No commitment, yet full legal protection?
NewsBharati 21-Aug-2026 16:43:07 PM
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The Delhi High Court’s recent observations on live-in relationships deserve a debate that goes beyond the immediate question of whether two consenting adults have the right to live together. The larger question is far more consequential. Are we gradually redefining individual freedom in a way that weakens the family as one of society’s oldest and most important institutions? There is no ambiguity about one principle. No adult should face violence, intimidation or threats merely because he or she has chosen a partner whom the family does not approve of. The law must protect citizens from coercion, regardless of whether society approves of their personal choices.
The modern language of individual liberty increasingly views many of these obligations with suspicion. Tradition can be portrayed as control. Family expectations can be characterised as interference. Social norms are dismissed as outdated. Marriage itself is sometimes presented primarily as a restriction on personal freedom. There is certainly much in traditional society that deserves criticism. Forced marriages, caste discrimination, patriarchal control, domestic violence and restrictions on women's autonomy cannot be defended in the name of tradition. Reform is necessary when tradition violates dignity and freedom.
Marriage is not merely an arrangement for two people to share a home. It has historically created a framework of commitment, responsibility, inheritance, child-rearing and obligations between families. A live-in relationship may be perfectly legitimate does not automatically make it identical to marriage in every social or legal sense. This distinction matters.
When courts protect individuals in live-in relationships from violence or harassment, they are performing an essential constitutional function. But when legal language begins to suggest that marriage and live-in relationships are broadly interchangeable, society has legitimate grounds to ask whether an important institution is being gradually redefined without sufficient public discussion. There is also a tendency in contemporary discourse to treat parental disagreement as inherently illegitimate. That is too simplistic. Parents do not possess unlimited authority over adult children, but neither does adulthood make every parental concern irrational or oppressive.
Parents may sometimes object because of prejudice. They may also object because they see genuine risks that an individual, driven by emotion, may overlook. Their concerns may involve financial stability, emotional maturity, future responsibilities, children or the durability of the relationship. Such concerns should not justify coercion, but neither should they automatically be dismissed as an attack on freedom. The deeper concern is the growing possibility that individualism is becoming detached from responsibility. Freedom without responsibility can become another form of social instability. If every obligation is viewed as a burden and every inherited institution as an obstacle to self-expression, what happens to the networks of care that society depends upon? Who bears responsibility when relationships break down? Who supports children? Who cares for elderly parents? What happens when the extended family, once an important social safety net, gradually disappears? These are not arguments against personal freedom. They are arguments for a more complete understanding of freedom.
The Indian Constitution rightly protects individual dignity and liberty. But constitutional democracy does not require Indians to abandon family, community or social responsibility. Perhaps the real danger lies not in one court judgment but in an intellectual trend. The tendency to measure social progress only by how successfully we liberate the individual from inherited institutions. A mature society should also ask what it is building in their place. The family should not be protected merely because it is old. Nor should it be discarded merely because it is old.
India needs reform without cultural amnesia, individual freedom without social irresponsibility, and modernity without the destruction of institutions that have provided stability across generations.
The state must protect an adult from violence. But society must still be allowed to ask a larger question - In our pursuit of individual freedom, are we strengthening human relationships or slowly dismantling the very institution that has held them together?
A series of judicial decisions has gradually weakened the traditional family institution and, in some respects, even reshaped the contours of family law. This raises a fundamental democratic question - is the judiciary merely interpreting the law, or is it effectively writing a new social brief for the family? Questions of such profound social consequence cannot remain the preserve of judicial interpretation alone. If the institution of family is undergoing a fundamental transformation, the executive and, above all, Parliament must intervene, debate the consequences and provide a clear legislative framework. The time has come for Parliament to reclaim its role in shaping family policy before changes that may prove difficult to reverse become entrenched. It may already be late but it is not yet too late.
But protection from violence is one matter. Elevating every personal choice above family, social responsibility and established institutions is quite another. India’s family system has survived for centuries not simply because Indians happened to live together under one roof. The family traditionally represented a network of responsibilities extending across generations. Parents cared for children; adult children cared for ageing parents; grandparents participated in raising the next generation; relatives provided support in times of economic or personal crisis. Marriage, whatever its imperfections, was embedded within this larger structure of obligations.
The modern language of individual liberty increasingly views many of these obligations with suspicion. Tradition can be portrayed as control. Family expectations can be characterised as interference. Social norms are dismissed as outdated. Marriage itself is sometimes presented primarily as a restriction on personal freedom. There is certainly much in traditional society that deserves criticism. Forced marriages, caste discrimination, patriarchal control, domestic violence and restrictions on women's autonomy cannot be defended in the name of tradition. Reform is necessary when tradition violates dignity and freedom.
But there is a danger at the opposite extreme. Assuming that everything traditional is oppressive and everything individualistic is liberating. A society cannot survive on rights alone. It also requires duties. The important question, therefore, is not whether consenting adults should be protected. Of course they should. The question is whether institutions of law and public discourse should be equally attentive to the social consequences of steadily weakening the institution of marriage and the family.
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When courts protect individuals in live-in relationships from violence or harassment, they are performing an essential constitutional function. But when legal language begins to suggest that marriage and live-in relationships are broadly interchangeable, society has legitimate grounds to ask whether an important institution is being gradually redefined without sufficient public discussion. There is also a tendency in contemporary discourse to treat parental disagreement as inherently illegitimate. That is too simplistic. Parents do not possess unlimited authority over adult children, but neither does adulthood make every parental concern irrational or oppressive.
Parents may sometimes object because of prejudice. They may also object because they see genuine risks that an individual, driven by emotion, may overlook. Their concerns may involve financial stability, emotional maturity, future responsibilities, children or the durability of the relationship. Such concerns should not justify coercion, but neither should they automatically be dismissed as an attack on freedom. The deeper concern is the growing possibility that individualism is becoming detached from responsibility. Freedom without responsibility can become another form of social instability. If every obligation is viewed as a burden and every inherited institution as an obstacle to self-expression, what happens to the networks of care that society depends upon? Who bears responsibility when relationships break down? Who supports children? Who cares for elderly parents? What happens when the extended family, once an important social safety net, gradually disappears? These are not arguments against personal freedom. They are arguments for a more complete understanding of freedom.
India needs reform without cultural amnesia, individual freedom without social irresponsibility, and modernity without the destruction of institutions that have provided stability across generations.
The state must protect an adult from violence. But society must still be allowed to ask a larger question - In our pursuit of individual freedom, are we strengthening human relationships or slowly dismantling the very institution that has held them together?
A series of judicial decisions has gradually weakened the traditional family institution and, in some respects, even reshaped the contours of family law. This raises a fundamental democratic question - is the judiciary merely interpreting the law, or is it effectively writing a new social brief for the family? Questions of such profound social consequence cannot remain the preserve of judicial interpretation alone. If the institution of family is undergoing a fundamental transformation, the executive and, above all, Parliament must intervene, debate the consequences and provide a clear legislative framework. The time has come for Parliament to reclaim its role in shaping family policy before changes that may prove difficult to reverse become entrenched. It may already be late but it is not yet too late.
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