Instead of criminalising child marriage, Assam should heed call of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

CategorySocial

Last Updated08/02/2023

As many as 650 million women in the world today were married as children.
About a third of them were married before the age of 15.
In India, which has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest number of child brides.

UN estimates suggest that 1.5 million girls get married before they turn 18. About 16% of girls in the age group of 15-19 are married at present.
According to the 2011 census, 44% of women in Assam were married before the age of 18.
The figures for Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were 47%, 46% and 43%, respectively.
In Assam, more than 4,000 FIRs have been filed and close to 2,500 people have been arrested for child marriage.

Modern international laws and conventions the UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962), the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Beijing Declaration (1995) do mandate countries to stipulate a minimum legal age for marriage.

Hindu and Muslim Personal Laws do not explicitly prohibit child marriage.
The Manusmritis say that if the father fails to marry off his daughter within three years of her attaining puberty, she can find a spouse on her own.
According to Medhatithi, one of the oldest and earliest commentators on the Manusmriti, eight years is the right age for a girl to be given in marriage.
The Rig Veda mentions garbhadhan literally as attaining the wealth of the womb. It is the first of the 16 samskaras a Hindu is expected to perform.
The Greek traveller Megasthenes (350-290 BC) has written that he was told that the women of the Pandian kingdom in South India bear children at six years of age.
The Muslim clergy too considered child marriages to be valid, though such children have the option to nullify their marriage.

The colonial state should be credited for reforming marriage laws.
The Age of Consent Acts of 1861 and 1891 brought in reform in conjugal rights.
The 1861 Act laid down 10 years as the minimum age for sexual intercourse.
When the Age of Consent Act was amended in 1891, the conservatives criticised it as interference in Hindu society.
Tilak’s newspapers Maratha and Kesari were at the forefront of this campaign. Rukmabai was probably the original Shah Bano, who stood up for her rights.
In 1927, Rai Sahib Har Bilas Sarda introduced the Child Marriage Restraint Act in the Legislative Council of India and sought a ban on marriages of children below the age of 12.
The legislation was passed in 1929 – it raised the age of marriage to 14 for girls and 18 for boys.

After Independence, the marriageable age for girls was raised to 15 in 1949 and 18 in 1978.
The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, stipulates imprisonment of two years or a fine which can go up to Rs 1 lakh, or both.

The Assam government should use education and a mass campaign to educate parents, rather than a coercive criminal law, to deal with the problem of child marriages.
If In Assam, child marriages are more prevalent amongst Muslims, educating Muslim girls should be given the highest priority.
There should be recognition of the complex nature of this social problem which no criminal law can really tackle.
There should be the implementation of the visionary and practical solution of Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.