India, April 13 -- Congress MP Shashi Tharoor introduced a Private Members Bill in Parliament to criminalise marital rape and is building a ground for it. While that's an ideal thought, the moot question is has the time come? The current socio-legislative position of marriage is not conducive for such an ideal thing.

Before we debate marital rape, we must liberalise divorce and bring gender parity in matrimonial laws. Else the misuse of marital rape will add voluminously to the prevalent misuse of existing matrimonial provisions.

First, we need to have no-fault divorce provision so that divorce can be granted in a short time at the invocation of one party without delay in proving fault of the other partner. Right now, we don't have this...