Why Marriage Feels Like a Life Sentence for Indian Women but a Badge of Honor for Men

Marriage in India is celebrated with noise, color, and grandiosity. Families bankrupt themselves to stage lavish weddings; society heaps blessings on the newlyweds.
But behind the shimmering veils and the glittering rituals hides a monstrous truth: marriage, for Indian women, is not a union of love — it is a life sentence dressed up in silks and jewels.
For men, it remains a badge of honor, a symbol of maturity, social success, and power.
This brutal imbalance didn’t happen by accident. It was meticulously scripted centuries ago — in none other than the Manusmriti, the ancient lawbook that institutionalized women's subjugation and still infects Indian consciousness today.


The Manusmriti, composed around 200 BCE, is not just an outdated text; it is the rotting foundation of Indian gender injustice.

Manusmriti 9.3 states:
“A woman must never seek independence. In childhood, she is dependent on her father, in youth on her husband, and in old age on her sons.”

This one line sealed women's fate for millennia.
Independence? Forbidden. Autonomy? An abomination.
A woman was never to exist for herself — she was property, first of her father, then her husband, and eventually her sons.

Marriage was not conceived as an equal partnership; it was a transfer of ownership — from one male guardian to another.
It codified the idea that a woman alone was dangerous, incapable, and unworthy of trust.
This idea persists even today. The invisible chains forged by Manusmriti still bind women tighter than ever, especially within marriage.


The tragedy begins at birth. Indian girls are systematically conditioned to prepare for marriage as their life's ultimate goal.
Their education is important — but only so far as it helps in “getting a good match.” Their ambitions are encouraged — but only if they don't threaten male ego.

“Learn, but not too much.”
“Work, but don’t outshine your husband.”
“Speak, but not loudly.”
“Dream, but not independently.”

From the cradle to the mandap (wedding altar), girls are brainwashed to aspire to one thing: becoming the perfect wife — obedient, sacrificing, adjusting, and smiling through it all.
The Manusmriti’s poison flows smoothly through modern Indian households. It dictates that a woman's worth is measured not by her talents or dreams but by how well she molds herself to fit into someone else's life.

This good wife syndrome ensures women enter marriage already defeated, programmed to serve rather than to live.


Marriage marks a milestone in an Indian man's life, a moment when society suddenly confers upon him newfound respect. He becomes more desirable to employers, more trustworthy to banks, more admirable to relatives. His world expands. His ability to socialize, travel, climb career ladders — everything accelerates after marriage. It is as if tying the knot hands him a certificate of competence. For women, marriage is the beginning of erasure. It is the slow, calculated murder of individuality. After marriage, a woman’s career often stagnates or is expected to collapse altogether. Her name gets swallowed by the husband's family; her body becomes communal property, her dreams irrelevant. She is handed a script to follow: bear children, obey elders, serve the husband's whims. Her social life shrinks, her freedom curdles into a ghost of what it once was. In the most private spaces, too, she is expected to yield — her consent is presumed, her resistance dismissed. Marital rape, though invisible to Indian law, thrives with brutal regularity behind closed doors. In this system, marriage is not an equal partnership; it is a lopsided deal where men gain prestige and women lose themselves. Marriage for an Indian man is a badge of honor. Marriage for an Indian woman is a premature funeral.

The roots of this tragedy run deeper than mere societal expectations; they are soaked in the rotting philosophical muck left behind by the Manusmriti. Indian society’s glorification of the suffering woman is not accidental — it is deliberate, programmed over generations to idealize female endurance as the highest virtue. Look at the women we call ideal: Sita, who walked through fire to prove her purity, only to be abandoned; Savitri, who fought death itself to bring back her husband, not for love alone but because that was her "duty"; Gandhari, who blindfolded herself for life to match her husband’s blindness, making his weakness her prison. In every story, the perfect woman is not the one who thinks or fights or creates — it is the one who suffers silently. This worship of female suffering builds a system of moral blackmail where a woman earns respect only by enduring humiliation, violence, and annihilation without protest. The woman who adjusts endlessly is praised; the woman who rebels is punished, shamed, ostracized. Even today, divorce is treated as a stigma for women far more than for men. A wife who leaves an abusive marriage is whispered about as if she committed a sin. Through the centuries, Manusmriti's venom has seeped into our myths, rituals, and moral codes, creating a society where a woman's ability to absorb pain is considered her greatest achievement.


It is time to stop pretending that a gilded cage is anything but a prison. Enough apologies, enough soft reformist language. The Manusmriti must not just be debated or reinterpreted — it must be burned, utterly and without remorse, in the minds and hearts of every Indian who dares to dream of a just society. Indian marriage must be stripped clean of its archaic rot. The kanyadaan ritual — where a father "gives away" his daughter like property — must be abolished without nostalgia. The idea that a woman must "adjust" by default must be laughed out of existence. The notion that a good wife is one who bears injustice silently must be shamed, not celebrated. Marriage must be reborn as a voluntary, equal partnership between two free individuals — not as a transfer of ownership masked in sacred ceremonies. Until marriage recognizes a woman's right to live for herself, to choose her dreams over suffocating expectations, it remains a beautifully decorated jail cell. True love cannot breathe where freedom is forbidden. True companionship cannot grow where submission is demanded. Marriage is sacred only when freedom is sacred. Until India accepts this truth, it will continue to sacrifice its daughters on the bloody altar of outdated honor. The Manusmriti curse must be shattered — not tomorrow, not someday, but now. The question is no longer whether we will act, but how many more daughters we will allow to wither and die before we summon the courage to tear down the monstrous edifice we call tradition.

The time for politeness is over.
Marriage is sacred only if freedom is sacred.

Until that truth is accepted, Indian women will continue serving life sentences for crimes they never committed — while Indian men will continue wearing their marriages as medals pinned to hollow, unexamined lives.

The Manusmriti curse must be broken.
The question is not if.
The question is — how much longer will we let our daughters bleed before we do it?