Love, law, and the extent of the matter

This week, quashing a case in which a petitioner had taken her ex to court after the end of a long-term relationship, alleging breach of promise, Justice B Pugalendhi of the Madras High Court, Madurai Bench, ruled that private discord arising from consensual acts cannot be converted into criminal misconduct. Other courts in India have recently taken the same decision, including the Odisha High Court in a case in February and the Delhi High Court in a case in September. Cases heard in the Supreme Court, which this Madras High Court ruling referenced, also set earlier precedents. They all concur: attempting to criminalise romantic relationships that had been consensual at the time they occurred is legal misuse. Laws involving a deceitful promise of marriage in order to gain sexual favour are meant especially to serve those who place a high value on concepts like virginity. They exist in India to protect women, in line with societal attitudes on sexual morality and what women stand to lose as a result. Men cant misuse these laws only because they dont have access to them for now. While concepts of sexual purity are regressive and anti-feminist, providing a recourse for women who believe in them today is not antithetical to the anti-patriarchal work of celebrating healthy sexuality. Such recourse necessarily acknowledges what is. Expansively, by speaking of consensual agency when quashing misuse, the courts allude to a more progressive society a feminist aim. This is also all within a context where a growing misogynistic movement frames laws that protect women as being disproportionately weaponised against men. Numerous cases involving the alleged misuse of anti-dowry laws, and recent social media frenzies following related suicides, have been fuelling this perception. But the existence of all such laws, the necessity because of which they were created, is more reflective of reality than stray cases of their misuse. However we slice it, no one petitioning a court to give her the sense of justice or closure she longs for is nearly as harmful as someone who takes the law into their own hands and resorts to violence. Women lawyering up when a relationship fails in India as a phenomenon is nowhere close in scale to the acid attacks, stalking, sexual assault and murders that occur to women when their male lovers feel scorned. Not statistically. Not ethically. Acrimony is often attached to the end of romantic relationships, and sometimes a denouement reveals true colours hitherto unseen. A wide range of angry desires may arise after a break-up. A person may be justified in feeling cheated, and may also hope to experience vindication. But to look to the law to provide that catharsis is a waste of ones own resources, above all. We cant criminalise our exes for being jerks to us and for making a mockery of our love by making a mockery of serious laws. To tie ourselves up in litigation furthers our own misery, too. It is possible to imagine how an individual may feel empowered by slapping a case on her ex, even briefly. But that is merely choice feminism, not a step that moves the needle for everyone.