K S Harikrishnan
TAMIL NADU, India, Aug 16 2010 (IPS) – Soon after she had her second child, Rathna fell into a frenzied state and had to be brought to a hospital here in the southern Indian village of Dharmapuri. After a month-long series of tests, doctors issued their diagnosis: Rathna, they said, was suffering from a psychiatric aberration that seems to occur often among adolescent mothers.
Rathna was just 16 years old. Her parents had married her off to a total stranger with whom she had two children in quick succession. A mere child herself, the experience was apparently too much for her to handle, causing her to suffer what appeared to be a breakdown.
The story of Rathna, however, is hardly rare in India, where child marriages are still considered acceptable by many people. This is despite the legal age for marriage for men being 21 years old and that for women, 18 years old.
The United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF), which defines child marriage as one in which either the bride or groom is under the age of 18, says that 40 percent of the world s child marriages take place in this country. In most cases, it is the girl who is the minor and with the groom more than a decade older.
Yet not only are the aspirations of such child brides dashed because of their early marriages. Experts say that these girls health is seriously compromised as well as a result of their having wed and borne children before they are physically and psychologically mature.
According to UNICEF, child brides often have premature pregnancies, which cause higher rates of maternal and infant mortality . Researchers led by Anita Raj of Boston University s School of Public Health also said in a 2009 paper released that girls who marry at a very young age are more likely to suffer from fistula, which is a genital tract tear, aside from complications arising from childbirth.
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Well-known demographer K G Santhya of the Population Council in New Delhi points out, too, that child brides are vulnerable to both physical and sexual violence perpetrated by their husbands .
Why the practice persists in India despite these risks can be traced partly to traditional norms that stress female subservience, among other things. Researchers including Raj and others have also found that child marriages are more common among the country s poor and uneducated.
Ananda Babu, a Kochi-based sociologist, recently told IPS that in some cases, by marrying off young girls, parents are aiming to get money and other aids.
This may be why the northern state of Bihar has resorted to offering financial help to those who marry after the age of 18.
In early August, The Hindu newspaper also quoted Bihar Social Welfare Minister Damodar Rawat as calling child marriages a gross injustice to children as it proves devastating for their life .
Studies have shown that Bihar has one of the highest incidences of child marriages in all of India. Just this year, the Population Council released a report that noted, Women from Bihar were most likely to be married off before reaching the legal marriageable age. Over nine in (10) young women with no formal schooling were married before age 18.
Bihar has the lowest literacy rates in the entire country, for both males (59.68 percent) and females (33.12 percent). Nationwide, the literacy rate is 64.85 percent, with that among males at 75.26 percent and females at 33.12 percent.
The Population Council report also said that nearly one- fifth of Indian women are married off before turning 15 and around 50 percent before reaching the legal marriageable age.
Sociologists say that some parents marry off their young daughter to a much older man in a misguided attempt to give the girl a mature guardian . The set-up, however, often ends up in abuse.
Although the details are sketchy, this may have been the case with Rathna, who was discovered by her parents to have fallen in love a college student. Fearing their daughter would elope, they forced her to marry a man twice her age.
Authorities and activists alike have been trying to stop marriages like this from taking place. Here in Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu state, 11 weddings involving minor girls were stopped by officials in a single day in June just before the nuptial knots were tied by the grooms , said a district social welfare officer.
In northern Haryana, another state where the number of child marriages are high, an officer in the women and child development department said, About 100 child marriages were stopped by the prevention cell in the last one year, and succeeded in stopping 20 child marriages in this year.
In Delhi, a court petition filed by a non-government organisation to have the marriage of a 17-year-old girl to a 40-year-old widower declared illegal yielded a high court order in May that prohibited the groom from consummating the marriage until his bride reaches 18.
The court also commented, Child marriage is a violation of human rights, compromising the development of girls and often resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, with little education and poor vocational training reinforcing the gendered nature of poverty.
Yet sociologist Babu said that ridding India of child marriage would not be easy. Families and communities, including boys and men, need to understand the risks associated with child marriage and must work for social change, he said.