Schoolgirls take lead in turning the tide against child marriages in Bihar state
Underage marriages of more than 170 girls have either been stopped or postponed
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Schoolgirls in Bihar are scripting a new saga of social change. Besides revolting against their parents seeking to marry the off while they are below the legal age, they are also seeking help from officials to stop the child marriages in the state.
According to information from the state Women Helpline, more than 170 girls have managed to stop their child marriages from being solemnised in recent months.
In a recent incident, dozens of girls stopped the wedding of their minor colleague Simran Kumari, a Grade 8 student in the Gurua market area of Bihar’s Gaya district on Wednesday. The marriage of the girl had been fixed with a boy from Uttar Pradesh.
Wedding stopped
Acting on information that wedding preparations for their friend were going on at a local temple, dozens of schoolgirls rushed to the temple and stopped the wedding. Seeing the anger of the girls, her parents fled the scene. The girls also called up the local block development official Balwant Kumar Pandey who rushed to meet the girls. Pandey later asked the local police to act in the matter.
This is the fourth such incident ■ from Gaya district in the past four months. Last month, a Grade 11 student, Resham Kumari, had shot off an emotional letter to the district magistrate pleading to stop her wedding after her parents fixed her marriage against her wishes.
Initially she tried to convince her parents to defer the wedding, but when she was stopped from attending classes, she penned her tale of trauma on a piece of paper and sent it to the local Gaya district magistrate Abhishek Kumar Singh through ordinary post. Soon after getting the letter, the official rushed to her village and asked her parents to stop the marriage instantly.
Yet another minor girl Pinki Kumari, a Grade 9 student, survived child marriage when some 30 of her classmates rushed to a local police station in February this year and got her wedding deferred with the intervention of the police.
classmates helped save minor Pinki from child marriage
Another case
Another girl Kajal Kumari, 14, also got her wedding deferred, thanks to intervention from a cultural troupe that was campaigning against child marriage.
Officials and social scientists say the development could be the outcome of growing awareness in society about the evils of child marriage.