Myth: "A Husband Can Never Get Maintenance From His Wife in India"

The claim

“Indian law doesn’t let a husband claim maintenance from his wife — only wives can claim it.” This gets repeated as a flat, universal statement about Indian maintenance law as a whole.

Where the claim comes from

It’s not baseless — it’s an overgeneralisation from one real, narrower fact, which OIM’s own Law Library documents: BNSS Section 144 (the old CrPC Section 125), the fast summary maintenance route used constantly in practice, names “wife,” not “spouse.” A husband cannot invoke that specific provision against a wife.

What the rest of the law actually says

BNSS Section 144 is one maintenance route among several, not the entire body of Indian maintenance law. Sections 24 and 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 — the provisions that operate inside an actual divorce or judicial-separation proceeding — are gender-neutral on their face: either spouse may apply for interim maintenance (Section 24) or permanent alimony (Section 25). Courts have applied both sections to husbands as well as wives where the facts supported it.

The verdict, precisely

As a blanket claim about Indian law, this is false. As a claim specifically about the BNSS Section 144 summary route, it’s true — and that narrower, accurate version is what OIM’s Law Library entry on that section actually says.

What this does not mean

It does not mean maintenance law is symmetrical everywhere, or that a husband’s odds of actually being awarded maintenance under Sections 24–25 match a wife’s in practice — that’s a separate empirical question this piece isn’t answering. It also does not mean this applies uniformly across every personal law in India; the Hindu Marriage Act governs Hindus (which, for this purpose, includes Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs), and maintenance provisions under Muslim, Christian and Parsi personal law differ. What the claim gets wrong is treating one sex-specific summary provision as though it were the entire legal landscape.