BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Sociology 2025-26 - 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

A norm is a rule or standard of expected behaviour in a given situation.

An ideal norm is the rule as a society professes it: the publicly stated standard, taught and held up as right. Complete honesty in a tax return, absolute non violence, total abstention from dowry.

A practical or real norm is the standard people actually observe, which usually falls short of the ideal but is tolerated by the group: some understatement of income, the giving of gifts at a wedding, the small untruths of courtesy.

A gap between the two is normal in every society and is not by itself evidence of breakdown.

1. Durkheim's functionalist theory. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Durkheim studied Australian totemism and concluded that the totem is a symbol of the clan, so that in worshipping the totem the clan worships itself. The essential religious distinction is between the sacred and the profane, and religion's essential function is social integration: ritual assembles people, generates collective effervescence, and renews the collective conscience that binds the group.

2. Marx's conflict theory. Religion is part of the superstructure, determined by the economic base and serving the interests of the ruling class. It is "the sigh of the oppressed creature... the opium of the people": it consoles the exploited with reward hereafter, explains present suffering as ordained, and so produces false consciousness and prevents the development of class consciousness.

Two others may be substituted: Weber's demonstration in The Protestant Ethic that religious ideas can reshape economic conduct, and Tylor's animism, that religion begins in the belief that spirits inhabit natural objects.

Status is the position a person occupies in a social system, carrying rights, duties and a place in the scale of prestige. Role is the behaviour expected of the person occupying that status.

Linton: "A role is the dynamic aspect of a status. When the individual puts the rights and duties which constitute the status into effect, he is performing a role."

Status is what a person is; role is what a person does. Status is ascribed, assigned at birth, or achieved, earned by effort; a master status dominates all others in how a person is perceived.

The distinction is Charles Horton Cooley's.

A primary group is characterised by intimate face to face association and cooperation: small, personal, enduring, spontaneous, and an end in itself. Cooley named the family, the play group of children and the neighbourhood group of elders as practically universal, and called them the "nursery of human nature".

A secondary group is large, impersonal, formal and contractual, entered for a specific purpose and therefore a means to an end: a political party, a trade union, a company, a professional association. Relations within it are determined by the role rather than the person.

Ascribed status is assigned at birth or acquired involuntarily, without regard to ability or effort, and generally cannot be changed: sex, age, caste, race, kinship position, hereditary title.

Achieved status is earned through effort, ability, choice or competition: advocate, graduate, husband, trade union leader, convicted offender.

The distinction is Ralph Linton's. Traditional societies rest mainly on ascription, modern industrial societies mainly on achievement, though no society uses one alone.

For full marks, cover: the meaning of social change, the four families of theory with their principal exponents and central claims, the criticisms of each, and a comparative assessment.

Social change is a change in the structure and functioning of society: in its institutions, patterns of relationship, norms and values. It is universal, continuous, multi causal and productive of chain reactions.

1. Evolutionary or linear theories

Society moves in one direction, from simple to complex, through fixed stages.

• Comte's Law of Three Stages: the theological, in which phenomena are explained by supernatural beings; the metaphysical, in which they are explained by abstract forces; and the positive, in which they are explained by observed law.
• Spencer: from incoherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity, and from militant to industrial society. He coined survival of the fittest.

• Sorokin: the principle of immanent change; cultures oscillate between ideational, idealistic and sensate types, and change comes from within the system.
• Pareto: the circulation of elites; history is "a graveyard of aristocracies", and elites of lions and foxes succeed one another endlessly.

Criticisms. Vague and hard to test; the organic analogy is misleading; fatalistic; and they underplay genuine cumulative gains in knowledge and technology.

3. Functional or equilibrium theory

Talcott Parsons treated society as a system tending towards equilibrium. Change is a disturbance the system absorbs by adjusting its parts until a new balance is reached, so change is gradual, adaptive and orderly, proceeding by structural differentiation as institutions divide and specialise. Revolution is abnormal.

Criticism. Explains stability far better than change, and says nothing about whose interests an existing equilibrium serves.

No single theory accounts for all change. Evolutionism captures long term direction; cyclical theory accounts for decline; functionalism explains gradual adaptation; conflict theory explains revolutionary change and the role of interest. Most real changes need more than one.

Types. Primary socialisation, in the family in early childhood; secondary socialisation, in school, workplace and wider society; anticipatory socialisation, learning the ways of a group one hopes to join; resocialisation, unlearning old roles and learning new ones, as on entering prison, the army or a monastery; and developmental socialisation.

Agencies. The family, primary and most powerful; the peer group, the first setting of equality, where cooperation and competition among equals are learned rather than obedience to superiors; the school, which trains the child in impersonal authority as well as in knowledge; religion; the workplace; and mass and social media, now very powerful and largely unregulated.

Theories of the self.

• Cooley's looking glass self: we see ourselves as we imagine others see us, in three steps, our imagination of our appearance to another, of that person's judgment, and the resulting pride or shame.

For full marks, cover: the definition and characteristics, the causes, the forms, the theoretical accounts by Marx, Simmel, Coser and Dahrendorf, the functions and dysfunctions, and its relation to law.

Definition. Conflict is a dissociative social process in which individuals or groups seek to attain their ends by directly opposing, harming, defeating or destroying the opponent.

Gillin and Gillin: "Conflict is the social process in which individuals or groups seek their ends by directly challenging the antagonist by violence or threat of violence."

Characteristics. Universal, found in every society; conscious and deliberate, unlike competition; personal, directed at the rival himself; intermittent, occurring in bursts rather than continuously; and it may use violence or the threat of it.

• Lewis Coser: the functions of conflict. It strengthens the internal cohesion of each side; it clarifies issues; it releases tension that would otherwise accumulate, so a society that permits conflict to be expressed is more stable than one that suppresses it; and it generates new rules and institutions, since the settlement of a conflict is usually a new arrangement.
• Ralf Dahrendorf: conflict arises from authority rather than property, wherever some command and others obey, which is in every association. He identified quasi groups of those sharing a position, which become interest groups when organised. On this account conflict survives the abolition of private property.

Functions (integrative effects). Strengthens solidarity within each group; clarifies issues and boundaries; produces social change that no other process would deliver, as the civil rights, anti caste and trade union movements did; releases accumulated tension; and leads to accommodation and a new equilibrium.

Dysfunctions (disintegrative effects). Destroys life and property; disrupts social unity and produces lasting hatred; diverts resources from production to destruction; damages personality, producing fear and hostility; and can disintegrate the group itself.

3. Caste: thousands of castes and sub castes, each with its own customs and its own endogamous boundary.
4. Racial and tribal: more than 700 Scheduled Tribes, with distinct languages, territories and institutions.
5. Regional: differences of dress, food, festival, architecture, kinship rule and marriage rule. South Indian cross cousin marriage and north Indian village exogamy are opposite rules within one country.
6. Rural and urban, and wide differences of class and standard of living.

Bases of unity

1. Geographical unity, a subcontinent bounded by the Himalayas and the seas, which the ancients called Bharatvarsha.
2. Civilisational continuity: shared epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, common pilgrimage routes running the length of the country, and a shared body of philosophical and literary reference.
3. Composite culture, produced by centuries of interaction, visible in language, music, architecture, dress and food. Hindustani music, Indo Islamic architecture and Urdu are its products.

Constitutional framework

Articles 14, 15 and 16, equality and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth; Articles 25 to 28, freedom of religion; Articles 29 and 30, the right of any section of citizens to conserve its language, script and culture and the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions; the language provisions and the Eighth Schedule; Article 244 with the Fifth and Sixth Schedules for Scheduled and tribal areas; Article 51A(e) and (f), the duties to promote harmony and to value the composite culture; and secularism as part of the basic structure, S. R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994).

Assessment

India is the largest working experiment in pluralism attempted anywhere, and its record is mixed. The linguistic reorganisation of states in 1956 defused what many predicted would break the country, and the constitutional protection of minority institutions has held. Against that stand recurrent communal violence, the persistence of caste, and periodic majoritarian pressure. Unity in diversity in India is a continuing achievement rather than a settled condition.

(a) The term sexual harassment

Meaning. Sexual harassment is any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, whether physical, verbal or non verbal, which violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment. The essential element is that the conduct is unwelcome, judged from the recipient's point of view rather than from the intention of the person doing it.

Statutory definition. Section 2(n) of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 includes any one or more of these unwelcome acts, directly or by implication: physical contact and advances; a demand or request for sexual favours; making sexually coloured remarks; showing pornography; and any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non verbal conduct of a sexual nature.

• Every workplace with ten or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee under Section 4, headed by a senior woman employee, with at least half its members women and one external member. Where there are fewer than ten employees, or the complaint is against the employer, it goes to the Local Committee constituted by the District Officer under Section 6.
• A written complaint under Section 9, ordinarily within three months, extendable by three more for sufficient cause; the Committee must assist her in reducing it to writing if needed.
• Section 10 permits conciliation at her request, but monetary settlement cannot be its basis.
• Section 12 allows interim relief during the inquiry: transfer of either party, up to three months' additional leave, or restraint on the respondent from reporting on her work.

• Assault or criminal force with intent to outrage modesty, formerly Section 354, now Section 74, if there is physical contact.
• An FIR may be lodged at any police station; zero FIR permits registration irrespective of jurisdiction, and refusal to register such a case is itself an offence.

3. Civil and other remedies. A civil suit for damages; a writ petition under Article 226 or Article 32 where a public employer fails to act; complaint to the National or State Commission for Women; and free legal aid under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.

4. Protection against retaliation. Adverse action taken because she has complained is itself actionable, and victimisation is treated as misconduct.

The background. The regime originates in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997), in which the Supreme Court, finding a legislative vacuum, laid down binding guidelines under Article 32 and treated sexual harassment as a violation of Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(g) and 21. Those guidelines governed for sixteen years until the 2013 Act.

Further roles relevant here:

1. Agenda setting, deciding which issues the public attends to.
2. Forum for debate and the formation of public opinion, which is the media's democratic justification.
3. Accountability, which is why the press is called the fourth estate.
4. Social change, since campaigns on sanitation, immunisation and girls' education work through it.

(b) How mass media influences public opinion

Public opinion is the collective view of a community on a matter of general concern. Cooley treated it not as a sum of individual opinions but as an organic product of communication and discussion.

The mechanisms:

1. Agenda setting. The best supported finding in the field, from McCombs and Shaw: the media may not tell people what to think, but it is strikingly successful in telling them what to think about.

Trial by media, which the question is about

The situation described is trial by media: the pronouncement of guilt by publicity before or during a trial.

Why it is objectionable. It violates the presumption of innocence, part of the fair trial guarantee under Article 21; it prejudices the trial by influencing witnesses and creating an atmosphere in which acquittal reads as failure; it destroys reputation irreversibly, since an acquittal receives a fraction of the coverage the accusation received; and it inflicts a sanction from which there is no appeal.

The legal position. Article 19(1)(a) protects press freedom and Article 19(2) permits reasonable restrictions in relation to contempt of court and defamation. The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, punishes publication prejudicing the course of justice. In Sahara India Real Estate Corporation v. SEBI (2012) the Supreme Court recognised the power to make a postponement order, deferring publication where there is a real and substantial risk of prejudice, and held it must be necessary and proportionate, the least restrictive measure available. Against this stands the equally constitutional value of open justice, and the proposition that secrecy is a greater danger than publicity.

2. It breaks the link between birth and occupation, creating achieved status. A qualification is earned and portable, and its holder can enter an occupation his caste never followed. This is the largest single solvent of the caste occupational order.
3. It creates upward mobility, and has been the route by which Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe families entered public employment and the professions. Sorokin identified the school as the most important channel of vertical mobility in modern societies.
4. It reduces prejudice, particularly through mixed classrooms where children of different castes study and eat together. The mid day meal has had this effect as a latent function.
5. It empowers women, raising the age at marriage, lowering fertility, improving child health and increasing participation in work and public life.
6. It creates awareness of rights, so that a person knows Article 17, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, exist.

2. Protection of couples: Lata Singh v. State of U.P. (2006), holding that an adult may marry whom she chooses and directing police protection; Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), holding the right to choose a partner part of Article 21 and issuing preventive, remedial and punitive directions against khap panchayats, including safe houses and special cells in each district; and Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K. M. (2018), restoring a marriage annulled by a High Court.
3. Prosecution of honour crimes without compromise, and accountability of officials who fail to protect.
4. Financial incentives, such as the Dr. Ambedkar Scheme for Social Integration through Inter-Caste Marriages and state schemes.
5. Removal of practical obstacles: the 30 day public notice under the Special Marriage Act, which exposes couples to interference, was read down as optional by the Allahabad High Court in Safiya Sultana (2021).
6. Social measures: co-education, mixed hostels, urban employment, and the ordinary rather than scandalous portrayal of such marriages.

For social mobility generally:

1. Reservation under Articles 15(4), 15(5), 16(4) and 330 to 342.

Mob lynching is the killing or serious injury of a person by a group acting outside the law, on an accusation the group treats as proved without trial. It is a form of collective violence and of extra legal punishment, and it is a direct denial of the rule of law.

(i) Causes

Immediate triggers.

1. Rumour, particularly on messaging platforms. Unverified messages alleging child lifting, cattle theft or cow slaughter have repeatedly produced killings within hours. Rumour is the standing mechanism of collective violence: it thrives where information is scarce, anxiety is high and official sources are not trusted.
2. Suspicion of cattle transport or beef possession, and of inter faith relationships.
3. Allegations of theft, witchcraft or kidnapping in rural areas.

Underlying causes.

7. Caste dominance, since a significant proportion of lynchings are of Dalits and Adivasis by dominant caste groups, and are about enforcing hierarchy rather than about any alleged offence.
8. Cultural lag and anomie: rapid change without a corresponding adjustment of norms produces normlessness, and in Durkheim's account that is where deviance concentrates.

(ii) Remedial measures

Legal and judicial.

1. Implement Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018), in which the Supreme Court held lynching an "affront to the rule of law" and issued binding directions: a nodal officer of at least Superintendent of Police rank in every district; identification of lynching prone areas; special task forces to gather intelligence on those spreading hate; prompt registration of FIRs; fast track courts with trial to be concluded within six months; a victim compensation scheme under Section 357A of the Criminal Procedure Code; and departmental action against police and district officers who fail to prevent or investigate.

Social.

1. Public awareness and rumour rebuttal, using the same platforms on which rumour travels, and officials trusted enough to be believed.
2. Education against prejudice, and the promotion of inter community contact and cross cutting association.
3. Responsible political and religious leadership, and the refusal of public honour to the accused.
4. Community policing and peace committees with members from all communities.

For full marks, cover: the definition of religion and its elements, the theories, evolutionary, functionalist, conflict and Weberian, the functions and dysfunctions of the religious institution, secularisation, and the constitutional position in India.

Definition and elements

Religion is a system of beliefs and practices relating to sacred things which unites its adherents into a moral community.

Durkheim: "Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church all those who adhere to them."

Elements. Belief in the supernatural; the division of the world into the sacred and the profane; ritual and worship; a moral code; sacred objects, places and texts; emotion of awe and dependence; a community of believers; and often a priesthood.

2. The functionalist theory (Durkheim). In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life he studied Australian totemism as the simplest religion available and concluded that the totem is a symbol of the clan, so that in worshipping it the clan worships itself. Religion's essential function is social integration: it creates and periodically renews the collective conscience. Ritual assembles people, produces collective effervescence, and returns them with their common identity refreshed. Malinowski added that religion relieves anxiety where human control fails, at death, illness and the start of a dangerous undertaking.

3. The conflict theory (Marx). Religion belongs to the superstructure, determined by the economic base and serving the ruling class. It is "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world... the opium of the people": it consoles the exploited with reward hereafter, explains suffering as ordained, and so produces false consciousness. In India the doctrines of karma and rebirth are cited as performing exactly this function for caste.

Criticism. Religion has also been revolutionary: the Bhakti and Sufi movements, liberation theology, Ambedkar's Buddhist conversion, and the black churches of the American civil rights movement.

6. Identity and belonging, giving the individual a place in a community.
7. Welfare and charity: temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras run schools, hospitals, langars and relief.
8. Legitimation of the social order, conferring sanctity on marriage, kingship and property.
9. Social change, through reform movements: Bhakti, Buddhism's rejection of caste, the Brahmo and Arya Samaj, and Ambedkar's conversion.
10. Rites of passage, marking birth, marriage and death, which is what makes life transitions socially recognised.

Dysfunctions

Communal conflict, since religion defines out groups as sharply as in groups; obstruction of reform and of science; legitimation of inequality, particularly caste and the subordination of women; superstition, commercialisation and exploitation by self styled godmen; fundamentalism and intolerance; and the diversion of resources into ritual.

Religion and the Indian Constitution

Articles 25 to 28 guarantee freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion, subject to public order, morality and health; the freedom to manage religious affairs; freedom from taxation for the promotion of a religion; and freedom from religious instruction in wholly state funded institutions. Article 25(2)(b) expressly permits the state to throw open Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes of Hindus, which is how temple entry was legislated. Articles 14, 15 and 17 limit religious practice where it discriminates. Articles 29 and 30 protect minority culture and institutions. Secularism is part of the basic structure, S. R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994). The essential religious practices doctrine, from Shirur Mutt (1954), confines Article 25 protection to practices integral to a religion.

3. Modes of production. Primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and, he predicted, socialism and communism. Each stage carries a contradiction between its forces and relations of production, which eventually bursts it.

4. Class and class struggle. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Class is defined objectively by the relationship to the means of production. He distinguished a class in itself from a class for itself, the transition being obstructed by false consciousness.

5. Surplus value and exploitation. Labour produces more value than the wage paid for it; the difference, surplus value, is appropriated by the owner. Exploitation is therefore built into the wage relation itself.

6. Alienation. Under capitalism the worker is estranged from the product, from the act of production, from his species being and from other people.

7. Ideology and religion. "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." Religion is the opium of the people.

3. Repressive and restitutive law. Law is the visible index of solidarity. Mechanical solidarity produces repressive law, which punishes because the offence outrages the shared conscience. Organic solidarity produces restitutive law, which restores the injured party's position. The proportion of the two measures the type of society.

4. Anomie. The condition of normlessness, in which the norms regulating desire lose their authority. The anomic division of labour occurs where specialisation outruns moral regulation, and industrial conflict is its symptom. Durkheim found anomie in sudden prosperity as well as sudden depression.

5. Suicide. The demonstration that even the most private act has social causes. Rates vary systematically with religion, marital status and nationality, and are explained by two variables, integration and regulation, giving egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types.

6. Religion. The totem is a symbol of the clan; the fundamental distinction is between the sacred and the profane; and religion's function is social integration.

7. Sociology as a discipline. He established its subject matter, its method and its independence, and founded L'Année Sociologique.

• I: Integration, coordinating the parts and regulating relations. Performed by law and social control, the "societal community".
• L: Latency or pattern maintenance and tension management, transmitting and sustaining values. Performed by the family, education and religion.

4. Pattern variables. Five paired choices facing any actor, which distinguish traditional from modern societies: ascription against achievement, diffuseness against specificity, particularism against universalism, affectivity against affective neutrality, and collectivity orientation against self orientation. Traditional societies cluster on the first of each pair, modern societies on the second.

5. Social change through structural differentiation. Change is evolutionary and adaptive: as societies grow complex, institutions divide and specialise, and the system reaches a new equilibrium at a higher level of adaptive capacity. Change is therefore gradual and orderly, and revolution is a pathology.

For full marks, cover: the meaning and characteristics of conflict, its causes, its forms in full, its functions and dysfunctions, then the meaning and nature of social control, the need for it, its types with agencies, the relation between the two, and the connection to law.

A. Social conflict

Meaning. Conflict is a dissociative social process in which individuals or groups seek their ends by directly opposing, harming, defeating or destroying the opponent. Gillin and Gillin: "the social process in which individuals or groups seek their ends by directly challenging the antagonist by violence or threat of violence."

Characteristics. Universal; conscious and deliberate, unlike competition; personal, directed at the rival himself; intermittent, occurring in bursts; and it may use violence or the threat of it.

Causes. Individual differences of interest and attitude; differences of culture, religion, language and caste; conflict of interests, especially economic; rapid social change, producing generational and group gaps; and inequality in the distribution of wealth, status and power.

1. Corporate conflict, conducted by members of a group against another group as groups, against personal conflict, between individuals within a group.

By mode:

1. Direct conflict, which aims at the opponent himself, against indirect conflict, which frustrates his purposes without attacking him.
2. Latent conflict, present but unexpressed, against manifest conflict, open and declared.
3. Violent and non violent conflict; and realistic conflict, over a genuine issue, against non realistic conflict, which serves only to release tension, which is Coser's distinction.

Functions and dysfunctions of conflict

Integrative or positive effects.

• It strengthens solidarity within each group. External conflict increases internal unity, which Coser demonstrated and every war illustrates.
• It clarifies issues and boundaries, forcing groups to define what they stand for.

Need for it. To maintain order and stability; to secure conformity and predictability; to protect the weak; to maintain solidarity in a plural society; to restrain deviance; and to transmit the culture intact.

Types and agencies

1. Informal social control. Unwritten, spontaneous, exercised by primary groups, internalised through socialisation.

• Means: folkways, the habitual customs of daily life; mores, folkways regarded as essential to welfare; taboos, negative mores; customs, traditions and rituals; religion, controlling through belief and the fear of divine sanction; and the sanctions of public opinion, gossip, praise, ridicule, satire and ostracism.
• Agencies: family, neighbourhood, peer group, caste, religion, public opinion.
• Effective in small, stable, face to face communities; weak in large, mobile and anonymous ones.

2. Formal social control. Deliberately created, written, enforced by specialised agencies with defined penalties.

4. Law cannot easily work against the mores. Sumner: "the mores can make anything right."
5. Where the two systems conflict, the formal system must supply the whole of the enforcement and usually cannot.

Types of marriage

A. By the number of partners.

1. Monogamy. One man married to one woman at a time. The most widespread form, and the only lawful form for Hindus, Christians and Parsis in India. Its advantages are emotional depth and stability, better care of children, equality between the sexes and economic manageability. Serial monogamy is successive marriage after death or divorce; straight monogamy forbids remarriage even after death.

2. Polygamy, of three kinds:

• Polygyny, one man with two or more wives. Sororal (sororate) where the wives are sisters, on the theory that sisters quarrel less; non sororal where they are not. Causes: excess of women, desire for male offspring, the value of labour and children in an agrarian household, prestige, political alliance, and the barrenness or illness of the first wife. Found among the Naga, Gond and Baiga, and permitted with conditions under Muslim personal law, limited to four wives with a requirement of equal treatment.

• Levirate (devar vivah), a widow marrying her deceased husband's brother; sororate, a widower marrying his deceased wife's sister.
• Cross cousin marriage, common in south India, and parallel cousin marriage, common among Muslims.

C. By residence. Patrilocal, the dominant Indian pattern; matrilocal, as among the Khasi and Garo; neolocal, increasingly urban; avunculocal.

D. By descent and authority. Patrilineal and matrilineal; patriarchal and matriarchal. The Khasi and Garo of Meghalaya and the Nair of Kerala are the Indian matrilineal cases.

Functions of marriage

Regulation of sexual behaviour; legitimate procreation and the assignment of descent; rearing and socialisation of children; economic cooperation and division of labour; emotional security and companionship; transmission of property, status and culture; and alliance between kin groups.

Relevance in modern times

Changes visible today:

10. Alternatives alongside marriage: live in relationships, recognised for limited statutory purposes in D. Velusamy and Indra Sarma under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005; single parenthood; and the unresolved question of same sex marriage after Navtej Singh Johar (2018) and Supriyo v. Union of India (2023).
11. Custom replaced by statute: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Special Marriage Act, 1954, the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, and the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019.

Causes. Education, particularly of women; employment and economic independence; urbanisation and its anonymity; industrialisation, which separated home from workplace; legislation and judicial decision; mass media; Westernisation; and the growth of individualism.

Problems. Dowry and dowry death; domestic violence; child marriage persisting despite the statute; the adverse sex ratio and the resulting shortage of brides in some regions; marital rape, still excepted from the general offence; desertion and maintenance disputes; the double burden on working wives; and honour crimes against couples who marry outside caste or religion.