Instead of criminalising child marriage, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma should heed PM Modi’s call of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

Source: The post is based on the article “Instead of criminalising child marriage, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma should heed PM Modi’s call of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” published in The Indian Express on 7^th February 2023.

Syllabus: GS 2 – Social Justice

Relevance: evolution of laws on child marriages in India

News: The Assam government has taken steps to crackdown child marriages and arrest those responsible. This brings us to the situation of child marriage prevailing in India.

What are the highlights of the data?

UN estimates suggest that 1.5 million girls get married before they turn 18 and about 16 percent of girls in the age group of 15-19 are married at present.

According to the 2011 census, 44 percent of women in Assam were married before the age of 18. The figures for Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were 47 percent, 46 percent and 43 percent, respectively.

What are the problems with child marriages?

Child marriages affect the national economy negatively and do not allow people to come out of the vicious cycle of inter-generational poverty.

Child marriage deprives women of education and life skills. Early pregnancies adversely affect the physical and mental health of young mothers.

However, prohibiting child marriages by adopting the measures of the Assam government is also not favourable.

How has the prohibition on child marriages in India changed over the time?

Religious Personal Laws: Hindu and Muslim Personal Laws do not explicitly prohibit child marriage.

The Rig Veda mentions garbhadhan which means attaining the wealth of the womb. It is the first of the 16 samskaras a Hindu is expected to perform.

Account of Foreign Travellers: Megasthenes has written that the women of the Pandian kingdom bear children at six years of age. Al Biruni also wrote that child marriages were rampant in India.

Colonial Period: 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. However, it was opposed and was asked to raise the age of marriage to 12 because it violated norms related to garbhadhan.

Therefore, the 1891 Act raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse to 12. However, it was also opposed by the people of that time and was thought as interference in Hindu society.

Further, in 1927 the Child Marriage Restraint Act was introduced in the Legislative Council of India. 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.

Further, in several cases like P Venkataramana (1977), Rabindra (1986), G Saravanan (2017), High courts have ruled that child marriages are neither void nor voidable but valid.

In 2021, the Punjab and Haryana High Court held a Muslim girl’s marriage after attaining puberty as valid.

In the Hadiya case (2018), the Supreme Court mentioned attainment of puberty, and not 18 years, as the minimum age of marriage, as one of the conditions for a valid Muslim marriage.

The Law Commission in its 205th Report (2008) has suggested that poverty, indebtedness and dowry are the main reasons behind the child marriages.

Therefore, even the courts have different views about child marriages. Hence, a proper solution is needed to it.

What can be the way ahead?

The government’s investment in adolescent girls, public awareness and growth in women’s education in the period between 2000-2010 brought down the percentage of child marriages from 47 percent to 30 percent.

Therefore, the Assam government should also opt for these measures instead of arresting and taking coercive measures. It should attempt the visionary and practical solution of the campaign Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.