Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hin­du child mar­riages do not ex­ist in T&T any­more, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day, as he dared At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi to bring sta­tis­tics over the past two years to sup­port his case.

Ma­haraj said so­ci­ety had changed and there were no child brides in T&T over the past two years.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the heads of 17 re­li­gious bod­ies and civ­il so­ci­ety groups on Wednes­day, Al-Rawi gave sta­tis­tics that showed 328 Hin­du mi­nors, 103 Mus­lim mi­nors, and 117 oth­er mi­nors were wed un­der a Chris­t­ian civ­il mar­riage union be­tween 2006 to 2014.

Al-Rawi al­so showed sta­tis­tics which re­vealed an up­ward trend of sex­u­al of­fences against fe­males un­der age 14 and 16, as well as an in­crease in un­der­age mar­riages.

How­ev­er, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said his in­for­ma­tion was that be­tween 2014 to 2016, no Hin­du chil­dren were mar­ried in T&T.

Asked to de­fine chil­dren, Ma­haraj said: "Lis­ten... hel­lo, hel­lo! I said we do not have child brides. We may have teenage brides but no child brides."

He re­it­er­at­ed that he was not in sup­port of any changes be­ing made to the Mar­riage Act which al­lows Hin­du girls to be mar­ried from the age of 14.

He al­so said he was sus­pi­cious of a news­pa­per re­port yes­ter­day which high­light­ed the plight of 44-year-old Maria Jadoo-Vil­lafana, who said her whole life was messed up af­ter she was forced to mar­ry un­der Hin­du rites at the age of nine.

Jadoo-Vil­lafana said she met her hus­band at age five, was mar­ried at age nine, preg­nant by age 11 and suf­fered ex­treme phys­i­cal abuse at the hands of her hus­band.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said he felt the sto­ry was a bo­gus one.

"The cus­tom (of mar­ry­ing chil­dren) has changed since 1945. If you get mar­ried, you get mar­ried at 14 years and over. When you run a sto­ry, why did you not ask who is the pun­dit? Was he a li­censed mar­riage of­fi­cer? No cred­i­bil­i­ty," he ex­plained.

He said mar­ry­ing two teenagers with parental con­sent had noth­ing to do with Hin­duism.

"There is no Hin­du child mar­riage in T&T. There is Hin­du teenage mar­riage. There are no lo­cal pic­tures to sup­port that child mar­riage is tak­ing place. They are pick­ing up pic­tures of this out­side of T&T on the In­ter­net."

He added: "In any event, the so­ci­ety is cor­rect­ing it­self and over the last two years we had no such mar­riage. We are ask­ing the AG for spe­cif­ic fig­ures. Tell us how many Hin­du child mar­riages take place over the last two years. None!

"There was a time when so­ci­ety didn't send girls to school. To­day our girls are dom­i­nat­ing UWI. Like­wise, the so­ci­ety is cor­rect­ing it­self so we don't have chil­dren be­ing mar­ried."

More vary­ing views on top­ic

Mean­while, founder and chair­man of Mus­lim group, Caribbean Ha­jj, Zabar Mo­hammed-Baksh, said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was not in favour of child mar­riages but did not want to get em­broiled in a con­tro­ver­sy with Ma­haraj.

"I don't want it to be a Hin­du/Mus­lim con­flict. My per­son­al opin­ion is I con­sid­er it an abuse of chil­dren to force them in­to mar­riage when they are not pre­pared for mar­riage," Mo­hammed-Baksh said.

He added that un­der Is­lam women have more rights than men and they should be re­spect­ed.

"If some­one says they don't want to mar­ry, then they should not have to mar­ry. That is not in keep­ing with Is­lam­ic prin­ci­ples and hu­man free­dom. It is not some­thing that should be on our leg­is­la­tion. God has giv­en women rights un­der Is­lam, but un­for­tu­nate­ly be­cause of cus­toms women are ex­ploit­ed," he said.

He added that even in the Mus­lim world women were robbed of their rights.

Past Trinidad Mus­lim League pres­i­dent, Dr Nass­er Mustapha, mean­while said ac­cord­ing to Is­lam, "un­der no con­di­tion must some­one be co­erced in­to mar­riage, es­pe­cial­ly with some­one to whom she is not at­tract­ed or with whom she is not com­pat­i­ble.

"There are al­so the spir­i­tu­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial di­men­sions that must be con­sid­ered," Mustapha added.

He ex­plained: "Is the fe­male phys­i­cal­ly, phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pre­pared to be a moth­er, wife or home­mak­er? These con­di­tions are not met in al­most all cas­es in our so­ci­ety. In fact, there are many per­sons in our so­ci­ety who may not be pre­pared for mar­riage even at age 20."

Mustapha said while he did not sup­port a mar­riage age of 12 years, he be­lieves it "should be per­mit­ted in the 1 in 100,000 in­stances where it may be nec­es­sary. The law should re­flect the par­ties' pre­pared­ness (phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, et cetera).

As such, if par­ties do not meet the re­quire­ments mar­riage should not be al­lowed. Mar­riage is a con­tract with rights and oblig­a­tions that de­pend on many vari­ables oth­er than age," he added.