International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

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Constitutional Morality and Marital Autonomy: A Critical Study of Restitution of Conjugal Rights under Indian Family Law

Author(s) Ms. Disha Kaushik
Country India
Abstract Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and Section 22 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 empower courts to decree restitution of conjugal rights, compelling a spouse to return to cohabitation upon withdrawal from the matrimonial home without "reasonable excuse." Critics argue that such decrees amount to state-sanctioned sexual coercion, operating as a judicially enforced violation of bodily autonomy, sexual agency, and the right to refuse intimacy, fundamental dimensions of personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. This paper interrogates whether restitution of conjugal rights, while textually gender-neutral, functions in practice as a patriarchal tool that disproportionately subordinates women, exposing them to conditions of potential marital violence and eroding decisional autonomy in intimate life. The analysis centres on the unresolved doctrinal tension between T. Sareetha v. T. Venkata Subbaiah (1983), in which the Andhra Pradesh High Court declared Section 9 unconstitutional as violative of privacy, dignity, and bodily integrity under Articles 14, 19, and 21, and Saroj Rani v. Sudarshan Kumar (1984), in which the Supreme Court upheld the provision's constitutional validity by privileging the institution of marriage over individual autonomy and dismissing privacy concerns as insufficiently pressing. Using a doctrinal, constitutional, and feminist methodology, the paper re-examines the Saroj Rani reasoning in light of subsequent developments in Article 21 jurisprudence, including the Supreme Court's recognition of privacy as a fundamental right in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017) and its affirmation of sexual autonomy, dignity, and bodily integrity in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018) and Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018). The paper argues that mandatory cohabitation decrees, which in effect place indirect but inescapable pressure on sexual relations within the matrimonial home, cannot be meaningfully distinguished from structural sexual coercion, particularly given gendered power imbalances and the persistence of the marital rape exemption in Indian criminal law. It concludes that the constitutional validity of Section 9 and Section 22 is no longer defensible under contemporary understandings of bodily autonomy, dignity, and the right to say no in intimate life, and proposes either striking down these provisions or radically reading them down to eliminate any element of compulsion.
Keywords Restitution of conjugal rights, bodily autonomy, right to refuse intimacy, Article 21, privacy, Section 9 Hindu Marriage Act, marital rape, sexual coercion, constitutional validity
Published In Volume 8, Issue 3, May-June 2026
Published On 2026-05-15
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E-ISSN 2582-2160
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