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?