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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Chiraiya shows marital rape is structural—it is embedded in India’s legal framework

Chiraiya, streaming on JioHostar, confronts consent within marriage. It stars Divya Dutta, Siddharth Shaw and Prasanna Bisht.

Streaming on JioHostar, the new series Chiraiya starring Divya Dutta, Siddharth Shaw and Prasanna Bisht, takes on a difficult question often ignored in India—consent within marriage as well as the legal and cultural invisibility of marital rape in our country.

In a media landscape where we are spoonfed stories that depict marriage as the ultimate happy ending, Chiraiya does something radical. It begins the story there and dismantles the illusion we associate with marriage as the ultimate destination for love. Chiraiya is, in turn, a remake of the Bengali web series ‘Sampurna’ streaming on Hoichoi. 

For as long as I can remember, society and popular culture have treated marriage as a moral blanket. Once it is draped over a relationship, everything becomes permissible or at least private. We are hushed under the ambiguity that what happens inside the marriage, it stays between the husband and wife. The contract becomes binding; legality precedes consent.

Marital rape is structural

Chiraiya confronts this head-on and shows us how absurd this claim is, how tradition is used as a beating stick to keep women in check. And how internalised misogyny makes women........

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