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With no way of supporting herself during lockdown, Bela Bai, a widow from India’s Madhya Pradesh state, did what would be unthinkable to most parents, and married off her teenage daughters in what she saw as a desperate bid to ensure their survival.
“I had no means of sustenance during the lockdown to enable me to look after my daughters during the pandemic, not even the paltry wage I earned earlier, so marrying off my daughters was my only option,” Ms Bai, whose name has been changed, told a social worker, who also declined to be named.
Both now fear being arrested for abetting the child marriages, which is punishable with a two-year jail term and a heavy fine, or both.
India is already the world’s worst country for child marriages. According to Unicef, a third of the world’s child brides come from India, with at least 1.5 million girls under 18 being married off every year, even thought girls legally must be 18 before they are allowed to marry, and boys 21.
For Ms Bai, 45, the Covid pandemic made it easier to wed her daughters, as there were no officials, police or activists during this period to prevent the illegal marriages from taking place in Sehore district, 23 miles south of the state capital Bhopal.
Holding a joint wedding was also inexpensive, helped by the fact that there would be no guests to feed, as everybody in her village was forcibly confined in their homes.
Share of women in child marriages
Ms Bai’s daughters are two of 117 such child brides recorded across Madhya Pradesh between April and June. According to Childline India, a children’s helpline, this was a 40 per cent increase from the 46 similar cases over the previous four months.
Childline claimed that some 5,200 cases child marriage cases were reported countrywide in the first four months of the lockdown up until June.
However, some volunteers said these numbers could well be three or four times higher as activity has gone unreported in remote rural regions.
“Many poverty stricken families in villages were panicked by the economic downturn during the pandemic and used the lockdown period to marry off their daughters aged between 11 and 16 years as there was no vigilance by either officials or NGOs,” said Childline’s Ellen Tonsing.
And, other than in Madhya Pradesh this practice remains prevalent in states like neighbouring Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and nearby Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh where it confined mostly to rural tribal communities.
Global child marriage
In the Rajasthan desert region, a witness to a wedding between a young girl and boy in Jodhpur district said the couple fell asleep as their marriage was being solemnised.
The two infants were woken up and escorted by their respective parents round a fire to complete the Hindu marriage rituals.
After any weddings involving young children, the brides will live at home until their grooms return to claim them at the age of 15 as part of a traditional ceremony called mulligan, after which the marriages will be consummated.
Social activists in Rajasthan are campaigning for such marriages to be consummated only after the bride turns 18, but find that traditions are hard to break amongst poverty-ridden tribal societies.
Money too plays an important part in promoting these weddings, as marrying an infant girl is ‘economical’ since small girls’ wrists and ankles need smaller silver bangles and anklets, a necessity for most brides, saving the parents some money.
Child marriage is a growing problem in India (file photo)
Credit: Rii Schroer
It’s also not uncommon in tribal communities to marry several children at the same time, to save costs.
The origin of infant marriages is unknown, but they are believed to have started around the 10th century with the first Muslim invasions of India that continued intermittently over the next 700 years.
Fearful that the conquering invaders would carry off their daughters, many rural families began marrying them off at an early age to ensure their safety.
Meanwhile, millions of boys in their early teens too have suffered during the mass unemployment and widespread economic downturn wrought by the pandemic.
Employed illegally on farms, in factories, shops, brick kilns, restaurants and as domestic workers they spoke of long working hours, meagre wages and frequent physical and sexual abuse.
Street beggars, often deliberately maimed, said criminal syndicates dragooned them into begging in the searing hot sun in chaotic traffic in cities across the country, an activity that had proliferated under the pandemic.
According to the last 2011 census there were over 260 million child labourers across India, many of who were forced by their own families to work to ensure survival
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