When Freedom Seeks Space, Does Marriage Lose Meaning—or Reveal Its Unfinished Justice?
-Ramphal Kataria
Abstract
This essay undertakes a longue durée exploration of the relationship between man and woman—from pre-historic fluidity to the institutional rigidity of marriage and its contemporary contestation through live-in relationships. It examines how marriage evolved as both a stabilizing and controlling institution, simultaneously granting legitimacy and imposing subordination upon women. Drawing upon the works of Friedrich Engels, Simone de Beauvoir, and B. R. Ambedkar, alongside recent judicial trends of the Allahabad High Court, the essay critically interrogates whether expanding personal liberty risks reviving older hierarchies in subtler forms. It argues for a morally anchored liberalism—one that protects freedom of choice while ensuring justice, dignity and compensatory safeguards for women within and beyond marriage.
Keywords
Marriage, patriarchy, live-in relationships, endogamy, Ambedkar, women’s rights, autonomy, sociology of family, India
I. In the Beginning: Before Marriage, Before Morality
Human relationships did not begin with law, ritual or contract. They began with proximity, survival and instinct. In early hunter-gatherer societies, the bond between man and woman was neither fixed nor sanctified. It was fluid, adaptive and largely free from institutional control.
Anthropological readings, particularly those advanced by Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, suggest that early societies recognized maternal lineage. Women, as central contributors to subsistence, were not subordinated but socially integral.
“The overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex.” — Engels
There was no anxiety over paternity, no rigid notion of exclusivity, no moral condemnation of desire. What existed was a form of relational autonomy that modern societies often claim, but rarely achieve.
II. The Turning Point: Property, Lineage and the Birth of Marriage
The shift from nomadic life to settled agriculture transformed human relationships irreversibly. Property emerged, and with it, the need to control inheritance. This necessitated certainty of paternity—something only possible through the regulation of women’s sexuality.
Marriage, thus, was born not merely out of affection, but out of economic necessity and social control.
What began as a flexible arrangement gradually hardened into a rule-bound institution. Sexuality was moralized, fidelity demanded, and women’s bodies became sites of lineage preservation.
III. Many Marriages, Many Worlds
Marriage, even in its early institutional forms, was not singular. It adapted to geography, economy and culture:
Polyandry in resource-scarce Himalayan regions
Polygyny among ruling elites
Monogamy as a later moral ideal
Matrilineal systems among Khasis and Nairs
The Forgotten Alternative: When Men Entered Women’s Homes
In matrilineal societies, the husband was a visitor, not the owner. Property belonged to the woman’s lineage. The child carried the mother’s name.
“Patriarchy is not nature—it is a historical arrangement.”
These systems disrupt the assumption that marriage must necessarily subordinate women. Yet, they remain exceptions, overshadowed by the dominance of patriarchy.
IV. Marriage as Shelter: Legitimacy, Security and Continuity
Marriage provided structure to human life. It transformed biological reproduction into social legitimacy. Women, within marriage, gained:
Recognized status
Economic support
Protection within a defined framework
Children gained identity, inheritance and belonging.
In this sense, marriage civilized relationships—it brought predictability and order.
V. Marriage as Cage: The Quiet Erosion of Freedom
But what marriage gave with one hand, it often took away with the other.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” — Simone de Beauvoir
As patriarchy deepened, marriage confined women to the domestic sphere. The “home” became her universe. Her labour became invisible; her desires secondary; her identity derivative.
She was no longer an autonomous individual, but:
A wife defined by her husband
A mother defined by her children
A body regulated by society
Marriage, thus, became an institution where protection and possession coexisted uneasily.
VI. Endogamy: Marriage as Social Policing
Marriage did not merely regulate individuals—it preserved hierarchies.
B. R. Ambedkar identified endogamy as the core mechanism of caste:
“Endogamy is the essence of caste.”
Through marriage, society enforced:
Caste purity
Religious boundaries
Economic stratification
Women became the custodians of this system—not by choice, but by compulsion. Their freedom to choose love was curtailed in the name of social order.
VII. Reforming the Sacred: The Hindu Code Bill
Independent India confronted this contradiction. Could a democratic nation sustain an unequal family structure?
Ambedkar’s answer was unequivocal.
“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
The Hindu Code Bill sought to:
Legalize divorce
Grant property rights
Recognize women as legal persons
Though diluted, it marked a radical shift—from sacrament to contract, from subordination to rights.
VIII. Women Across Faiths: A Comparative Unease
Across religions, marriage has oscillated between protection and control:
Islamic law recognizes mehr and inheritance but permits polygyny
Christian law historically restricted divorce
Hindu traditions sanctified indissolubility
In each, reform has been gradual, contested and incomplete.
IX. The Return of Informality: Live-in Relationships
In modern India, live-in relationships emerge as a challenge to rigid marriage norms. They claim freedom without ritual, companionship without contract.
Though often seen as new, informal unions have existed historically. Claims associating figures like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Ram Manohar Lohia, and George Fernandes with such relationships remain largely anecdotal and not firmly established, and thus cannot serve as normative precedents.
X. Law Steps In: Protection and Paradox
Indian courts have extended limited recognition to live-in relationships under the right to life and liberty. Women in such arrangements may seek protection under domestic violence laws.
Yet, new complexities arise:
Relationships end without legal closure
Women face abandonment
Men face allegations of rape based on “false promise of marriage”
The law struggles to distinguish between broken trust and criminal intent.
XI. The Allahabad High Court and the Crisis of Consistency
Recent pronouncements of the Allahabad High Court reflect this tension.
In cases such as X vs State of Uttar Pradesh (2024–2025 protection petitions), the Court observed:
“Consensual relationships between adults, even if socially unacceptable, do not constitute a criminal offence.”
Yet, in similar matters, it has held:
“The rights of a legally wedded spouse cannot be defeated under the guise of personal liberty.”
This duality reveals not contradiction, but absence of a coherent legal framework.
XII. A Dangerous Echo: Freedom or Feudal Return?
If a married individual enters a live-in relationship without dissolving marriage, what emerges?
Not freedom—but fragmentation.
It resembles an older order where rulers could bring multiple women into their households without accountability.
“When liberty ignores justice, it begins to resemble privilege.”
XIII. The Invisible Woman: Left Without Closure
At the Centre of this debate stands the most neglected figure—the lawful spouse, often a woman:
Without emotional closure
Without economic compensation
Without social dignity
A liberal discourse that celebrates choice must also confront abandonment.
XIV. Towards a Responsible Liberalism
Freedom must not be denied—but neither must it be unregulated.
A just framework must ensure:
Dissolution of prior marriage before new unions
Compensation and maintenance for affected spouses
Legal recognition and protection of children
Clear standards distinguishing consent from coercion
Conclusion: Between Past and Future
Marriage is neither wholly sacred nor wholly obsolete. It is a living institution—shaped by history, contested by modernity.
The challenge is not to choose between marriage and liberty, but to reconcile them.
“A society that expands freedom must also deepen justice—else freedom itself becomes unequal.”
Footnotes
1. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884).
2. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society (1877).
3. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949).
4. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936); Constituent Assembly Debates on Hindu Code Bill.
5. Kathleen Gough, “Nayar: Central Kerala” in Matrilineal Kinship studies.
6. Allahabad High Court, various habeas corpus and protection petitions (2024–2025) concerning live-in relationships and marital subsistence.
7. Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (India).
8. Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India.
9. Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens.
10. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian (sections on gender and social justice).
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