Marital rape ‘cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context’

New Delhi: Despite mounting international pressure, India cannot criminalise marital rape with the NDA government citing various reasons such as “Indian mindset to treat marriage as a sacrament” to justify the move.

The Union home ministry on Wednesday told Parliament that the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women has recommended India to criminalise marital rape.

The MHA said that the “concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context”. The reasons cited by the MHA for not criminalising “marital rape” as it is done in various countries, included various factors like “level of education and illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of society to treat the marriage as a sacrament” and so on.

This was stated by minister of state for home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in a written reply to a question by DMK Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi on Wednesday. The Justice J.S. Verma Committee, set up in the aftermath of the brutal Delhi gangrape case in 2012, had recommended criminalising marital rape.