While researching for my final paper, I realized the full extent of the child marriage problem in India. Through my research, I found that despite the laws put in place against child marriage, as of 2014, there were almost 900 million boys and girls in illegal child marriages. I found an article on an Indian feminist website that discusses the state of child marriage in 2017. This article states that the amount of marriages of girls in the 15-17 year old age group is four times the amount of girls in the 10-14 year old age group, but there were no new marriages of girls or boys below the age of 10 in the 2011 census. There also was an increase in marriages of girls in urban areas and a decrease in rural areas, which is interesting because while researching for my part of the final paper, I found the family planning program funded by the Indian government wants to focus their efforts in rural areas due to the fact that there was a higher number of women with more knowledge on reproductive health in urban areas compared to rural areas in 2014.
The article discusses the effects child marriage has on young boys and girls. Being married at such a young age takes away these children’s childhoods and impacts their educational development, in addition to increasing the chances of health problems during pregnancy for young mothers. During my research for the final paper, I found that early pregnancies can lead to increased child bearing over time and an unhealthy amount of time between births. Not only does child marriage lead to physical health problems, it can also lead to an increased chance of the child suffering through depression, anxiety, and resorting to self-harm. Delaying marriages helps decrease the chance of young girls and boys going through physical and mental health problems.
Even though there are laws put in place to prevent child marriage, these laws can be considered problematic and they are often not enforced very strictly. According to the article, “the laws for child marriage and other social ills like dowry are ignored as they go against the social customs of people”. The article also states that Justice AK Sikri used Section 375 of Indian Penal Code as example of a problematic law since it states that if a girl over the age of 15 has sex with her husband, it is not considered rape, but having sex with a married girl under the age of 15 is considered rape. The Indian government passed the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2006, a revision to previous laws put in place against child marriage, which strengthened the punishment for ceremonies for child marriage and created Child Marriage Prohibition Officers to help push for the effectiveness of these laws.
Child marriage is a serious issue, not only in India, but all over the Global South. With the help of local activism and more serious laws put in place to prevent it, hopefully the battle against child marriage will be beat.
https://feminisminindia.com/2017/06/12/child-marriage-reality-india/
-Reese Campbell
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