India’s highest court has denied an 89-year-old man the right to divorce his wife of six decades, marking a poignant example of the enduring taboo surrounding divorce in many parts of the country.
In India, only one out of every 100 marriages concludes with divorce, often due to societal and familial pressures to preserve strained unions.
Nirmal Singh Panesar, who married in 1963, has been seeking a divorce for the past 27 years, contending that his relationship with his wife, Paramjit Kaur Panesar, 82, irretrievably deteriorated in 1984.
The crux of the issue revolved around his wife’s refusal to relocate to the southern city of Chennai when Nirmal was posted there by the Indian Air Force in 1984.
The protracted legal battle began in 1996 when Nirmal first filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and desertion.
A district court granted the divorce in 2000, but the decision was subsequently overturned later that year following an appeal by Paramjit.
Remarkably, it took two more decades for Nirmal’s case to reach the Supreme Court. Despite the court’s acknowledgment that their marriage was “beyond salvation,” the divorce petition was ultimately denied.
In its judgement, the Supreme Court asserted that the institution of marriage continues to hold a revered place in Indian society, representing a sacred and invaluable emotional bond between spouses.
Granting the dissolution, in this case, was deemed an “injustice” to Paramjit, who expressed her unwillingness to bear the “stigma” of being a divorcee and insisted that she had made substantial efforts to honor their “sacred relationship.”
She remained committed to caring for her husband in his old age.The couple, who share three children, has become emblematic of the enduring complexities and challenges within India’s legal system.
Chronic backlogs and a glacial pace of justice proceedings often result in cases taking decades to reach resolution.
As of last year, the government reported a staggering 43.2 million pending cases before courts throughout the country.
This situation sheds light on the need for reforms and improvements in India’s legal infrastructure to address such protracted legal battles and provide timely resolutions for those involved.
