child marriage: The Current Scenario

The legal age for marriage in India is 18 years for a female and 21 for a male as per Section 6 of the Hindu Marriages Act, 1956. Any marriage of a person younger than this is banned and punishable in India under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.

But child marriages still take place in India, particularly around the Hindu holy day of Akshya Tritiya. Normally Hindus decide the date for marriages based on horoscopes interpreted by pundits. Some dates however are considered so auspicious that no pundit needs to be consulted. One such day is Akshya Tritiya (also knows as Akha Teej), the third day of Baishakh, the month of the Hindu calendar generally falling in May. During this time lots of marriages take place. Unfortunately, many of them are child marriages. It is a religious tradition in many places in India and therefore quite difficult to change.

And that is really the crux of the problem — child marriages are a reflection that, like sati, women and girls are seen as property that ‘belongs’ to someone: her family, her husband, her in-laws. If her marriage is left too late, she is considered a burden to her own family. In some communities where child marriage takes place, instead of dowry there is a system of ‘bride price’ where, when the girl gets married, the husband’s family has to pay a sum of money in exchange for the bride. Instead of making things better, this system also means that families are eager to get their daughters married off so they can bring in money.

In any case, child marriages are worse for girls than for boys, since the girls are usually younger than the boys. Marriage also puts an end to any education girls may have been receiving. And if they get pregnant while still young, their health gets much worse since their bodies are often not ready to bear children. According to the United Nations, maternal mortality i(which indicates the number of women dying in childbirth or from pregnancy-related causes) is 25 times higher for girls under 15, and two times higher for 15-19-year-old.

Interestingly enough, around the same time as Akshya Tritiya in 2010, the United Nations had just concluded a special session on children where they adopted 21 child welfare goals for the next decade. One of these was to end “harmful traditional or customary practices such as early and forced marriage”.