A marital rape exemption in Indian law – meaning husbands cannot be prosecuted for raping wives – has been around since colonisation.
Rights advocate Aanya Wig, founder of Girl Up Rise, said it was time for that law to change.
"We live in the 21st century today and marriage should no longer be seen as an alliance of unequals," she said.
Her comments come as the Delhi High Court prepares to decide whether the marital rape exemption in India's law is unconstitutional.
The court proceedings have set off fierce debate in India and drawn criticism from politicians and men's rights groups — some who are calling for a "marriage strike".
So, why is the issue in the spotlight now? And what does a "marriage strike" involve?
Why the issue is making headlines now
Lawyer Jhuma Sen said reviews into the marital rape exemption and successive court judgements had increased momentum for the case being heard now.
"This has been one of the very thorny issues for many, many years and it's been one of the fiercest feminist battles to get rid of this," Ms Sen said.
The current court case is based on a 2015 petition filed by gender equality organisations to the High Court, which is hearing whether the exemption is unconstitutional.
The Rit Foundation was one of the petitioners to the High Court.
Its president Chitra Awasthi told the ABC that when she was providing pro bono legal support to women, she realised marital rape was a problem that needed to be addressed.
Ms Awasthi said sometimes even the victim didn't recognised that they were being exploited, while others didn't see marital rape as an issue.
The case comes after significant reforms were already made to sexual assault and rape laws in India in 2013, prompted by widespread protests in the country over a vicious attack.
In 2012, a group of men gang raped a 23-year-old college student on a bus, bashed her then threw her from the vehicle, in New Delhi. Four of her attackers were executed.
Ms Wig said while the laws had been strengthened, it hadn't automatically led to fewer rape cases in India because it was not enforced strongly enough.
"All these things look really good on paper, but the actual implementation is really weak," she said.
India is one of more than 30 countries, including China and Singapore, which hasn't criminalised marital rape, according to UN Women.
Section 375 of India's penal code still reads: "Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape. "
Police in Delhi reported a 20 per cent increase in rape in 2021 from the previous year.
A recent survey by India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare found nearly 30 per cent of women aged 18 to 49 have experienced domestic violence.
What is a marriage strike?
The hashtag MarriageStrike began trending on social media in protest against removing the marital rape exemption from India's penal code, after the High Court started hearing the case.
One of the groups against criminalising marital rape, a men's rights organisation called the Save Indian Family Foundation, is using the hashtag to advocate against the change.
Co-founder Anil Murty argued if marital rape was criminalised, it could lead to false allegations against men and put them through a lengthy legal process with limited options to appeal.
"We want better investigations to happen, whether it is sexual violence in marriage, or sexual violence outside [marriage], or whether it is domestic violence," Mr Murty added.
But Ms Sen said fears that men would be wrongly prosecuted was a "strawman's argument".
Ms Awasthi said she understood some people were skeptical of criminalising marital rape because of concerns about false accusations, but she said it would be up to authorities to enforce the law.
Mr Murty has been on a marriage strike for 16 years.
He said before the hashtag starting trending on social media, the term "marriage strike" was used to express dissatisfaction around the difficulty of getting a divorce.
India's politicians join debate
In submissions to the High Court, India's government has opposed any changes to the marital rape exemption in the law, according to local media, saying India shouldn't "blindly" follow Western countries.
As the case receives more attention, some politicians have made their positions public.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition party, tweeted in support of criminalising marital rape.
"Consent is amongst the most underrated concepts in our society. It has to be foregrounded to ensure safety for women," he wrote in January.
But government minister Smriti Irani recently argued against criminalising marital rape, according to local media.
"To condemn every marriage in this country as a violent marriage and to condemn every man in this country as a rapist, is not advisable," Ms Irani said in a Hindustan Times report.
The ABC has contacted India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Women and Child Development, and the Indian high commission in Canberra for comment.
Ms Wig said women would not feel safe in their own homes until the law was amended.
Ms Sen said the court did not have the power to formally remove the exemption from the statute because that was still the parliament's job.
"But the High Court can declare it unconstitutional and effectively strike it off," she said.
"If [the court] declare the exemption to be unconstitutional the parliament may formally amend it by passing a bill, but they are not bound to do it."
Ms Sen said there could be a decision from the High Court in a few months.
But she said the case was likely to follow a similar path to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2018 in India, which moved from the High Court to the Supreme Court — India's highest court.
