The more than century-old law prescribed that any man who slept with a married woman without her husband’s permission had committed adultery, a crime carrying a five-year prison term in the conservative country.<\/p>\n
A petitioner had challenged the court to strike down the law, describing it as arbitrary and discriminatory against women.<\/p>\n
“Thinking of adultery from a point of view of criminality is a retrograde step,” unanimously declared the five-judge bench of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Women could not file a complaint under the archaic law nor be held liable for adultery themselves, making it solely the realm of men.<\/p>\n
The court said it deprived women of dignity and individual choice and “gives license to the husband to use women as a chattel”.<\/p>\n
“It disregards the sexual autonomy which every woman possesses and denies agency to a woman in a matrimonial tie,” said Supreme Court Justice D. Y. Chandrachud.<\/p>\n
“She is subjugated to the will of her spouse.”<\/p>\n
It was the second time this month the court overturned Victorian-era laws governing the sexual choices of India’s 1.25 billion citizens.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the court\u00a0struck down<\/a>\u00a0a ban on gay sex introduced by British rulers in 1861.<\/p>\n The bench argued that Section 377 had become “a weapon for harassment” of homosexuals and “history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families”.<\/p>\n On adultery, government lawyers argued it should remain a crime as it threatens the institution of marriage, and caused harm to children and families.<\/p>\n But in its ruling, the court said extramarital affairs — while still a valid ground for divorce — were a private matter between adults.<\/p>\n Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer in the Supreme Court, said watershed decisions on gay sex and adultery had shown the judges’ “adherence to liberal values and the constitution”.<\/p>\n “Another fine judgement by the SC,” he Tweeted after Thursday’s ruling.<\/p>\n In 1954, the court upheld adultery as a crime arguing “it is commonly accepted that it is the man who is the seducer, and not the woman”.<\/p>\n But in their ruling on Thursday, the judges said this narrative no longer applied, noting also that Britain did away with its own laws penalising adultery long ago.<\/p>\n “Man being the seducer and women being the victim no longer exits. Equality is the governing principle of a system. Husband is not the master of the wife,” the verdict added.<\/p>\n Source: https:\/\/www.france24.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The more than century-old law prescribed that any man who slept with a married woman without her husband’s permission had committed adultery, a crime carrying a five-year prison term in the conservative country. A petitioner had challenged the court to strike down the law, describing it as arbitrary and discriminatory against women. “Thinking of adultery from a point of view… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1888,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions\/1888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}