NO MEANS NO

India Rejects Marital-Rape Laws

“Cannot be suitably applied.”

There are just too many exceptions to make marital-rape laws viable in India, the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party said in parliament. “It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context,” wrote Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary, a federal minister, citing exceptions for “various factors, e.g. level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mind-set of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament, etc.” Proposals for marital-rape laws were last shot down in 2012, when the country’s other main party, the Congress, was in control.