WHEN Anil Srivastav, a financier, faced his wife in a New Delhi court yesterday for the final hearing to end their seven-year marriage, he knew where to pin the blame for the breakdown: women’s liberation.

His wife, Anjali, 26, is a marketing executive who often works until late at night and travels for her job. Anil, 28, says he had no problem with her career but wanted her to come home earlier to spend time with their six-year-old son. What also rankled was her reluctance to perform puja (prayers) and wear a sari when with older members of his family.

“I don’t mind if she roams around in shorts or jeans when we’re with friends, but I expected her to wear traditional clothes in front of my parents,” he said. “Whenever I asked her to follow any Indian tradition, she’d ask, ‘Why?’ I’m all for working women and I know society is changing, but we have to preserve our culture.”

Indian marriage is in crisis. More and more young couples like the Srivastavs are getting divorced. Although no reliable national statistics are available, the number of divorces within the first year of marriage have risen by around 30% since 2000. Seven out of 10 involve couples aged 25 to 35.

These statistics are all the more shocking considering Indian society’s obsession with marriage. Weddings, which often last for days, are both highly expensive and lavish by western standards.

Traditionally to be unmarried was to be a circus freak, a divorced man was a curiosity and a divorcée was viewed as a painted Jezebel. But such perceptions are changing, even though some 95% of marriages remain arranged.

For centuries Indian women were expected to “adjust” to their husbands — a classic euphemism meaning a bride must bend to the will of her husband and in-laws and endure virtually anything short of insanity or depravity. But young, educated, urban women lack their mothers’ docility.

The new woman is smart, has an MBA, wears designer clothes, drives herself around town and sips chardonnay in funky bars. Increasingly economically independent, she is no longer prepared to remain in an unhappy marriage.

“Women are driving the change. They are the ones questioning the old patterns and demanding change, while Indian men still want them to follow some 16th-century model of marital behaviour,” says Shobhaa De, a former “bonkbuster” author whose marriage manual, Spouse: The Truth About Marriage, is soaring up the bestsellers list.

A short, light, breezy read aimed at the middle classes, Spouse has sold 15,000 copies in a week. De, who claims to have been “blown away” by the book’s success, says: “Indian couples are confused and bewildered. With women changing so radically, the men are really struggling to adapt.”

The onus, according to De, is on men to change. “They have to realise that women no longer need marriage as a security blanket or as a meal ticket,” she said. “Women can pay their own way, pay their own bills. What they want now from marriage is respect and equality.”

Take Alisha Kapoor, 32, who has divorced her husband after four years of marriage because she considers they are temperamentally incompatible and want different things out of life.

“I like stability and a settled life,” she said. “His lifestyle is wild and anarchic and we just couldn’t get along. My parents supported me. My mother told me if I was unhappy I should get out while I was still young.”

Many males appear reluctant to move with the times. In a recent survey of men in 11 cities, 72% said they expected their brides to be virgins. Asked if they would marry a woman who admitted to having had pre-marital sex, 77% said “No”.

Subhashini Ali, a women’s rights activist, accuses men of trying to have the best of both worlds: “It suits them to continue with the old ways. They want their wives to work because they need a second income for a glamorous lifestyle, but they hate it when she comes home late from the office, puts her career first or doesn’t grovel in front of her mother-in-law.”

It is not that Indian women are abandoning all traditional notions. Most women still accept that they will probably live with their in-laws; and many would still not dream of eating before first serving their husbands. Some 78% of young people polled in a survey last year said it was “very important” for their spouses to be accepted by their families.

The question is how adept will Indian men be at the kind of “adjusting” that used to be expected of women. “It’s going to very difficult,” says De. “They have been mollycoddled for centuries by their mothers and wives. But this is their wake-up call.”

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