“Every modern marriage law has a divorce option; there will always be genuine cases where separation is needed,” lawyer Arvind Sharma said.

India has one of the lowest divorce rates. In 2002, it was 1.1 per cent, compared with 54.9 per cent in Sweden.

In the metros and IT hubs, however, divorces have doubled or even tripled in the past five years, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

The judges today remarked sarcastically that couples were now filing “anticipatory” divorce petitions even before marriage. They rued the misuse of the Hindu Marriage Act’s provision for divorce on grounds of diseases like leprosy or mental illness.

The act had for the first time interpreted a Hindu marriage as a contract, overturning the older view of it as a sacramental union that could not be dissolved. It introduced the concept of divorce on grounds such as cruelty, infertility and lunacy, and was later amended to include “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage as a ground.

Source: The Telegraphy Calcutta India