Child Marriage: An Edifice of Systematic Violence

Today is Akshay Tritiya, an auspicious day according to the Hindu calendar, and unfortunately also the day when thousands of kids in India are pushed into an abyss of misery, misfortune and maladies. The ill-practice of child marriage continues to haunt Indian ethos.

UNICEF's ‘State of the World's Children-2009’ report states that 47% of India's women aged 20–24 were married before the legal age of 18, with 56% marrying before age 18 in rural areas. The report also informed that 40% of the world's child marriages occur in India; therefore, it’s not that the problem is endemic to India.

Until recently, some communities in the first world, such as the Mormons in the US, also used to report such cases. The practice is rather patronized in various theocratic Middle East states, but clearly, that’s not the case in India. Through Jinnah’s unrelenting efforts, the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed in 1929, and it outlawed the marriage of a male younger than twenty-one or a female younger than eighteen. In November 2007, Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA) was introduced to address and fix the shortcomings of the earlier act. The previous Act also made it difficult and time consuming to act against child marriages and laid lesser focus on authorities as possible figures for preventing the marriages. Some of the remarkable features of the new act are:

• Minors forced into marriages have the option of voiding their marriage up to two years after reaching adulthood, and in certain circumstances, marriages of minors can be null and void before they reach adulthood.
• All valuables, money, and gifts must be returned if the marriage is nullified, and the girl must be provided with a place of residency until she marries or becomes an adult.
• Any male over 18 years of age, who enters into a marriage with a minor or anyone who directs or conducts a child marriage ceremony can be punished with up to two years of imprisonment or a fine.

Reasons’ Rigid Repertory

Reasons behind this extreme form of cruelty and violence are as foolish as they could get:

1. Many parents continue to think that marrying their daughters off at an early age is the best way to protect their virginity (the highly overrated virtue in our society) and to save them from going wayward
2. Many families still use marriage as a mean to forge alliances, just like the medieval ages. It is, therefore, also a by-product of that feudal mentality, which aims at chaining, curbing and controlling a woman’s freedom. No wonder such families think education will undermine their daughter’s ability to be a traditional wife and mother
3. Some poor families see early marriage as a way to avoid paying heavy dowry later on, since younger brides are valued more. Female members may not be adding to the family income and marriage is seen as the simplest way to get rid of them. Thus, it may be difficult to control this malpractice without curbing the root-cause of poverty
4. Sometimes it may just be a result of mere ignorance. Some of these parents claim that it’s important to marry their daughters off at a young age since the reproductive age of women is shorter compared to that of men. Clearly, such parents may be unaware of the horrors of child marriage

Hall of Shame Spreads Overseas

South Asians fail to gel well with modernity, if some latest reports are to believed. 1,500 children from South Asian countries, including from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, were coerced into or threatened with marriage in Britain last year.

Shockingly, a girl aged five was the youngest victim. There were 1,618 such cases in 2008, 1,682 in 2009 and 1,735 in 2010. The cases frequently involve a girl being taken abroad, usually on the pretext of a holiday, and then forced into wedlock.

Case of Ratnashri Pandey: Double Trouble

Ratnashri Pandey, like many unfortunate girls, was forced into child marriage by her parents leading to years of suffering caused by her husband. In spite of having cleared MP civil services exam twice, she has been denied a job, thanks to an otherwise well-meaning law, which disqualifies people who marry as minors from entering government jobs.

She divorced her abusing husband and got no maintenance, and is now afflicted by this tragedy.

Government Tightens Noose

Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand constitute the top six states in India which have high incidence of child marriage. The government seems to have made elaborate plans this Akshay Tritiya, but no such plan can bear fruits without assistance from masses.

In Indore, a circular has been sent by district collector Raghvendra Singh to all the SDMs, who have been instructed to take punitive action against not just the parents and relatives, but whosoever participates in the marriage. In the last six months, 22 actions have been taken, six child marriages have been stopped and for the first time two FIRs have been registered for child marriage.

In Rajasthan, the tribal belt of Udaipur and Banswara, in addition to districts like Sawai Madhopur, Jaisalmer and Barmer, is infamous for a high number of child marriages. A letter sent to the Bharatpur district collectors makes it mandatory to mention the date of birth on the wedding invitations. It was proposed that in case of any information on a possible child marriage, the family should be informed of its ill-effects and, if necessary, legal help must be sought to stop the wedding. A 24-hrs control room has also been set up during. All schools have been instructed to hold awareness camps about the mal-practice. Strict action will be taken against the concerned patwaris, gram sewvaks and other government officials if they fail to give information to the police.

Darkness, Dangers and Degradation

A study conducted by the International Center for Women showed that girls married before 18 years of age were twice as likely to be beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands and three times more likely to experience sexual violence. The following are some of the medical complications that child marriages are known to precipitate:

• Young brides show symptoms of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress
• Child marriages are a leading cause obstetric fistulae, premature births, stillbirth and sexually transmitted diseases (including cervical cancer)
• Girls between 15 and 19 are twice as likely to die of pregnancy related reasons as girls between 20 and 24
• Teenage mothers are prone to hypertensive disorder, eclampsia, pre-eclampsia, and post-partum hemorrhage
• Their kids, too, are 60% more likely to die in their first year than those born to mothers over the age of 19. Even if they survive, they are more likely to suffer from low birth weight, malnutrition, and late physical and cognitive development

It’s high time that this medieval abuse is completely weeded out not just from reality, but also from the psyche of our countrymen.