Hindu marriages need sacred rituals, not just registration: Gujarat High Court

A wedding certificate is just paper unless the sacred fire has witnessed seven steps together, that's the blunt message from the Gujarat High Court, which has ruled that a Hindu marriage cannot be considered valid on registration alone if rituals like 'saptapadi' were never performed. The court quashed a family court's November order and sided with a UK-based techie who insisted he never married the woman claiming to be his wife.

The case reached the High Court after appellant Kaushal Sonar, who lives in the UK, challenged a family court's refusal to declare his alleged marriage null and void. Sonar said he found out about the "marriage" only when the woman, a resident of Ahmedabad, showed up at his parents' doorstep waving a marriage certificate and calling herself his lawfully wedded wife. He claimed he never performed any rites, never lived with her, and that his signature on the marriage papers was obtained through fraud, without his consent.

Here's the twist that decided the case: the woman herself admitted before the family court that no marriage rites or ceremonies had ever taken place between the two, and that they never actually lived as husband and wife. Despite this admission, the family court had still dismissed Sonar's plea, an error, the High Court division bench of Justices Ilesh Vora and R T Vachhani said, that could not stand.

Leaning on Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, the bench made it clear that ceremonies like saptapadi, the bride and groom taking seven steps together before the sacred fire, are what actually seal a Hindu marriage, not the certificate. Since none of these rites were performed, the judges said, the marriage was missing its most basic ingredient altogether.

The bench didn't hold back while describing what marriage actually means. In its June 23 order, made public on Monday, the court said marriage is "not merely an occasion for 'song and dance' or 'wining and dining'" or a business deal, but "a solemn and foundational event" meant to build a family and a lifelong bond.

The judges added: "A marriage is sacred because it creates a lifelong, dignified, equal, consensual, and healthy union between two individuals. It is also regarded as an event that helps an individual attain salvation, particularly when the prescribed rites and ceremonies are duly performed."

The bench also used the ruling to speak directly to the country's young men and women, urging them to treat marriage with the weight it deserves. "A Hindu marriage is a samskara and a sacrament, and it must be given its due status as an institution of great importance in Indian society. We, therefore, urge young men and women to carefully consider the institution of marriage before entering into it and to understand the sacred nature of this institution in Indian society," the court said.

The bench also touched on the idea of a wife's status within Hindu tradition, observing: "In Hindu tradition, a wife is regarded as one-half of her husband (ardhangini), while at the same time being recognised as an individual with her own identity and as an equal partner in the marriage. Under Hindu Law, marriage is considered a sacrament or samskara. It forms the foundation of a new family."

Whatever the region or the local customs, the court noted, these rituals share the same purpose, to purify and transform a person's spiritual being. For the UK-based appellant, that principle turned out to be the deciding factor: without the rites, there was, in the court's eyes, simply no marriage to dissolve.

(Inputs from PTI)