When the world was busy celebrating International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, India’s Supreme Court, while responding to a public interest litigation — arguing non-consensual marital sex with minors encouraged child marriage — pronounced a landmark judgement to bring about uniformity in the system of laws relating to child protection. Strange it is that while Indian child protection laws prohibit an adult from having sex with minor, the criminal code, however, had included an exception for married couples, leading the court to observe “the exception carved out in the Indian Penal Code creates an unnecessary and artificial distinction between a married girl child and an unmarried girl child and has no rational nexus with any unclear objective sought to be achieved”.
Declaring that a girl child below the age of 18 cannot be treated as a commodity having no say over her body, the judges categorically ruled “human rights of a girl child are very much alive and kicking, whether she is married or not and deserve recognition and acceptance”. Besides, the court also came down heavily on the abysmally low number of prosecutions and annulments of marriage filed under Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. The fact is, minor girls, particularly from the underprivileged section of the society, remain under extreme social and family pressure to marry early and it has been found that even government-appointed child marriage prohibition officers have failed miserably to register complaints and prosecute the guilty. Interestingly, a recent study shows, India’s urban areas also witnessed a spurt in child brides.
“It is a misconception that child marriage is a rural phenomenon and linked to poverty. This regressive societal scourge is an inextricable part of India’s patriarchal culture, possessing wider social currency. An inherent tendency among Indians to follow the old family traditions, including early marriage, is responsible for the rise of child brides in India’s towns and cities,” says Kriti Bharti, rehabilitation psychologist and managing trustee of Saarthi Trust, responsible for the first ever child marriage annulment in the country.
Marriage before the age of 18 is a reality for many young women across the globe, and particularly common in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A 2016 Unicef report reveals, South Asia is home to approximately 42 per cent of all child brides worldwide, while India has the highest number of child brides. In India, 47 per cent of girls get married before attaining the age of 18. Moreover, India, unfortunately, has the distinction of ranking second highest in terms of the rates of child marriages in South Asia. Also, according to census data, India has 12 million married children under the age of 10 and 65 per cent of them are female. That girls are most disadvantaged is reflected in eight out of ten illiterate married children being feminine.
As per India’s National Family Health Survey 2015-16, 26.8 per cent of women in the age group of 20-24 were married before the age of 18. The survey also found that forced sexual encounters at the hands of older husbands have long-lasting and adverse impacts on the psychological and emotional well-being of a girl child, resulting, more often than not, in post-traumatic stress disorder. And younger the girls, greater is the risk of suffering marital rape. Most importantly, teenage pregnancy compromises the reproductive health of a girl child, thus exposing her to risks of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases and resultant complications. Also, lack of biological maturity leads to increased maternal mortality rates among girls aged between 15 and 19.
“Maturity is also about using information intelligently” says Bharti, who believes proper education is necessary for inducing maturity in children, especially girls, which in turn can help prevent many social scourges. The pioneering child marriage activist explains “most victims do not even realise what sexual abuse is all about, and that they have been victimised, due to lack of consciousness.”
Child marriage in India has continued despite social reform movements and legislations against it — the earliest being the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929. However, to be fair, the savage practice of discriminating against girls is not restricted to India, but is widespread in South Asia and persists not just among the poor, but all strata of the region’s societies. Globally, a whopping 39,000 girls under the age of 18 are becoming victims of child-marriages daily. Therefore, appropriate holistic measures can strengthen the fight against this out-dated social practice.
Supreme Court’s intervention in India is just one among the many necessary steps. “Harmonisation of the contradictory laws will henceforth ensure that victims of sexual abuse get prompt justice,” says Bharti, but the war is not yet won. She strongly feels the government and private machinery, including the aligned system, needs to work in tandem to achieve victory. Adriano Gonzalez Regueral, a senior international adviser on child right and formerly associated with Unicef, advocates a multipronged strategy to address the core concern. “Inducing social demand is an essential prerequisite for successful implementation of progressive laws and Justice’s decisions on essential issues concerning children and girls’ rights,” observes Adriano, adding, “Demand should be consistent enough to put social pressure on democratic institutions at different levels, in order to develop local, state and national policies for the actual implementation of such legislations.” And social commitment, strong focused work, resource allocation as well as multi-level monitoring based on C4D (Communication for Development) are keys to success.
Seema Sengupta is a senior journalist and columnist based in Kolkata.
