A Strategy Doomed to Failure
The government strategy to stop child marriages in Rajasthan only on Akshaya Tritiya is a misplaced one, doomed to failure. While the day itself is universally auspicious for Hindu weddings, marriages during this time of the year are actually performed over a period of 12 days – right from Akshaya Tritiya to pipal punya. Marriages can be conducted on any day.
The strategy, therefore, is bound to fail as the rural people of Rajasthan have become clever and are either finding more devious ways of bypassing the media and the government on this date – or are planning marriages on other days of the year when there are no cameras and no surveillance by police and administration.
Devious Means of Child Marriage
On Akshaya Tritiya interested parties may print a card that shows the marriage of older children – while they’re actually secretly getting the younger ones married off. They may perform the marriage late in the night when there are no government agencies to monitor them. People will tell you that once the dhwaj or central stick of the mandap is erected onto the ground, the coconut, inviting the groom, is sent to the groom’s home and the sacred yellow thread (the thread of protection) is tied around the wrist, there is no way the wedding can be prevented from being solemnised. Which means, if this has to stop, work has to begin well before Akshaya Tritiya.
The popular day to marry off children in peasant communities – in many parts of central and western Rajasthan – still remains the mausar, the occasion of the death feast, after a senior member of the family dies.
Mausar was criminalised in 1961 as this practice was deemed to bring families into indebtedness for generations. The feast would not be had merely with members of the family or community, but the entire village and several villages. The economic argument often is, that marriages during mausar help families save money.
But as political and social activist Aruna Roy tried to explain, this paradox of expressing grief and joy together surely make the people of Rajasthan more down-to-earth and tuned to the cycle of life where grief and joy co-exist. The government does not monitor mausar. It is a practice as prevalent as child marriage, if not more, as conspicuous consumption has gone up. No cases are lodged against the people for violating the death feast law.
It is obvious that the strategy of stopping child marriages has failed and that all the government indulges in is tokenism.
What the Government Should be Doing
The effort of working with girls through the year in schools, through anganwadis, panchayats and door-to-door persuasion are never tried. We insist that the focus has to be the girl as the boy can always get out of an early marriage and is not as traumatised by the experience. The girl, if deserted in marriage, is then subjected to the practice of nata – cohabitation under customary law – which over the years has become oppressive and commercialised.
The elected representatives could also assert themselves and play an important role in correcting this practice, but even today, these people are vital vote banks for all political parties. Be it the Congress or the BJP, each party harvests votes through jati panchayats; therefore, the elected representatives whether at the panchayat level or Parliament, will never actively participate in social reform.
The only way out is to work with girls and to get them to say no to marriages – or to use the law to declare it null and void if a child marriage has happened. This can only happen if girls are treated as autonomous human beings exercising their choices. The issue of child marriage should be seen as a gender issue by civil society, media and the government and not merely as a child rights issue.
(Kavita Srivastava is National Secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties.)
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