Child marriage: A social evil that persists despite a law to root it out

Many young people are flocking to Jodhpur to get their child marriage annulled

Meet 18-year-old Guddi. When she was three, her father, in a drunken fit, decided to get her married off. As the years went by, it became evident that Guddi had special needs. “When I turned 15, the boy’s family said I was old enough to come and live with them,” she says. By now her father was dead and luckily for Guddi, her mother, Dhapu Devi, intervened. “While my husband was alive I had no say in anything,” says Devi. “With him gone, I wasn’t going to send my little girl off like this.” The mother-daughter duo found the courage to get the marriage annulled by mutual consent in Jodhpur. Guddi is now studying in Class X, and she loves to read and dress up like any other teenager.

When three-year-old Pinky Kumari’s three older sisters were being married, her family decided to cut costs and married her off as well. At 16, she was sent to her marital home, where she was subjected to all sorts of abuse by her husband, 10 years older than her. “I read in the newspaper that my marriage could be annulled,” she says. “So I ran away, came to Jodhpur and filed a case.” Today, Pinky goes to a college in Jodhpur, and dreams of becoming a teacher or a nurse. 

Ashok Bishnoi was 17 when he found out that he had been married when he was just five years old. “I was stunned,” he says. “My parents told me that they’d decided to do ‘Aata-Sata’, a traditional exchange in which my 10-month old sister and I had been married off to two siblings!” Ashok and his sister both applied for annulment, and with mutual consent, it came through in three days — the quickest in Indian legal history. 

Guddi, Pinky and Ashok are the lucky ones who were able to get their child marriage annulled quickly. Others are not so fortunate. For despite the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (2006), the marriage of minors continues to thrive in India. A recent Unicef report states, 10 years ago 47 per cent of India’s married females were below 18 years, whereas today, this has come down to 27 per cent. In Rajasthan, though, the figure is a staggering 40 per cent. The state has seen 36 annulments since 2012 — the maximum for any state in India. With more young people growing up to learn that they were married off as a child, dozens throng the family court in Jodhpur every week to have their marriages annulled.

But not every victim of child marriage is able to get a speedy annulment. For some, the case drags on and life comes to a halt. Moreover, the PCMA dictates that annulment can only be applied for by those who have not yet reached the legal age of majority (18 for girls, 21 for boys). Hence, older appellants have to file for divorce, necessitating countless trips to the court, endless waiting and the inevitable social opprobrium. 

Dr Kriti Bharti of Jodhpur-based Saarthi Trust, who orchestrated India’s first annulment on the grounds of child marriage, and thanks to whose efforts Jodhpur has emerged as the child marriage annulment capital of India, says that shockingly, she often finds the district administration and the police supportive of the practice. “Often, when I hear that a child marriage is about to take place and approach them for help, they laugh and tell me to keep my nose out of other people’s private lives,” she rues. 

Indeed, even though people are aware that child marriage is an unlawful act, the practice still enjoys a great deal of social sanction. A government school teacher (name withheld) says that often when a child is absent for a couple of weeks, they surmise that she must have been married off. “Last month, a Class III student was married,” she says. “We laughed to see how excited she was.” Perhaps remembering that she was talking about a social evil, she adds defensively: “Even though she was in Class III, she was quite old… at least 12 years!” Teachers are powerless against social customs, she says. “Anyway, I wonder whether it is a good idea to go against society and break up these marriages…” 

In some cases, this clash between the letter of law and the force of tradition has resulted in people refusing to recognise an annulment as a dissolution of marriage. Take the case of Susheela. When she filed for an annulment of her child marriage, her family turned her out and said they would murder her as well as Bharti, who was helping her. In court, her in-laws swore that no wedding had taken place. Even after her marriage was annulled successfully, her family told her that they didn’t recognise the court’s verdict. “They’ve said that whenever I go back to them, they’ll send me back to my ex-husband’s house,” says Susheela.  Recently, her father called Bharti. “He told me that his daughter would have to return to the family fold soon as I may not be around too long,” says Bharti wryly.  

For victims of child marriage who are no longer a minor, the fight to get their marriage annulled is often a harrowing one. After her grandfather’s death,15-year-old Papli was forcibly married in accordance with the regressive cultural practice of mausar, the belief that a departed soul will find peace only when all marriageable relatives are married within 13 days of death. “I cried and said that I didn’t want to be married, that I wanted to study,” she says. No one listened. When the boy’s family demanded that she be sent to live with them, she again pleaded that she didn’t want to go. They stopped stopped sending her to school, she says. Eventually, she came to Jodhpur and filed a plea for annulment. When the case came up in court, the boy’s family challenged her to prove that she was a minor when married. “I don’t know how long I have to wait to be free,” says the 18-year-old. 

For girls like Papli, freedom will perhaps remain a distant dream until cultural norms change. Indeed, such cases show that simply having a law against child marriage isn’t enough. The law must also have provisions to help victims get easy annulments and rehabilitate them by providing them with education, livelihood training and counselling.
 

Next in the series: Legal loopholes, cultural mores make annulment of child marriage arduous