The origin of child marriages may be found in the Muslim invasions that began more than 1,000 years ago. Legend says that the invaders raped unmarried Hindu girls or carried them off as booty, prompting Hindu communities to marry off their daughters almost from birth to protect them. Today, these invaders have been replaced by superstition: the local view that any girl reaching puberty without getting married will fall prey to sexual depredations, some from men imbued with the common belief that having sex with a “fresh” girl can cure syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.
n India, children are forced everyday into a relationship, of which they have only the faintest knowledge and for which they are not at all prepared. To push two physiologically and emotionally ill-prepared individuals into marriage is a compassionless way of looking at relationships. India’s Parliament adopted the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1978 (a revision of the British Child Marriage Prevention Act of 1929 and the following amendment of 1949) setting 18 as the minimum age for women to get married and 21 for men. Nevertheless, like in many other Indian social spheres, the law seems inconsequential when it comes to protecting the rights of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
Women and girls are the main victims of child marriages. Sati is a Hindu practice which consists of the widow’s immolation on her dead husband funeral pyre. Women are seen as property with ownership rights to someone else, her parents, her husband or her in-laws. In some cases, husbands sell their wives, even their unmarried daughters, as sexual partners to other men.
Religion plays a key role in such harmful traditions and practices. The society in turn, instead of playing a watchdog role, is an enthusiastic participant in a deliberate perpetuation of entrenched interests, including property and social considerations, all which make child marriages so common.
Though INDIA has entered into the 21st century and aims to be a developed nation by 2020, some parts of India are still grey and caught up in the old, ill and conservative traditions that have already played enough havoc with the society.
Despite the so-called stringent laws, Indians still come across dreadful and fearful stories of children being forced to tie the nuptial knots even when their body and mind are not ready for marital relations.
Child marriage is still prevalent in India. One such gory incident recently came to the fore in a remote village of Kathua district, in Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), where a 10-year-old girl of class IV was ‘sold’ to a man three times of her age. More shocking was the revelation that the girl, who stayed put at her father’s house soon after the illegal marriage, was even raped by her ‘husband’.
As some of the villagers had objected to the marriage of the girl child at a young age, it was decided that she would stay with her parents till she attains marriageable age.But her husband, Rinku, who reportedly had ‘purchased’ the girl-child, wanted to take her to his house in Bandota village.Miffed at being denied to take the girl-child, Rinku visited her parental house and raped her in a nearby field. According to “National Plan of Action for Children 2005,” (published by the Department of Women and Child Development of India) a goal has been set to eliminate child marriage completely by 2010. This plan is proving to be successful, though it is still difficult to monitor every child due to the sheer population of India. According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children-2009” report, 47% of India’s women aged 20-24 were married before the legal age of 18, with 56% in rural area The report also showed that 40% of the world’s child marriages occur in India.
