WUNRN
INDIA - MORE GIRLS ARE REFUSING TO
BECOME CHILD BRIDES
Despite
a 2006 law banning the age-old practice, most parents in rural India still want
to marry off their daughters before the legal age of 18.
Roshan Bairwa, center, in red, refused to be married off at age 14. The 17-year-old is now in the 10th grade, and hopes to become a teacher. With the encouragement of Shiv Shiksha Samiti, a charity that promotes women's rights and social development, Roshan and 22 other girls meet and perform skits that encourage girls to safeguard their future. (Mark Magnier / Los Angeles Times / November 12, 2009)
By
Mark Magnier
November
13, 2009
Mohammad
Nagar Dhani, India - Her fate was all but sealed, the wedding bells ringing in
her relatives' heads. Then the bride-to-be, a little girl playing in the dirt
in this impoverished village, plucked up her courage and said, "I do
not."
Roshan Bairwa, then 14, joined a growing number of girls defying the
centuries-old tradition of child marriage in a country where nearly half of all
women are married before their 18th birthday.
The British Raj tried to stamp it out. Mohandas Gandhi, himself a child groom,
campaigned against it. The United Nations has condemned it. And in 2006, the
Indian government explicitly banned it.
But child marriage remains pervasive in India, accounting for one-third of such
unions worldwide and underscoring the contradictions and complexities of a
society that produces cutting-edge engineers even as it clings to feudal
traditions.
"These girls are very brave," said Sarita Singh, secretary of the
Rajasthan state Department of Child and Women Development. "There are
enormous social forces working against them."
Roshan, with quick eyes, a nose stud and purple flip-flops, doesn't consider
herself particularly brave. All she knows is the dread she felt three years ago
when her grandmother told her matter-of-factly that some people were coming to
finalize her wedding arrangements in a ceremony known as a saadibiba, a
traditional meeting of future in-laws.
"If I married, the doors would close," Roshan, now 17, said as she
perched on a charpai, a string cot.
It wasn't that hard to convince her grandparents, who helped raise her after
her father died when she was 3 and her mother abandoned her. But her aunt and
uncle, who had found the boy groom in a village 30 miles away, were another
matter.
Roshan said they viewed her early marriage as only proper, and also knew that
it would mean one less mouth to feed. The battle lasted a good two weeks, with
several meetings and much yelling. Eventually they were brought around by the
promise that she might receive a government wedding subsidy if she waited until
she was 18.
"I was scared when I thought about refusing, but very relieved after I
did," Roshan, now in the 10th grade, said as a water buffalo bellowed
nearby. "I want to study, which wouldn't happen if I married young."
Activists and social workers cite new momentum behind their effort to curtail
the practice. They're organizing "wait till you're 18" parades,
eliciting pledges, presenting puppet shows and lobbying holy men to stop
officiating at underage marriages.
With the encouragement of Shiv Shiksha Samiti, a charity that promotes women's
rights and social development, Roshan and 22 other girls meet and perform skits
that encourage girls to safeguard their future. And when they hear about girls
who are being pushed to marry, they lobby the parents to delay the wedding.
The group said eight child marriages in a 25-village radius have recently been
shelved. Although that's a fraction of the 150 that went ahead, it's a big
break with the past. Increasingly, those who resist are gaining notice.
A few months ago, Rekha Kalindi, a 14-year-old who lives in the northeastern
state of Bihar, was invited to meet Pratibha Patil, India's first female
president, after Rekha refused to be married.
"They become little agents of change, although the numbers are still
shockingly high," said Sarah Crowe, spokeswoman for UNICEF in New Delhi.
The physical costs of underage marriage are enormous: Girls who have babies
before they're 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than those in
their 20s.
Then there's the emotional toll. At the Women's Hospital in Jaipur, in
Rajasthan, a crowd of young women, a riot of red, orange and pink saris,
gathers to see a doctor in a region where women's healthcare is limited.
"They're often not psychologically prepared to be mothers because they're
children themselves," said Adarsh Bhargav, head of the gynecology
department. "Many are irritated by their newborn's crying. There's no
attachment."
The best way to raise marriage ages is education, activists said. But most
girls in rural areas must travel some distance to attend middle school, and
parents often hold them back, fearing that their daughters could be raped,
sexually harassed or even just heckled, which can be enough for a groom's
family to break off the engagement and ruin her reputation.
"Sexual purity is hugely valued," said Pinki Solanki, a consultant
who did a report on girls who reject early marriage for the Vishakha Mehrangarh Foundation in Jodhpur.
"As soon as menstruation starts, a girl's control over her own life drops
off rapidly."
Child marriage in India dates back at least 2,000 years, said Sambodh Goswami,
a historian at Jaipur's Sant Jayacharya Girls' College. Hindu teachings tout
the virtues of marrying off daughters before their thoughts become impure. In
Rajasthan, the Rajputs, members of a warrior caste, were said to marry off
their pre-pubescent daughters to protect them from invaders, who were thought
to be less inclined to abscond with married women.
"The Rajput kingdom is long gone," said Francesca Barolo, a manager
with Mamta, a New Delhi-based charity focused on healthcare for women and
children. "But child marriages continue."
Economics is a factor. Children who leave school to marry potentially start
earning immediately. The groom's family also reaps a windfall from the dowry,
by tradition paid by the girl's family and among life's biggest expenses.
Child marriage is often defended on the basis of tradition, but ultimately it's
about male domination, some activists argue.
"There's a real view that women are someone's property," said Barolo,
and some mothers-in-law compare their selection of a bride to the buying and
selling of cattle.
Those trying to change this system can find themselves under attack, one reason
activists tend to cite the damage to girls' health and future earnings rather
than combat the practice head-on. In 1992, Bhanwari Devi, a village woman
working for a nonprofit group, was gang-raped after she tried to prevent a
child marriage. The accused men were acquitted on the grounds that "upper
caste men, including a Brahmin, would not rape a woman of a lower caste," according
to the court ruling. The decision has been appealed.
The 2006 law sets the legal age for marriage as 18 for women and 21 for men,
explicitly prohibits child marriage, provides for punishment of adults who
arrange them and for annulment of such unions. But the law has had limited
effect, women's rights groups say.
It has, however, spurred evasive tactics. Families that used to marry their
children en masse on Akha teej, an auspicious date in April or May, now
wed them as soon as possible to avoid attracting notice. Counterfeit birth
certificates, which cost about $3, are in hot demand. And wedding parties tend
to be hidden behind compound walls.
"It's driving things underground," said Ratna Gaikwad, Mamta's
program manager in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan.
Unclear laws don't help. Although getting married to a minor is unlawful,
remaining married to one, by some interpretations, is not. And raping a wife is
not considered a crime if she is older than 15.
On the enforcement front, activists charge that local police are often corrupt,
tend to share elders' social values and frequently feel that chasing down child
brides is beneath them.
"The cops usually inform the family in advance they're going to
raid," said Kathmana, who uses only one name, with the charity Shiv
Shiksha Samiti. "So the family shifts the wedding by a day or two."
A few miles from Roshan's village, 45-year-old farmer Ramdev is pleased, having
recently married off his daughter, Manisha. She's 8, now the wife of a
10-year-old. It will be a few years before she moves into her husband's house,
a ceremony called the gauna, but her parents have already restricted her
movement and limited her playtime.
"I know the government says we should marry at 18," Ramdev, who uses
one name, said as a camel pulled a cart slowly past their dirt house. "But
even at 12 or 15, it's difficult to keep a girl's honor. And by 18, if
unmarried, they get crazy thoughts."
Back in Mohammad Nagar Dhani, Roshan belts out a song with three
so-far-unmarried friends. "I want my rights, the right to be a child, to
dance, sing and be healthy," they croon in a one-room "girls'
center" built by Shiv Shiksha Samiti and decorated with posters touting
the merits of delaying marriage.
Roshan's brave stance, combined with her good grades and hopes of becoming a
teacher, has led even some among the village's old guard to concede that she
may be on to something, especially if she eventually finds work that earns more
than farming.
"I think what she's doing is right. She'll have more opportunity than we
ever did," said village elder Rameshwar Berwa, wearing a multicolored
turban. "That said, I disagree with their challenging us. If I'd even
thought of such a thing as a kid, I'd have been whacked like you wouldn't
believe."
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