New Delhi, May 13 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a woman's refusal to sacrifice her professional career and relocate with her husband cannot amount to cruelty or desertion warranting divorce, delivering a strong rebuke to what it described as "archaic", "ultraconservative" and "feudalistic" notions of marriage. Setting aside adverse findings recorded by the Gujarat family court and affirmed by the Gujarat High Court against a woman dentist, a bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta underlined that marriage does not extinguish a woman's autonomy or individuality. "A well-educated and professionally qualified woman cannot be expected to be confined within the rigid boundaries of matrimonial obligations alone. Marriage does not eclipse her individuality, nor does it subjugate her identity under that of her spouse. It is for both the husband and the wife to balance their marital ties in a manner that respects mutual aspirations, and not for one to unilaterally dictate the life choices of the other," the bench observed. The court said the expectation that a wife must abandon her career and unquestioningly accompany her husband wherever he is posted reflects a "regressive and feudalistic mindset" that has no place in contemporary constitutional society. "The expectation that a woman must invariably sacrifice her career and conform to traditional notions of an obedient wife meant for cohabitation, irrespective of her own aspirations or the welfare of the child, reflects a line of reasoning that is archaic, ultraconservative, and cannot be countenanced in the present-day scenario when women are leading various professional fields from the forefront," the bench observed. It added that a woman can no longer be treated as a mere appendage to the household of the husband, and that her independent intellectual and professional identity and aspirations must receive due credence and respect. The ruling came in an appeal filed by a woman dentist challenging a 2024 Gujarat High Court judgment that uphelddissolution of her marriage with an army officer on grounds of cruelty and desertion after she chose not to relocate to Kargil during his posting there and instead chose to stay with her parents in Ahmedabad to provide for better medical care to their daughter and establish her dental clinic....