Indian Agency Campaigns Against Child Marriages
The BBC reported this month that India’s National Commission for Women is trying to highlight he issue of child marriages in that country.
Thousands of children, including some infants, are married on Akha Teej, which is considered one of the most auspicious days in some Hindu communities. Despite official laws making it illegal for boys under 21 and girls under 18 from being married, child marriage is still widespread in some parts of India, especially in the rural areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
In 1998 The New York Times reported on a survey that interviewed 5,000 married women in Rajasthan and found 56 percent had married before the age of 15.
According to legend, the practice of child marriage began to protect girls against rape from Muslim invaders. The Muslim invaders would take any unmarried women, so Hindus responded by marrying their children at very early ages.
Today, the practice continues in part out of fear that girls not married by the time they reach puberty will fall prey to sexual licentiousness and in part as a means of creating an elaborate social network among people who are extremely poor and where the right arranged marriage can mean the difference between survival and starvation if there is unexpected flooding or drought.
Source:
Child Marriages, Though Illegal, Persist in India. John F. Burns, The New York Times, May 11, 1998.
Move to stop Indian child marriages. Jyotsna Singh, The BBC, May 14, 2002.
The Indian Agency Campaigns Against Child Marriages by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: India
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