This article presents in-depth ethnographic evidence of women’s lived experience of arranged marriages and love marriages, their agency and constraints in a working class neighbor hood of New Delhi.

While it is laudable that the Indian government has made the effort to initiate a holistic reproductive health programme, its failure to address issues of sexuality that arise in this context is puzzling.

In recent years there has been a growing concern in many countries, including India, that public health and family planning programs have placed insufficient emphasis on the quality of their services (Ickis 1992; Khan et al. 1994; Mensch 1993; Miller et al. 1991).

Reproductive health [1] practices among Muslim women in India have been little researched perhaps because of the widespread notion regarding the tight Islamic control over sexual behaviour and the sanctions against contraceptive use.