Myth of consent

India’s refusal to criminalise marital rape rests on a premise that is rarely stated plainly but widely enforced: that consent, once given at marriage, is permanent. This idea ~ embedded in law, reinforced by custom, and normalised in households ~ turns a private relationship into a zone of diminished rights. The consequences are not abstract. They are lived, negotiated, and often endured in silence.

The legal architecture still carries the imprint of colonial-era thinking, where marriage was treated as a contract subsuming individual autonomy. Despite constitutional guarantees, the exception persists, effectively placing married women outside the full protection of sexual violence laws within marriage. This creates a hierarchy of citizenship within the home: what is criminal outside it becomes permissible within. Opposition to reform often invokes the sanctity of marriage or fears of misuse. These concerns deserve to be heard but not allowed to dominate the debate.

Advertisement

Every criminal law carries the risk of misuse; the answer has never been to deny protection altogether. By that logic, large parts of the penal code would collapse. The deeper issue is not misuse but non-recognition ~ a refusal to acknowledge harm when it occurs in a socially sanctioned space. The social dimension complicates the legal vacuum. Family structures frequently prioritise cohesion over justice, urging women to adjust rather than assert. Economic dependence, stigma, and the fear of social isolation reinforce this pressure. In such an environment, the absence of legal remedy does more than limit recourse; it signals that the harm itself is negotiable.

Silence becomes not just a coping mechanism but an expectation. Cultural narratives are beginning to disrupt this quiet consensus. Popular storytelling, particularly on digital platforms, is forcing uncomfortable questions into the open: What does consent mean within marriage? Can intimacy exist without autonomy? These interventions do not change the law, but they reshape the conversation, making denial harder to sustain. The judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has been approached repeatedly to revisit the exception. Yet the issue remains entangled in political caution and social conservatism.

This stalemate reveals a broader pattern in Indian reform: when change threatens entrenched norms within the family, the state often hesitates, deferring to society even when society is divided. What emerges, then, is not merely a legal gap but a moral contradiction. A system that recognises bodily autonomy in principle cannot selectively suspend it in marriage without eroding its own foundation.

The question is no longer whether the law should intervene, but whether it can afford not to. India stands at a familiar crossroads, between tradition and transformation. The outcome will depend not only on legislative courage but on whether society is willing to confront the myth it has long sustained: that marriage implies consent, and that consent, once given, cannot be withdrawn.