Opinion: A child needs parents, not a husband

Almost half of all girls in South Asia marry before the age of 18, says UNICEF. One in five girls is married before the age of 15. Bangladesh is the worst offenders in this regard followed by India. Child marriages are most prevalent in rural India, with rates of child marriage being the highest in the central and western parts of India and lower in the eastern and southern parts of the country.

While these facts and figures, as a journalist, are not unknown to me, to meet a child bride is a different experience. Discomforting and unnerving too. In a book release ceremony recently organised by HAQ, I came face to face dozen of child brides-most of whom are married but have not met their groom or the in-laws yet. Many of them pointed out to me that they didn't even remember the face of their husband not to mention the marriage ceremony.

I have, as the UNICEF does too, always associated the menace of child marriage with the restraints poverty places on an individual family. Recently, the Guardian even carried a report as to how an increasing number of African girl children are getting married off because of climate change, such as drought and flood, crop loss and stunted growth. Thus Africa witnesses a social evil because a drastic environmental change is taking an economic toll on their lives.

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But poverty is not always the stimulus behind child marriage. As was pointed out to me in so many words by Ayesha. Ayesha comes from a village of Murshidabad. Not necessarily a child of a poor father, Ayesha's family tried to give her off in marriage as per the cultural norms of her community. She repeatedly blames societal norms for the trauma she underwent as a child. From the tender age of 3 months, her father tried to get her married off at least dozen times before she entered her teens.

The only silver lining of her story is that all these hardships hardened her resolve to complete her education. She is the only girl from her village who has successfully completed a Masters degree in science. Now Ayesha devotes her time in fighting the curse of child marriage which she claims is still ubiquitous in the villages of Murshidabad.

Jaya is another woman who went through the ordeal of getting married at the age of 13. Hailing from a village in Rajasthan, Jaya went through the terrible pain of getting beaten by her in-laws and even her husband. Her voice of protest was stifled and met with further harassment. But Jaya did not give up. Now she is a well-known activist who plays a pivotal role in organising the women against the menace of child marriages. She does not depend on the government or anyone else for her crusade. She has fought for the education of her of own two girls who are now principals of local schools.

If these two grown-ups tell us the stories of the lives that have, fortunately, taken a favourable turn over time, though it has exacted a very stiff price in the course, there are many other young girls who still stare at an unknown future.

One such fighter is young Zeba. She hails from Rajasthan too. She was given to marriage at the age of 3. Now a student of class XI and already a child rights activist, Zeba asked her mother the reason behind such an act. Her mother's answer was that the family did not have money to marry off all her sisters separately. So her eldest sister who was 16 at that time and Zeba at 3, all were married off together in a pack. Zeba has not met her husband yet. Her parents constantly threaten that at the completion of Class XI, Zeba will be sent to her husband.

But Zeba does not want to go. She wants to complete her education and be a teacher someday.

Jaba's story is little different from that of Zeba other than they belong to different religious communities. Jaba's mother wanted her to be married after the death of her father. Jaba did not, however, elaborate whether such a decision was prompted by reasons of poverty or only a sense of insecurity. My hunch is the death of the male guardian of the family created a sense of terrible insecurity and the mother felt pressurised to give her off in marriage.

Daughters are after all prescribed by Shastraic injunctions to spend the childhood under the tutelage of the father, the adulthood under a husband and old age under the care of the son(s). This care ethics unknowingly breed a sense of dependence and, perhaps more dangerously, a sense of ownership over women. Jaba is a classic example of what misfortune can befall a girl child once she loses the male guardian in her life.

When I asked the organisers as the what prompted them to take up the cudgel against child marriage among all other social evils. Indrani Pancholi pointed out to me that they wanted to locate voices of dissent among sufferers themselves. They wanted the resistance to come from the girls who are suffering because they will be the ones who can best point out what they want.

This brings us back to Jaya who pointed out at the end of the interview to us how her village is witnessing changes that are not grafted from outside but organically efflorescing, courtesy the initiatives of women like her. For instance, Jaya pointed out, women would cover their heads and faces in the past, but they don't do it anymore.

It did not require a French political system type of ban to prevent women from covering their faces, it came most spontaneously from a sense of empowerment.

Let us hope that this force of social change, emanating from the ground will change the gender dynamics in India not so far in the future.

(Disclaimer: The author writes here in a personal capacity).