Autonomy vs. Obligation: A Human Rights Critique of Restitution of Conjugal Rights in India

Abstract

“Restitution of conjugal rights” (RCR), provided in various personal law statutes in India, and is a remedy that obligates a spouse to rejoin another, when the copulation is withheld by him/her. The remedy is by no means a neutral procedural tool, but rather a legal tool, which puts individual bodily autonomy underage to the performative of marriage. This paper critically examines RCR through the intersecting lenses of constitutional law, international human rights norms, and feminist jurisprudence. It surveys the pivotal judicial contest between “T Sareetha v T Venkata Subbaiah” and “Saroj Rani v Sudarshan Kumar Chadha”, situates the remedy against the evolving Article 21 privacy jurisprudence culminating in K S Puttaswamy, and measures India's legislative inaction against the State's CEDAW obligations. The paper argues that RCR is constitutionally unsustainable in the contemporary rights framework and that Parliament must repeal it without further delay. A comparative survey of common law jurisdictions underscores that India now stands as an outlier among its peers.