No toilet, no marriage: Muslim clerics push for sanitary hygiene

Muslim clerics have deicded not to solemnise marriages if the groom's side does not have a toilet at their place in certain parts of northern India.

Data belonging to international NGOPublic Radio International suggest that some 70 per cent of Indian households don't have access to toilets and worse still, some 60 per cent of India's 1.2 billion population continue to defecate in the open.

The current government wanted to address the problem by building 2.5 million toilets in urban areas but the target has fallen way short, almost by 76 per cent as of now.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Maulana Mahmood A Madani, secretary general of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, said having a toilet has been made a mandatory condition for Muslim marriage in three states -- Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.

He said the same rule will soon be appliedin the rest of the country too.

"I feel that all religious leaders from all the religion throughout the country should decide that they will not conduct any rituals in houses where there are no toilets," he said.

"There are two types of cleaning - one is external and the other internal. Both are interconnected, we will only be able to achieve the internal cleaning if our body is clean," he said.

(WION with inputs from PTI)