Culture

How Christian Marriage Reshaped Indian Law

Rahil Patel

Going deeper

Rahil Patel is a Speaker and Tutor at OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics

One Husband, One Wife: How Christian Marriage Entered the Indian Story 

In the final years of British rule in India, the government in London hoped to leave one last mark on a land shaped by centuries of empire. The British had introduced democracy, a free press, infrastructure, and legal reforms. But alongside these came another legacy—one less visible, yet deeply moral: the Christian ideal of marriage. One husband. One wife. 

Yet it was not colonial officials who carried this idea forward. That task fell to Indian reformers—campaigners, lawyers, and thinkers—who took up the vision and made it their own. This is their story. 

In 1946, British officials tentatively raised the issue with Mohandas Gandhi. He rejected it outright, telling them not to meddle in social traditions. The British, wary of pushing too hard, quietly stepped back. Gandhi’s response puzzled many. After all, he often spoke of Jesus with deep admiration and once called the Sermon on the Mount the greatest political document ever written. 

Incarnations with many wives

For many in Indian society, having multiple wives was a mark of status. For women, a string of husbands suggested strength, not submission. Whether prince, aristocrat, or village elder, this pattern of partnership followed the example of two revered incarnations of God in Hindu tradition: Ram and Krishna. 

Over the past two millennia, two great epics have shaped the moral and cultural imagination of more than a billion Hindus: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. 

The Ramayana, composed and refined between 200 BC and 200 AD, centres on the divine figure of Rama—an incarnation of the Supreme. He is portrayed as a righteous king, married to Sita, who defeats the demon-king Ravana—an event still remembered in the festival of Diwali. With around 300 versions of the epic in circulation, some traditions mention that Rama had 8,000 wives, with Sita being the most prominent amongst them.  

The Mahabharata, composed over 800 years from 400 BC to 400 AD, is another foundational epic—one that inspired Virgil’s Aeneid. Its battlefield setting introduces two key figures in Hindu thought. First, the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred dialogue on duty and devotion, narrated by Krishna—widely regarded as the most pivotal avatar in the Hindu world. Second, the epic’s fierce and intelligent heroine, Draupadi, who is married to five brothers. Krishna, who has 16,108 wives of his own, stands as her ally and guide throughout the story. 

The reformers of Bengal

So where does the story of Christian marriage reform in India begin? Not in London or Delhi, but in 19th-century Bengal where reformers were shaped by both tradition and new ideas. 

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was born into an orthodox Hindu family in eastern India. Though raised with deep reverence for Hindu customs, he was later drawn to the Brahmo Samaj, a reformist movement that sought to renew Hindu society from within. The Brahmo Samaj, founded in the early 19th century by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, played a decisive role in shaping modern Hindu life. Often called the Father of the Indian Renaissance, Roy believed that to reform Indian society, one must reform Hinduism. And to reform Hinduism, he believed, one must draw on Christian ideas: equality, human dignity, and the moral imagination shaped by the Bible. 

Roy campaigned against sati—the burning of widows—and for the rights of women. The biblical teaching that all are made in the image of God left a deep mark on his thinking. 

Vidyasagar continued the work. He saw, as Roy had, that the dignity of women lay at the heart of social transformation. His efforts to challenge entrenched customs were fierce and often unpopular. But after years of resistance, his campaign for widow remarriage succeeded. In 1856, the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act became law.  

However, this wasn’t enough. Hindu reformers and philosophers remained troubled by certain deep-seated ideas that shaped Indian society. Among them was Keshab Chandra Sen, another transformative figure from Bengal. He was a sharp critic of Christianity until he encountered the work of the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville. In Democracy in America (1835), Tocqueville reflects on the moral foundations of the American experiment. Toward the end of the second volume, he identifies the sanctity of Christian marriage as its hidden strength. 

Tocqueville’s argument altered Sen’s view of Christianity. A question lingered in the minds of many Indian thinkers: how had a small, rain-soaked island in the North Atlantic come to govern a vast subcontinent with such apparent ease? “Has God favoured England with unique gifts?” they asked with a mix of wonder and unease. For Sen, the answer became clear. The strength of the British nation, he concluded, lay in the moral foundation of the Christian family. 

He followed in the footsteps of Roy as one of the most influential thinkers of his time. And like Roy, Sen campaigned to weave Christian ideas into the fabric of Hindu thought. The Brahmo Samaj, a reformist Hindu movement that rejected idolatry and emphasised monotheism, reason, and moral reform became his platform for change. After years of painstaking effort, the Special Marriage Act of 1869 was finally passed. But there was a problem: the law only applied to members of the reformed Brahmo Samaj. It was swiftly rejected by the broader orthodox Hindu community, particularly the upper castes. 

Yet the idea of Christian marriage, and the social strength it promised, lingered. It quietly seeped into the imagination of India’s reformers and intellectuals, waiting for its time. 

Ambedkar on a mission 

The 20th century ushered in B.R. Ambedkar, a brilliant economist, jurist, and political reformer who would ultimately carry the idea of Christian marriage across the finishing line. Educated at the London School of Economics (where a bust of him still stands today), Ambedkar possessed a formidable intellect and a rare grasp of cultural dynamics. He understood, perhaps more clearly than anyone of his time, the difficult relationship between Hinduism and democracy. 

Ambedkar believed that Hinduism and democracy were fundamentally incompatible, largely because of the rigid caste system. So, when he was appointed to lead the drafting of India’s constitution in the late 1940s, he made it his mission to embed the document with Christian principles of equality and human dignity. 

Around this time, Ambedkar encountered Sex and Culture, the influential study by British anthropologist J.D. Unwin. Unwin argued that civilisations which upheld sexual restraint, especially through monogamous marriage, achieved cultural vitality. In contrast, those that abandoned such discipline were more likely to decline. The work made a deep impression. For Ambedkar, it confirmed what he already sensed: a profound weakness at the heart of Indian marriage. 

 Ambedkar aligned more closely with Sen than with Gandhi, challenging Gandhian politics and economics with forensic precision. Though he embraced Buddhism as his personal faith, Ambedkar carried forward the Christian idea of marriage. As the lead architect of India’s new constitution, he saw an opportunity to embed it in law. In 1948, he urged Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to recognise the social strength of monogamy—one husband, one wife—as a foundation for a modern nation. 

But Nehru hesitated. The cultural shift was too great, the opposition too strong. He asked Ambedkar to set the proposal aside for the moment, so the constitution could pass in its current form. Once the new government was in place, they could return to it. 

But hurdles remained. 

By 1952, the debate returned only to face rejection once more. India’s ruling party, along with the nation’s first president, Dr Rajendra Prasad, dismantled the proposal again. In frustration, Nehru threatened to resign if the cabinet refused to pass the monogamy clause. But they called his bluff. Even if Parliament approved it, Nehru knew the President would withhold his signature. The moment passed. Hope faded. 

Ambedkar, by now disillusioned and angry, turned to the press. With sharp intellect and fearless resolve, he wrote blistering critiques of the government, and of Nehru himself. His words carried weight. His moral authority remained strong across the political spectrum and amongst ordinary citizens.  

One husband, one wife becomes law

Three years later, after relentless public pressure and debate, Parliament passed the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955. After more than a century’s campaigning, the biblical idea of one husband and one wife became law. Legally, the act covered not only Hindus, but also Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists who were communities seen as sharing a common civil code. Whether they embraced it for spiritual reasons or practical ones, a sweeping shift had begun. 

Growing up in England in an orthodox Hindu family, I often heard my parents lament the high divorce rates in Western society. In all my years of reading Hindu scriptures as a monk, I never found any sanction for divorce. And yet, in many Hindu communities across the diaspora, the sanctity of marriage remains strikingly strong. Still, it’s worth asking: Where did that strength come from?  