A tale from modern India: A man rapes his wife so brutally she dies. She leaves a dying declaration before a magistrate. There’s a post mortem that finds grievous injuries. A trial court sentences the man to 10 years in jail. He appeals and the Chhattisgarh high court acquits him of all charges, rape, unnatural sex and even culpable homicide. Off he goes, free as a bird to live the remainder of his life as he chooses.

Our law does not recognize the crime of marital rape. In fact, our rape laws, rewritten under public pressure in 2013, make an ‘exception’ for husbands, provided their wives are over 18 (small mercies).

This is by design. In October last year, the ministry of home affairs told the Supreme Court that husbands do not have a fundamental right to “violate the consent of their wives”—a fancy way of saying rape—but if Parliament removed the marital rape exception, then the institution of marriage will be destroyed.

Why does the government have any interest in preserving an abusive marriage; one where the wife is the property of her husband and her consent is irrelevant? In 1736 Sir Matthew Hale declared:........

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