Beyond the Myth of Four Wives: Understanding Polygamy in India

Public discussions in India often revive the idea that Muslim men commonly marry multiple wives, a notion that persists more in social imagination than in lived reality. Much of this perception stems from a tendency to conflate religious allowance with actual social behaviour, overlooking both the legal landscape and decades of demographic evidence.

While subsequent sections of this article explore India’s diverse marital laws and the specific provisions of Muslim personal law; however, it is important to note here that polygamy is rare across all communities in India. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–21), only about 1.4 percent of currently married women reported that their husbands had another wife, meaning that more than 98 percent of marriages in the country are monogamous. These findings reaffirm that, regardless of legal permission or prohibition, polygamous unions remain a marginal practice and have steadily declined over time.

This contrast between public perception and empirical reality forms the central thread of this article, which examines how law, culture, and lived experience intersect to shape marriage patterns in India.

Legal Framework: India’s Mosaic of Marriage Laws

India’s marriage laws reflect the country’s plural social and religious composition. There is no single civil code governing marriage and family life for all citizens; instead, different religious communities follow their respective personal laws. For the majority population, comprising Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, marriage is regulated by the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. Under this Act, bigamy is prohibited, and a second marriage while the first is existing constitutes an offence punishable under Section 17 of the Act, read with Section 494 & 495 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Similarly, for Indian Christians, the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872 and related provisions in the IPC make bigamy a punishable offence. The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936 also explicitly forbids more than one marriage at a time.

In contrast, under the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, a Muslim man is legally permitted to have up to four wives at a time, provided he treats them equitably as required by Islamic injunctions. This conditional allowance, often overlooked in public discourse, places justice and equality at the moral centre of marital relations in Islam. Beyond these religious laws, several tribal and indigenous communities in parts of the Northeast, central India, and hilly regions continue to observe customary laws. In some of these communities, polygyny (where one man has more than one wife) is accepted as part of tradition. These practices are often rooted in local customs and social structures rather than formal legal recognition.

Overall, India’s legal landscape on marriage is thus a complex mosaic, largely monogamous by law, with limited and conditional exceptions under Muslim personal law and certain customary practices. However, as national survey data consistently reveal, the legal allowance for polygyny has not translated into higher prevalence. Across communities, monogamy overwhelmingly remains the social and practical norm.

Data Tells a Different Story

Across three rounds of the NFHS, the data offer a clear and consistent pattern. Despite legal permission under Muslim personal law, the prevalence of polygynous marriages among Muslims (1.9% in NFHS-5) is only marginally higher than among Hindus (1.3%), and both communities have witnessed an identical decline of about 24 percent between NFHS-3 and NFHS-5. What is even more revealing is that some communities where polygamy is legally prohibited, such as Christians, continue to show a slightly higher prevalence (2.1%) than Muslims. Tribal and certain customary-practice groups in specific regions exhibit similar patterns.

Source: NFHS-3, NFHS-4, & NFHS-5

These trends challenge the common assumption that religious permission directly translates into higher practice. Instead, the NFHS data suggest that social norms, economic realities, and cultural contexts exert far greater influence on marital arrangements than the legal or religious allowance itself. It is also noteworthy that the Qur’an is the only major religious scripture that specifically advises marrying just one woman if a man fears he cannot treat multiple wives with fairness and justice, highlighting that ethical responsibility, rather than numerical allowance, forms the core of its guidance.

Where and Why Polygamy Persists

While polygamy is rare nationwide, both NFHS and the detailed district-level analysis by Sahoo, Nagarajan and Mandal show that its prevalence is geographically concentrated rather than religiously driven. The highest levels appear in specific tribal and North-Eastern states, notably Mizoram, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Sikkim, as well as pockets of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh, where several districts record significantly higher-than-average rates. Many of these regions overlap with Scheduled Tribe-dominant areas where customary practices historically included forms of secondary marriage.

The research also finds that polygynous unions in these areas often arise from social and economic circumstances rather than doctrinal motives. In other cases, customary inheritance norms, patriarchal kinship systems, and low female educational and economic opportunities play a stronger role. But the data and research underscore a central conclusion: poverty, tribal customs, and gender disadvantage, not religion alone, are the most consistent predictors of polygamy in India. Hence, ultimately, the persistence of polygamy in a few contexts is less about faith and more about socio-economic vulnerability. Addressing those vulnerabilities through education, employment, and social support is therefore a more constructive policy response than communal or moral arguments.

Many Wives and Many Children

A long-standing public belief links polygamy among Muslims to higher fertility and faster population growth. However, demographic evidence over the past three decades consistently challenges this assumption. The NFHS data show that fertility among Muslims has been declining steadily and rapidly.

Between NFHS-1 and NFHS-5, the Muslim Total Fertility Rate (TFR) dropped sharply from 4.4 to 2.3, representing a 48 percent decline, one of the steepest among major communities. During the same period, the Hindu TFR declined from 3.3 to 1.9, a 41 percent reduction. As a result, the fertility difference between the two communities has narrowed from 1.1 children in the early 1990s to just 0.36 in the most recent survey, bringing Muslim fertility much closer to the national average of 2.0. This convergence reflects broader social changes, greater access to education, rising aspirations, improved maternal healthcare, and widespread adoption of family planning, rather than differences in religious law or the limited incidence of polygamous unions.

Source: NFHS-1 & NFHS-5

Why Permission Does Not Equal Prevalence

Several factors explain why the legal allowance under Muslim Personal Law has not led to a significantly higher incidence of polygyny. First, economic constraints make supporting multiple households impractical for the vast majority of families. Second, urbanisation, women’s education, and changing social aspirations have strengthened the norm of monogamous unions across all communities. Third, social stigma associated with polygamy, even where legally permissible, discourages the practice.

In most cases, religious permission remains a theoretical allowance rather than a widespread social reality. The direction of change, across all communities, is clearly toward smaller, nuclear families and gender parity in marriage.

WRAPPING-UP

The evidence from successive NFHS rounds shows that polygamy in India is rare, declining, and largely similar across communities. The rate among Muslims (1.9%) is not much higher than among Hindus (1.3%), despite different legal frameworks, and some groups where polygamy is prohibited, such as certain Christian and tribal communities, report slightly higher prevalence. These patterns highlight that socioeconomic conditions and local customs, rather than religion, shape marital practices. As education, women’s empowerment, and economic opportunities expand, polygyny continues to diminish. India’s family patterns are converging, underscoring a broader shift toward smaller, more equitable households across faiths.

A clearer, evidence-based conversation, one that acknowledges complexity without reinforcing stereotypes, can help replace myth with understanding. If the data tell us anything, it is that the story of marriage in India today is one of convergence, modernity, and shared social change that cuts across faith traditions.

[The writer is based in Dharwad, Karnataka.Email: javeediips@gmail.com]