Free Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India by Narendra Subramanian

in adultery in
Rajani Prabhakar Lokur v. Prabhakar Raghavendra Lokur
(1958), even though the woman had a relationship with her lover even before she entered her marriage unwillingly, and continued that relationship for over a year after she got married, because it found no evidence that she was still involved with her lover when the divorce petition was filed. It therefore granted the man judicial separation rather than divorce, and did not absolve him of his maintenance obligations. Various other high courts responded similarly in cases of the 1950s and 1960s, in which they found that the woman committed adultery, but was not living in adultery. 61 Since the 1950s, courts have declared that women were living in adultery only when there was clear evidence of them sharing a house with their lovers, as in
Devyani Kantilal Shroff
(1963) and
Sanjukta Padhan v. Laxminarayan Padhan
(1991), 62 or had long-lasting relationships with them, as in
M. Kanniappan v. Akilandammal
(1954) and
S.S. Manickam v. Arputha Bhavani Rajam
(1980). The evidence was comparably strong in cases in which courts found women to be living in adultery over the past two decades. 63 Thus, there has been no significant change in the standards by which most courts assess claims of living in adultery.
    However, some courts began to separate the eligibility of divorcées for alimony from whether they were considered to have failed in their matrimonial responsibilities, starting in the 1980s. The Calcutta High Court upheld a maintenance order in favor of a woman against whom a divorce decree had been passed earlier on the ground of desertion in
Sukumar Dhibar v. Smt. Anjali Dasi
(1983), while noting that the husband had made the woman unwelcome in their matrimonial home and might be in another relationship. However, it said that divorcées would not be eligible for maintenance from their husbands if they did not remain chaste, and perhaps also if they were unwilling to live with their ex-husbands without sufficient cause. In
Smt.Vanamala v. Shri H.M. Ranganatha Bhatta
(1995), the Supreme Court awarded maintenance for a divorcée, but held that the rule that men should not be required to provide maintenance for wives who were either living in adultery or refusing to live with their husbands for no valid reason, or if the couple were living apart by mutual consent, does not apply to divorcées, as adultery is conceivable only when one is in a matrimonial relationship and divorced couples cannot be expected to live together. It followed
Vanamala
while awarding maintenance for a divorcée held to have deserted her husband in
Rohtash Singh v. Smt. Ramendri & Ors
(2000). 64 Some high courts relied on these Supreme Court precedents over the past decade to uphold maintenance orders in favor of divorcées who were living with other men either during their marriages or after the dissolution of their marriages, or who were found to have other matrimonial faults. 65 These courts moved toward making divorcées’ eligibility for maintenance independent of their earlier matrimonial behavior and current conjugal behavior. However, this process is incomplete because some high courts, apparently unaware of the Supreme Court opinions in this regard, continued to deny maintenance to divorcées whom they took to be living in adultery. 66
    D. Desertion
    Individuals whose spouses deserted them for at least three consecutive years were made eligible for judicial separation in 1955, and for divorce in 1976. This was meant to enable them to change their marital status if they abandoned their hopes of resolving their matrimonial problems, provided they had until then shown an inclination to resume their conjugal relationships. Patrilocality is the predominant pattern of postmarital residence in India and men typically exercise greater influence than their wives even over nuclearized house holds, an influence they sometimes use to evict their wives from the matrimonial home. As it is the woman