Live-In Forebodings: A law meant to protect wives now reaches the men who never became husbands
Section 498a of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a draconian law with good intent to protect wives against the harassment by husbands and in-laws, has had a chequered history of misuse. It has single-handedly, because of non-bailable provisions, led to a men’s rights movement in India with husbands who got arrested forming a community.
Many had genuine grievance. A wife could by a complaint put her in-laws, even those who lived far away, in jail for a lengthy stretch. This was thought a necessary recourse against dowry deaths when the law first came about, but it soon began to be gamed by lawyers in divorce proceedings. Wives were asked to file false complaints so that husbands would negotiate faster. All this has been common knowledge for decades, and there have been repeated attempts to dilute it but the law remains stubbornly around and gamed. This week, the Supreme Court, while recognising this aspect, extended Section 498a to live-in relationships, thus making the domain of unmarried men a target of its misuse.
The wording of the IPC section is unambiguous. It specifically says ‘husbands’. But courts have power of interpretation and they extended a concept of marriage-like live-in relationships where marriage is intended
to be treated as marriages. Live-in couples are unmarried because they often don’t want the legal burdens and responsibilities that come with the paper. The judiciary equating the two was done much earlier to protect rights of women in such relationships. With Section 498a’s broadening, lawyers have more rope in manipulating it. Chances are it will happen because perfectly reasonable and honest people become scarred and vicious in relationships that go sour. Weapons available must be cautiously distributed. Men will become more wary about live-in relationships and that makes women who desire it deprived of the partnership they seek.
Dowry remains an ongoing issue, but harassment over it is much less common than the 1980s and 1990s when newspapers were rife with wives being burnt to death.Extraordinary times requires extraordinary laws, but when those times pass, these laws persist and metamorphose, and not always for the better.