equality

or the institution of marriage. It was merely a legal means to enforce patriarchal ownership over the wife’s body and sexuality.

Like land, cattle and crop, girls and women across societies were subsumed within the estate of their fathers, and after marriage, within that of their husband. Tracing the Judeo Christian, Islamic and Hindu scriptural codes that confer patriarchal regulation of women’s sexuality, the judgment elaborates on the oppressive nature of adultery law.

Justice DY Chandrachud cites extensive sources to demonstrate that denial of sexual agency was necessary within marriage to ensure purity of bloodline and lineage.

As feminist writings in the Indian context have shown, the regulation of female sexuality was necessary to ensure purity of caste and thereby maintain the structure of gender and caste inequality. Rather than protect the family, as is erroneously claimed, the adultery law affirms purity of caste-based bloodlines and transmission of privilege and property along caste lines.

The real infirmity lies not in the oppressive social values themselves, but with the state using the force of law to entrench gender inequalities and oppression.

The Supreme Court rightly held that exacting fidelity through the adultery law is not sanctioned by the constitutional mandate to protect women, or indeed, the preservation of the institution of marriage. While being significant in itself, this verdict finally opens doors to a fuller understanding of women’s equality within marriage – including for seeking protection against sexual violence and claiming economic rights free of conditions of chastity by women from their spouses.

(The writer is the executive director of Partners for Law in Development, a legal resource organisation on women’s rights, one of the intervenors in the PIL on adultery)