The battle against child marriage Premium
The Hindu
Assam cracks down on child marriage, but activists and health workers seek an all-round approach from education of girls to awareness campaigns to stop the practice
For the first time in more than two decades, a police team from the Ulukunchi outpost came asking questions at Birsingi, a village in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district. The visit on February 4 made the hill-dwelling Tiwa tribal people analyse gobhiya thaka, a kind of live-in relationship a few of them still practise.
Birsingi is about 110 km east of Guwahati. “The police came with records of teenage pregnancy and delivery from the Umpanai health sub-centre nearby. It made us think seriously about our practice and when a girl child is old enough to choose to live with her partner,” Dilip Timung, a village elder, said. The police inquiry pertained to a non-local teenage girl who had come to stay with a relative during childbirth.
In adjoining Morigaon district’s Kasakhila village, aerially 60 km northwest of Birsingi, 17-year-old Mamoni Biswas (name changed) wished she had listened to her parents to wait till her Class 12 exams to be with her boyfriend Prasenjit Mandal. About nine months ago, she skipped school near her village and walked 3 km to daily-wager Prasenjit’s house. They were later married at a local temple.
On February 3, the police picked up 23-year-old Prasenjit leaving a pregnant Mamoni distraught and her mother-in-law worried about her son’s future. “I still don’t understand why my son has been arrested for marrying the girl he loves,” she said.
Also read: Crackdown against child marriage will continue: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma
At No. 2 Kosutoli in Morigaon district, almost equidistant from Birsingi and Kasakhila, Hafiz Mujibur Rahman has become the most hated person overnight. The local kazi or civil judge following the Muslim personal law, he has been absconding since the Assam Police launched the crackdown against child marriage on February 3.
“My brother, Badrul Hasan, was arrested five days ago because the kazi erred ... registered his wife’s age wrongly. And he took ₹7,000 for the nikaah to put us in trouble,” Monjul Hasan, a commercial vehicle driver, said.