Do you think marriage as a sacrament is loosing its value in Modern India?

Classical Hindu tradition treats marriage as a sacrament (samskara) — an indissoluble, sacred union entered for dharma, progeny and companionship, not a dissolvable contract. Modern India shows visible strains on this ideal, but not its collapse.

Signs of the sacrament weakening

• Legal contractualisation: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 introduced divorce and judicial separation, while the Special Marriage Act, 1954 enables purely civil unions.
• Rising divorce and separation, particularly in urban India, with matrimonial disputes a fast-growing category of litigation.
• Live-in relationships enjoy judicial recognition, with partners protected under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (Indra Sarma case, 2013).
• Individual choice: self-arranged, inter-caste and late marriages reflect a companionship-based rather than ritual-based understanding.
• Growing singlehood and delayed marriage among educated women prioritising careers.

Continuity of the sacramental ideal

• Marriage remains nearly universal in India, and arranged marriage is still the dominant mode.
• Elaborate rituals — saptapadi, kanyadan — persist even in otherwise 'modern' weddings.
• India's divorce rate, around 1%, stays among the world's lowest; family and kin continue to anchor matrimonial decisions.

Marriage in India is thus not so much losing value as changing character: the sacramental frame increasingly coexists with contractual, egalitarian and companionate elements — a transformation of the institution rather than its decline.