Race to marry off teenage daughters amid age rise fears

India is witnessing a sharp surge in “panic” or “distress” weddings following the government’s proposal to raise the legal age women can marry from 18 to 21, the same as men.

Girls in their late teens are being rushed into marriages by parents worried that the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021 will become law and they will have to either wait for their daughters to get hitched or face the wrath of the justice system.

They are willing to pay triple fees or are desperately searching for potential suitors, amid reports of priests being rushed off their feet and some ceremonies taking place in homes as marriage venues are jammed.

The bill, rushed through parliament last month with little debate aiming to increase gender equality and eradicate child marriages, is being scrutinised by a parliamentary committee.

Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, who introduced the bill, said the move to raise the legal age was a “decisive step” in India’s history. The country is still a conservative society where women marrying at a young age is not unusual and underage marriages are common, especially in rural areas.

The minister said up to 200,000 child marriages were stopped by the authorities between 2015 and 2020, while the latest National Family Health Survey, for 20192021, revealed that 6.8 per cent of girls aged 15 to 19 were pregnant at the time of the survey.

The data also revealed 23.3 per cent of women aged 20-24 were illegally married before the age of 18. Around 635,000 households took part in the survey.

Despite the figures and the difficult lives of many young women behind them, the bill has created a public uproar.

Critics said raising the marriage age could be a “recipe for disaster” and penalise young adult women.

“The new law will control adult women’s autonomy while robbing them of their sexual rights to marry when they feel ready. If 18 year-olds can vote, drive, represent the country in Olympics and act in films, why can’t they tie the knot at that age?” asked Pratibha Kapur, a Delhi-based activist.

The impact of the proposed legislation is already being felt with rushed marriage ceremonies seen across several states.

“We have three daughters who have finished their schooling/ college and we’ve found good boys for them, so we’ll be holding a collective wedding for them later this month,” said a father in the south-central state of Telangana who did not want to be named.

“This is an arbitrary governmental directive with no rationale where public opinion wasn’t even factored in. Why should we follow it?” he said.

Some parents believe increasing the age women can get married would be a blow to tradition with potential adverse affect on their engaged daughters’ futures: they might elope with someone else or the groom might fall for a different girl. There is also concern the groom’s parents might increase the dowry amount.

Many concerned parents are moving at speed. In Telangana that led to a local Waqf religious body urging the Muslim community “not to panic”.

Women’s rights activists and family planning experts fear that if the new law comes into force “it will lead to a tsunami of illegal marriages”. They also say existing laws have stated for decades that girls should not marry before 18 but, nevertheless, child marriages are still commonplace.

“What’s the guarantee that people will follow the new guidelines?” said Kishori Aggarwal, a member of the Lawyers Collective, a human rights advocacy forum.

“A coercive law will only push marginalised communities into law breaking,” she said.