Child marriage, admittedly, is among the worst curses on children of both the sexes and more starkly on the lives of girls. India, overall, has nearly 2.5 crore child brides – mostly teenagers – these forming one-third of the ‘world total’ as per UN estimates. While the problem is not restricted to one state, Assam reportedly has the worst case-scenario. The state has the highest maternal mortality rate and the third highest infant mortality rate, both believed linked to child/teenage marriages. Given the present context, it was logical for the government to act and put things in order. However, rather than going about in a systematic manner and starting with a sufficiently long term of awareness campaign, chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma chose to take the bull by its horns in a ham-handed manner. The arrests and filing of FIRs on thousands of men – fathers of the girls and husbands – in recent days have caused agony and put fear in the minds of such families. Such a style of governance does not augur well for the democratic system. A law that was virtually left in cold storage despite periodic amendments was naturally taken for granted by the people, the poor, the less-informed tribals and illiterate Muslims.
It is well-appreciated that one has to start the process of setting a wrong right at some point of time. Such a strong governmental response was long overdue but successive national and state governments slept over the matter. Even today, other states are reticent about wielding the stick against those promoting this highly condemnable system. The Assam government deserves praise for its action even though the abrupt manner it chose to go ‘hammer and tongs’ at the law-violators vis-à-vis child marriages is both objectionable and disturbing to the civilized mind. At the same time, since the BJP is ruling Assam, the politics involved in the present offensive is not lost sight of. Poor Muslims, as also tribal communities, showed a tendency to marry off their girls in their childhood or in adolescence both as part of their customs and to escape from the responsibility of safe upkeep of their girls at home for longer periods. Among tribal communities especially, with less security at home, the idea was also to avoid teenage pregnancy of unmarried girls. Muslims are allegedly procreating with “the more the merrier” attitude out of a religious frenzy to increase their population and emerge as the single largest faith in India. If so, the resultant explosion in the nation’s population and its ill effects in the long term can be imagined only with a shudder.
