Last week, India's national supreme court decided that Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, the law allowing for the prosecution of a man who has commits adultery with another man's wedded wife, as unconstitutional and "destructive of women's dignity." This is because his archaic British Raj-era (i.e. back when India was still a British colony) law allowed for men to take legal action against any lovers their wives may have, but it does not allow women to litigate against any lovers their husbands may have. While the elimination of this law was lauded by many women's rights activists and political progressives in India as a step towards gender and sexual equality, there are also those who favor adultery remaining criminalized, but on more general terms. According to Swati Maliwal, the commissioner for women in the Indian city of Delhi who believes that the adultery law should be made more egalitarian instead of being struck down, many women come to her office alleging that their husbands have abandoned them for adulterous reasons and have "left them without support to look after their children." Maliwal further added that this supreme court decision would only be effective in an "ideal society, " where adultery is not as destructive a practice. Like Maliwal, the Bharatiya Janata (BJP) political party in India (of which Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is a member) has also suggested a new adultery law that still criminalizes adultery, but now in the cases of both male AND female perpetrators. But would this really be more effective than decriminalizing adultery all together?
In its decision, the Supreme Court dismissed the aforementioned concerns that striking down anti-adultery laws will legitimize the already destructive practice of adultery, saying in its ruling that "each partner is equally responsible to keep the sanctity of marriage intact." While this argument is sound and unbiased, since it calls for both parties in a marriage to play an active role in maintaining the marriage, it is also important to realize that there are changing perceptions, especially among younger Indians, about what is a successful marriage. A recent survey done by global dating site Ashley Madison with over 75,000 correspondents (80% of them were married) in 10 Indian cities not only showed that 76% of male respondents and 61% of female respondents believed that adultery was neither sinful nor immoral, it also showed that 81% of men and 68% of women who responded to the survey viewed the extramarital affairs that they had as having a "positive effect" on their marriage. Therefore, although this survey was limited in its ability to represent the entire Indian subcontinent, is possible that decriminalizing adultery often leads to more successful marriages and relationships.
Regarding Maliwal's and the BJP's arguments for a gender-neutral adultery law, there are few, if any, examples of evidence linking adultery to poverty except in isolated cases. Maliwal's claims of poor women coming to her offices after their husbands abandoned them was not supported with any concrete statistics or other forms of corroborating data when she made them. Until information surfaces that actually illustrates how adultery harms people on a systemic level, it is best to ensure that pursuing love outside of marriage is not a crime.
