Justice Dipak Misra’s comments display a patriarchal mindset.
Caste-based discrimination and resultant socioeconomic disadvantage is therefore more fundamental a problem than simple economic disadvantage, and it’s the former that reservation has been constitutionally mandated to address. Economic disadvantage is usually a consequence of a vulnerability, and thus it is that vulnerability which needs to be tackled for effective poverty alleviation, which is exactly what the drafters of the Indian Constitution had understood to be the purpose of reservation.
It is essential to criminalise marital rape in order to break the age-old understanding that “marriage sanctions sex” or that married women are incapable of giving consent or that consent is presumed/implied upon marriage. This understanding only legitimises the patriarchal notion that a woman is the property of her husband after marriage.
In the Rajesh Sharma case, the Court had legitimised the argument by directing the setting up of ‘family welfare committees’ to scrutinise a complaint by a woman before the police even take cognisance of it and to give its opinion to the police. However, the Court course-corrected in the subsequent Manav Adhikar case, when it accepted that social welfare committees have no role to play during investigation and prescribing duties to the social welfare committees will tantamount to judiciary overreaching its power as it is the Parliament which makes the law.
