Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

It is im­por­tant to bring some per­spec­tive on the de­bate that is rag­ing on about child mar­riage in this coun­try. It seems like the pro­posed amend­ments to the Mar­riage Act was a fait ac­com­pli whilst the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al chose to go through the fa�ade of con­sul­ta­tion with heads of re­li­gious bod­ies. To date, no one has tak­en the time to put mat­ters in con­text.

As such, the Ma­ha Sab­ha will be putting out its po­si­tion in a cou­ple of weeks af­ter it con­cludes its own con­sul­ta­tions. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1845-1945, mar­riages per­formed un­der Hin­du rites were not recog­nised as le­gal. Wives and chil­dren of these unions were plagued by prob­lems of in­her­i­tance of prop­er­ty for le­gal rea­sons.

Be­tween loss of in­her­i­tance and hav­ing Hin­du chil­dren be brand­ed il­le­git­i­mate or bas­tards, it is un­der­stand­able how the dis­gust to­wards the Hin­dus was al­most pal­pa­ble. I wish to point out the er­ro­neous think­ing of the AG when he says that the busi­ness of child mar­riage is not a re­li­gious is­sue.

This begs the ques­tion–why in­vite heads of re­li­gious bod­ies for con­sul­ta­tion? It is very much a re­li­gious is­sue. The Hin­du mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny has nev­er been one to be un­der­tak­en light­ly. It is one of the 16 san­skaars that punc­tu­ate a Hin­du life. Con­sid­er­a­tions of as­tro­log­i­cal com­pat­i­bil­i­ty tend­ed to pre­cede any de­ci­sion to mar­ry. Fur­ther­more, it is a well es­tab­lished Hin­du prin­ci­ple that mar­ry­ing a daugh­ter is an act of un­par­al­leled wor­ship and ho­n­our any Hin­du fa­ther can un­der­take.

The point here is that with such an im­por­tant sacra­ment as mar­riage, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty is not pre­pared to be tak­ing tips or bait from any­one out­side the fold. We de­mand a prop­er re­spect if one wish­es to en­gage us on this de­bate. And, af­ter such a his­to­ry of hu­mil­i­a­tion at the hands of the colo­nial over­lords, we will guard against any­one mak­ing de­ci­sions for us as if we are im­be­ciles. Pu­ber­ty sig­nals the body's sex­u­al mat­u­ra­tion, and usu­al­ly oc­curs in girls be­tween 10 and 14, and in boys, be­tween 12 and 16 (med­i­cineNet.com).

Nat­u­ral­ly these ages, as ap­pear in the Hin­du Mar­riage Act, do sug­gest that those peo­ple are bi­o­log­i­cal­ly com­pe­tent to en­gage in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty. It is al­so no se­cret that, in the past, Hin­du boys and girls would have rou­tine­ly been mar­ried even at nine and ten years old. That was the norm.

How­ev­er, times have changed and Hin­dus of T&T no longer get mar­ried at that age. There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in blind­ly fol­low­ing that tra­di­tion. If, on first blush, it seems that the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty is pre­pared to en­cour­age child mar­riage, rest as­sured, this is not so. The ra­tio­nale is a dif­fer­ent one which takes in­to ac­count the val­ues of our com­mu­ni­ty and our fam­i­ly and so­cial struc­tures. If a "child" of 14 hap­pens to get preg­nant, it seems prefer­able to bring up the new-born in a fam­i­ly in which par­ents are mar­ried rather than out of wed­lock.

Such a safe­ty net en­sures that not on­ly the mar­ried "child" but al­so the new-born are safe­ly tend­ed to in the fam­i­ly fold by grand­moth­ers, grand­fa­thers, aun­ties and oth­ers. Bring­ing chil­dren up, out­side of wed­lock, is sim­ply not a Hin­du cul­tur­al prac­tice. If the West­ern world has changed its pri­or­i­ty to al­low chil­dren to be brought up out of wed­lock whilst the teenage moth­er is giv­en a free pass to ab­di­cate her parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, it does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low that the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty must re­arrange its own val­ue sys­tem.

Imag­ine in one of the most fa­mous love sto­ries in the world, Romeo and Juli­et, we see that Juli­et is not yet 14. An au­thor writ­ing a mov­ing love sto­ry of to­day would dare not cast his fe­male pro­tag­o­nist at 13 be­cause this will deeply of­fend our so­cial sen­si­bil­i­ties. One does not de­ny that any suc­cess­ful mar­riage to­day re­quires a new lev­el of re­solve, un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and mind-bog­gling re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, which may be be­yond the ca­pac­i­ty of a teenag­er.

Be that as it may, if such a teenag­er gets preg­nant, one must ask one hard ques­tion: if she is not mar­ried, can she de­pend on the fa­ther for sup­port? Is she go­ing to bring up this child alone? What are her chances of go­ing back to school and com­plet­ing her ed­u­ca­tion? And then the sec­ond hard ques­tion comes: who is there to en­sure that the new-born is go­ing to get a chance to grow up in a fam­i­ly that is his very own?

The an­swer is clear: the big­ger fam­i­ly struc­ture pro­vides this lev­el of care and over­sight of all these is­sues. Preg­nan­cy is not a soli­tary event in the life of a teenag­er. Its im­pact is be­yond nine months. It is a life-al­ter­ing oc­cur­rence.

And yes, it can hap­pen at 14. The Hin­du Mar­riage Act as it is to­day is a safe­ty net which can pro­tect a teenag­er in these kinds of sit­u­a­tion. The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty awaits the re­lease of sta­tis­tics by the AG to fur­ther as­sist in its in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions, af­ter which our for­mal po­si­tion on this de­bate will be an­nounced.