Rajya Sabha MP Ajay Pratap Singh is not inaccurate in citing a World Health Organization statistic that as many as 38% of women killed around the globe were murdered by their intimate partners. However, the MP’s use of this statistic to seek a ban on live-in relationships is misleading. “Intimate partner” is a legal term widely used to indicate, as per the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University “…the spouse of the person, a former spouse of the person, an individual who is a parent of a child of the person, and an individual who cohabitates or has cohabited with the person”.

            For anyone serious about ending intimate partner violence in India, a more pertinent approach would be to take a good hard look at marriage, not at any other relationship configuration. Marriage is still the primary method through which intimate partnership is experienced in India, and it is also the arena in which intimate partner violence is most rampant.

            The criminalization of marital rape, which has for some time been a core mandate of progressive law reformers and feminists, would be far more effective at curbing intimate partner violence in this country than any kind of law that seeks to restrict what people freely choose to do outside the parameters of wedlock. The sensationalization of a few cases of murder within live-in relationships goes hand in hand with the more subdued – if not actually suppressed – coverage of abuse and murder within marriage, which remains large drawn on heteropatriarchal lines that do not cross religious or caste lines often enough.

Fortunately, at this time the Supreme Court of India continues to formally resist any challenges to consenting adults choosing to live together. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court even dismissed as “hare-brained” a PIL calling for live-in relationships to be registered. Nonetheless, the fact that live-in relationships are not illegal in India does not mean that they are accepted.

            It is time for Indian society to take a more mature look at why people enter live-in relationships, and to respect those choices whether or not one relates to them. Turgid declarations about traditions, social fabric and so on hold very little water when actually argued with, unless the final word is the definitive and dismissive phrase “That’s just how it is”. It certainly isn’t how it has to be, and there are many liberating possibilities when one considers how else it can be.

Aside from self-appointed moral crusaders, the idea that those who choose live-in relationships are lax and lack responsibility is something that many ordinary folks believe – but here, reconsidering where such bias comes from usually results in a new understanding. Running a household without structural support, making choices that are both autonomous and united, and being willing to stand one’s ground against pressure and discrimination all show high levels of responsibility and indeed determination as well as self-determination.

If there is a rise in live-in relationships in India, or in any conservative culture, it merely signifies increasing levels of equality. Just like a higher number of divorces, it is an indicator of positive shifts towards lives and worldviews that empower, rather than entrap.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2023. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.