Author(s) :

Dr. Gauri Shankar Yadav, Assistant Professor, Department of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, SIKKIM GLOBAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, Namchi, Sikkim, India) .

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Abstract :

Marriage in the Indian subcontinent has historically been celebrated as a sacred sacrament and simultaneously deployed as a mechanism of social control. While early Vedic traditions emphasized marriage as a saṁskāra—a religious duty necessary for maintaining lineage and cosmic order—later texts and practices transformed it into a patriarchal institution that curtailed women’s autonomy. In the beginning, the essence behind marriage had been freedom of choice by the women and its sacred sanctity remained intact until the practice of freedom of choice had been mandatory by the woman concerned. Later on, the freedom of choice had been truncated and imposition of choice became the essence and the very same reason with other factors became the root cause of the fallen of this institution. The arrival of Islam reframed marriage as a civil contract (nikāh), theoretically granting women certain rights, but medieval society, both Hindu and Muslim, entrenched patriarchal controls over women’s sexuality and mobility. Colonial codification reinforced rather than dismantled patriarchal traditions, while reformers sought to reconfigure marriage as a site of gender justice. Post-independence legislation introduced divorce, secular alternatives, and legal reforms, yet social practices such as dowry, marital rape exemption, and honor killings reveal the persistence of patriarchal control. This paper traces the historical trajectory of marriage from sacrament to contract and critically examines how it has functioned to tame women’s freedom in the Indian subcontinent

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