Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam on the perils of legally sanctioned live-in relationship.

The Supreme Court’s recent judgment legitimising live-in relationship is yet another example of judicial intervention in issues of traditional morality regarding human sexual conduct.

Last year the Delhi High Court’s judgment decriminalising sex between consenting adults of the same sex created its own share of protests. This is the second time in such a short period that the silent majority of this country is left wondering as to where the country is headed.

As far as we understand, the Supreme Court’s stance is not going to offer any great advantage to society or individuals, but its harm is quite evident. It is going to accelerate the downhill race to moral anarchy and breakdown of family.

As a society, India has always cherished the sacred. That has helped it over the centuries to maintain families and raising of children within wedlock. The reverse of it is the West’s gradual loss of family, its sanctity and its emotional and physical protection.

Live-in relationships are by now an established pattern in Western society. That emerged from the West’s loss of faith in religion and God-given, religion-based institutions like marriage. India has not reached that stage so far. However, the widespread acceptance of live-in relationships would surely hasten our passage to that stage. Legal sanction to it, come as it does from the highest judicial authority, will have its consequences.

We firmly believe that the institution of family, based on wedlock, is worth preserving. That is one reason the institution of family has survived for millennia in all civilised societies. It has helped raise responsible citizens in the fully protected environment of the family. Dismantling this valuable institution has a heavy cost of unprecedented and unimaginable proportions.

We would like to suggest a review of the judgment by a larger Supreme Court bench in the interest of wellbeing of future generations of Indians. g

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