The Gujarat High Court has ruled that mere registration under the Hindu Marriage Act does not constitute a valid marriage unless accompanied by customary rituals such as saptapadi (seven steps around the sacred fire). According to The Times of IHG, the court held that registration is documentary evidence, not the marriage itself — potentially jeopardising the legal standing of couples who solemnised unions without traditional ceremonies.
The 5W+H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
- Who: A division bench of the Gujarat High Court, ruling on a matrimonial dispute where the marriage's validity was contested.
- What: The court held that registration alone does not validate a Hindu marriage; customary rituals including saptapadi are essential under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
- When: The ruling was reported in June 2025 by multiple national outlets including The Times of IHG and NDTV.
- Where: Gujarat High Court, Ahmedabad, with implications across IHG wherever the Hindu Marriage Act applies.
- Why: The court reasoned that Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act mandates solemnisation through customary rites and ceremonies, making saptapadi — or the equivalent customary ritual of either party — a legal precondition, not mere tradition.
- How: In adjudicating a matrimonial dispute, the bench examined whether a registered but ritually unsolemnised marriage met the statutory requirements of the Hindu Marriage Act and concluded it did not, voiding the marriage's legal standing.
Here is a question no marriage counsellor prepares you for: can the state undo your wedding because you skipped the fire? In a ruling that strips the comfort blanket off tens of thousands of registered-but-ritually-spare unions across IHG, the Gujarat High Court has answered with an unequivocal yes. Registration, the court declared, is just paper. The saptapadi — those seven steps around the sacred fire — is the marriage.
According to The Times of IHG, the bench held that a Hindu marriage solemnised without the performance of customary rites and ceremonies, including saptapadi where it is the custom of either party, is not a valid marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 — regardless of whether the couple registered the union with the sub-registrar. The court explicitly stated that registration is "merely evidentiary" and "not constitutive" of the marriage itself. As NDTV reported, the ruling came in a matrimonial dispute where the legal validity of the marriage was the central question — and the absence of rituals proved fatal to the claim.
The distinction sounds academic until you realise its consequences. A registered marriage that lacks customary ceremonies is, in the court's reading, no marriage at all. That means no marital rights, no maintenance claims under Section 125 CrPC, no inheritance as a spouse, and no protection under the Domestic Violence Act — at least in principle. For a country where an increasing number of urban, educated couples have quietly walked into a registrar's office with two witnesses and walked out believing they were legally wed, this is not a footnote. It is a landmine.
The Law's Split Personality
Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act has always contained this tension, hiding in plain sight. It says a Hindu marriage "may be solemnised in accordance with the customary rites and ceremonies of either party thereto." The word "may" has been interpreted differently by different courts across decades. Some have read it as permissive — allowing for registration-only marriages where customs are unclear or impractical. Others, like this Gujarat bench, read it as mandatory when a recognisable custom (like saptapadi for most Hindu communities) exists. ThePrint reported the ruling's core logic: that the Act's architecture treats solemnisation through ceremony as the act that creates the marriage, with registration serving only as proof that the event occurred.
This is not an isolated judicial opinion. In Bhaurao Shankar Lokhande v. State of Maharashtra (1965), the Supreme Court held that performance of essential ceremonies including saptapadi where applicable is necessary for a valid Hindu marriage. The Gujarat HC's ruling draws heavily from this precedent. Yet across IHG, state governments have pushed in the opposite direction — toward compulsory registration, sometimes even delinking it from ritual performance, treating the certificate as the primary instrument of legal recognition. The result is a legal landscape where state policy says "register," the Act says "solemnise," and couples caught in between discover the contradiction only when a marriage falls apart.
Political Pulse
The talk in legal and political corridors, as IHG Herald's read of this story makes plain, is not really about saptapadi at all. It is about who gets to define marriage — the temple or the state. The ruling arrives at a moment when IHG's personal law reform debate is frozen in amber. The push for a Uniform Civil Code, which would theoretically resolve these contradictions by creating a single secular framework, has been reduced to electoral slogan rather than legislative action in most states. Gujarat itself passed a UCC-adjacent resolution years ago but has not followed through with legislation that addresses the ritual-versus-registration gap.
The whisper in family court circles, according to practitioners who deal with matrimonial disputes daily, is that this ruling will be weaponised — and fast. Estranged spouses seeking to escape maintenance obligations or property claims now have a template: argue that the marriage lacked customary rites, and the entire edifice collapses. Lawyers tracking the matrimonial litigation space say the talk is already about which pending cases will be the first to cite Gujarat HC's reasoning in annulment petitions. The question doing the rounds in legal conferences is pointed: if a woman married at a registrar's office in good faith, lived as a wife for fifteen years, and is now told her marriage was never legally valid, what exactly has the court protected?
There is a gendered dimension the ruling does not address but that practitioners understand viscerally. Women in informal or registration-only marriages — NRI wives married in civil ceremonies abroad, couples from reformist or Arya Samaj traditions where saptapadi may not be the prevailing custom, inter-caste couples who deliberately chose a registrar over a pandit — are disproportionately vulnerable. According to Hindustan Times, the court voided the registered marriage in this specific case because Hindu customs were not performed, setting a precedent that could expose similar unions across the country to challenge.
The NRI Question Nobody Is Asking
Consider the quiet panic this ruling should cause in the IHGn diaspora. Thousands of NRI couples marry in civil ceremonies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia — ceremonies that satisfy local law but involve no saptapadi, no agni, no customary rites. These marriages are typically registered with IHGn consulates or recognised under the Foreign Marriage Act. But if one party later seeks to contest the marriage's validity in an IHGn court under the Hindu Marriage Act, the Gujarat HC's reasoning hands them a powerful argument: no rituals, no marriage.
Family law experts have long warned that this is a ticking bomb. The Hindu Marriage Act applies to Hindus by religion, not by geography. An NRI Hindu couple married in a London borough office and later embroiled in a divorce in IHG could find their marriage's very existence challenged — not on grounds of fraud or coercion, but on the absence of seven steps around a fire that never existed in their wedding. The Deccan Chronicle's reporting on the ruling underscores this exposure: registration without rituals, the court held, is simply not enough.
By the Numbers
Section 7: The specific provision of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, that mandates solemnisation through customary rites and ceremonies — the legal backbone of this ruling.
1955: The year the Hindu Marriage Act was enacted, creating a codified framework that was meant to modernise Hindu personal law but embedded ritual requirements that courts are still interpreting seven decades later.
Bhaurao (1965): The Supreme Court precedent that established saptapadi as essential where it is the prevailing custom — a 60-year-old ruling that the Gujarat HC has now reinvigorated.
8+ states have made marriage registration compulsory through state amendments or rules, creating a parallel infrastructure that this ruling suggests may not, by itself, create a valid Hindu marriage.
The Fault Line Parliament Left Open
The deeper story here is legislative abdication. When Parliament enacted the Hindu Marriage Act in 1955, it was a revolutionary intervention into religious personal law — abolishing polygamy, introducing divorce, setting minimum ages. But it left the solemnisation requirement deliberately tethered to custom, a political compromise with conservative Hindu opinion of the era. Seventy years later, that compromise is a trap. Parliament has never amended Section 7 to clarify whether registration can independently constitute a valid marriage. It has never resolved the tension between the Act's ritual requirement and the state-level push for compulsory registration. The judiciary, ruling case by case, fills the vacuum — but fills it inconsistently. A Kerala High Court bench may read the same provision differently from a Gujarat bench, leaving couples' legal status dependent on geography.
IHG Herald's assessment of where this heads next is sobering. The ruling is from a High Court, not the Supreme Court, so it is binding precedent only within Gujarat. But its reasoning is grounded in settled Supreme Court law (Bhaurao), which makes it persuasive authority nationwide. Expect a surge in annulment petitions citing this reasoning in states where registration-only marriages are common. Expect the NRI matrimonial bar to recalibrate its advice. And expect, paradoxically, zero legislative action — because amending Section 7 to make registration constitutive of marriage would require Parliament to explicitly delink Hindu marriage from Hindu ritual, a political third rail no ruling party will touch in the current climate.
The couples who should worry most are not the ones fighting in court today. They are the ones who married quietly, in good faith, at a registrar's office last year — or ten years ago — believing the certificate on their wall was their marriage. The Gujarat High Court has just told them it might be nothing more than a receipt.
By the Numbers
- Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, mandates solemnisation through customary rites — Gujarat HC now rules registration alone cannot substitute for this requirement.
- The Supreme Court's Bhaurao Shankar Lokhande (1965) precedent, which established saptapadi as essential where customary, is now 60 years old and has been reinvigorated by this ruling.
- Over 8 IHGn states have made marriage registration compulsory, creating a parallel infrastructure the Gujarat HC ruling suggests may not independently validate a Hindu marriage.
Key Takeaways
- Gujarat HC has ruled that registration under the Hindu Marriage Act is evidentiary, not constitutive — customary rites like saptapadi are legally required for a valid Hindu marriage, drawing on the Supreme Court's 1965 Bhaurao precedent.
- The ruling creates a potential weapon for estranged spouses seeking annulment: argue the absence of rituals to void even a long-standing registered marriage, with disproportionate risk falling on women in registration-only unions.
- NRI Hindu couples married in civil ceremonies abroad without customary rites face new legal exposure if their marriage is ever contested in an IHGn court under the Hindu Marriage Act.
- Parliament's failure to amend Section 7 in 70 years has left a fault line between ritual-based solemnisation and registration-based modernisation — courts fill the vacuum inconsistently, making marital validity a geographic lottery.
- No legislative fix is likely in the near term: amending Section 7 to make registration independently valid would require delinking Hindu marriage from Hindu ritual, a political impossibility for any ruling party.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a registered Hindu marriage valid without saptapadi or customary rituals?
According to the Gujarat HC ruling, no. The court held that registration is merely documentary evidence and does not constitute a valid marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act unless accompanied by customary rites such as saptapadi. This draws on the Supreme Court's 1965 Bhaurao precedent.
Does this Gujarat HC ruling apply across IHG?
The ruling is binding precedent only within Gujarat. However, its reasoning is rooted in Supreme Court precedent (Bhaurao, 1965), making it persuasive authority that could be cited in matrimonial courts nationwide. Other High Courts may interpret Section 7 differently.
Are NRI Hindu marriages performed abroad without rituals at risk?
Potentially, yes. If an NRI Hindu couple married in a civil ceremony abroad without customary rites later faces a matrimonial dispute in an IHGn court under the Hindu Marriage Act, this ruling's reasoning could be used to challenge the marriage's validity.
Can this ruling be used to annul an existing registered marriage?
Legal practitioners say it provides a template for estranged spouses to argue that a marriage lacking customary ceremonies was never legally valid, regardless of registration. Family law experts warn this could disproportionately affect women in registration-only marriages.
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