Opinion Allahabad High Court affirms right to love and live as you please
HC’s intervention is a modest but necessary corrective — an assertion that the law must recognise adults as rights-bearing citizens, with the freedom to make their own way, not wards to be steered towards socially-approved choices
Across India, caste, class and religious orthodoxies continue to police intimacy, with inter-faith and inter-caste couples frequently facing hostility, coercion and violence from families and communities, often with no help from institutions meant to safeguard their freedoms. The Allahabad High Court’s order directing police to offer protection to 12 women in live-in relationships reaffirms the constitutional commitment to personal liberty at a moment when such freedoms appear increasingly contested. “The concept of a live-in relationship may not be acceptable to all, but it cannot be said that such a relationship is an illegal one or that living together without the sanctity of the marriage constitutes an offence,” held the court, rejecting the state’s claim that cohabitation outside marriage corrodes the “social fabric”. The court’s insistence that fundamental rights cannot be eclipsed by social disapproval or hollowed out by stigma is significant: It places individual autonomy above majoritarian morality and locates constitutional interpretation within evolving social realities rather than fixed or inherited anxieties.
Last year, a report in this paper showed how different readings of a provision of UP’s Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 produced uneven and often regressive outcomes in cases related to inter-faith live-in relationships. In more than one instance, marital sanctity was prioritised over individual rights; pleas for protection were dismissed in some cases and granted conditionally in others, leading to challenges in the Supreme Court. The present judgment comes against a fraught backdrop — in states such as Uttarakhand, the Uniform Civil Code, with its requirement to register live-in relationships and its accompanying penalties, has signalled a shift towards greater state intrusion into personal relations.
Across India, caste, class and religious orthodoxies continue to police intimacy, with inter-faith and inter-caste couples frequently facing hostility, coercion and violence from families and communities, often with no help from institutions meant to safeguard their freedoms. From Lata Singh (2006) to S Khushboo (2010) to Shafin Jahan (2018), the Supreme Court has pushed back against this moral vigilantism, affirming the right of consenting adults to choose their partners without intervention from society or state. Read in this light, the Allahabad HC’s intervention is a modest but necessary corrective — an assertion that the law must recognise adults as rights-bearing citizens, not wards to be steered towards socially approved choices.
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