Re-Examining Mental Cruelty: Patriarchy In Marital Residence Norms
Shambhavi Mathur
5 Dec 2025 6:00 PM IST
The recently released NCRB data for 2023 underscores a disturbing persistence in crimes against women in India. With 448,211 reported cases - a small rise from 445,256 cases in 2022, although consistent. The national crime rate was 66.2 incidents per lakh female population, based on mid-year projections of 67.7 crore females. Of these, cruelty by husband or relatives (Section 498A IPC) made for the largest share with 133,676 cases (29.8 per cent), alongside there were 6,156 dowry deaths, 4,825 cases of abetment to suicide, and 8,823 instances of insult to modesty.[1] These statistics represent a dire snapshot of gendered violence still present in our society.Despite this, There have been numerous court judgements that persist to regard the pressure of a wife on her husband to vacate the latter's parental home and live in separate housing as a form of "mental cruelty" to a spouse under matrimonial law the custom of a woman leaving her own parental home after marriage, celebrated in Indian culture as 'vidai', is never regarded as cruelty rather it is culturally accepted and emotionally significant, highlighting a deeper orientation of patriarchy steeped in culturally normative and legal reasoning. This is a stark example of the patriarchy embedded in Indian cultures and traditions, mirrored in practices such as dowry disguised as gifts, kanya”daan”, the changing of surnames, and the expectation that women belong to their in-laws' household regardless of who nurtured them since birth.
Judicial pronouncements like Court's observations in Shailendra Kumar Chandra v. Bharti Chandra[2] illustrate how courts stresses on the notion that “no son would like to be separated from his old parents”, often framing the son as a natural caretaker whose duty wives must not disrupt, and that insisting on separation, coupled with threats, crosses the line from incompatibility into cruelty. This framing is exclusionary to families where there are no sons, or families where daughters are the primary caregivers. Such normative assumptions effectively normalize a son's preference, fuel discrimination of gender, and reinforce patrilocal residence as the matrimonial default. As a result, it becomes cruel for a wife to independently choose to live apart or to create a new nuclear household, which put a disproportionate burden of readjustment on her.
A clear distinction must be drawn between genuine cruelty which means threats, false criminal complaints, systematic humiliation, alienation of children, done by women and a normative choice, wanting to form a nuclear household or living independently at a distance from in-laws. Daughters-in-law have numerous responsibilities when it comes to in-laws, they are expected to manage both domestic and professional roles seamlessly. In an era where both the spouses contribute equally to financial sustenance, then equitable sharing of household responsibilities with equally important considerations for personal space and privacy must come as fundamental principles.
Moreover, the societal insistence on the eldest son for the responsibilities overlooks situations where the eldest child is a daughter who experiences similar care burden but lacks similar recognition in law and society. This social taboo that parents living in their daughter's house ignores progressive social structures and the constitutional guarantees of dignity, equality, and individual autonomy enshrined in Articles 14 and 15.
The Supreme Court's decision in cases like Joseph Shine v. Union of India[3] and Danial Latifi v. Union of India[4] demonstrates a trajectory towards the recognition of spouses as equal partners who possess dignity and autonomy within married life. These cases speak to a need to retain and reject backward-looking patriarchal biases in the adjudication of family-related legal issues and offer a jurisprudential tool for promoting women's rights to make independent decisions about their cohabitation without stigma. Similarly, the reluctance to recognize marital rape as an offence, as stated in recent critical critiques of legal reforms proposed in relation to the legislation, demonstrates how entrenched patriarchal notions deny women control over their bodies and dignity while married. The decision not to penalize marital rape under Section 63 BNS represents an underlying valuation of marriage as a non-viable institution of individual rights.
If the law is to evolve, then a recalibration of Indian family law is necessary, one which incorporates constitutional protections of equality and liberty with lived social experiences. Draft frameworks for Uniform Civil Code legislation, for example, have sought to enshrine a comprehensive family law regime that eliminates discriminatory provisions and institutes gender-just arrangements in marriage and caregiving, which recognizes equality of agency for both spouses.
Judicial generalizations treating wife's assertion to separate from her husband's residence to be mental cruelty without placing her allegations of abuse or harassment in context to abuse or harassment, the courts are acting in a patriarchal manner of bias. Courts need to evolve to find that separate living arrangements to which both spouses have access and availability is a neutral choice. Courts should hold equal responsibility to whoever is asserting actual abusive behaviour rather than penalizing someone for wanting to physically separate living arrangements. In situations of possible conflicts between loyalties to natal family and spouse, courts should not have preconceived bias and dictate judicial outcomes toward the husband estate or family.
Such an evolving legal interpretation is aligned with constitutional values and the emerging global norm on marital equality. It is time for courts to depart from the practice of archaic patriarchal scripts and support the dignity and autonomy of each spouse in their home and specifically whether living arrangements are appropriate. Favouring one spouse's dignity and autonomy over the other spouse will not build foundations of marital harmony in the spirit of genuine consent and equality. The eradication of patriarchal assumptions in relation to both culture and the courts about marital residency entails a range of legislative, judicial, and social reform. Upholding the sanctity of dignity, autonomy, and equality for spouses to determine residence is a key to building marriages on mutual respect and consent, and not categorically hierarchical obligations and sacrifices of involuntary service.
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