Before The Legal Marriage Age For Women Is Raised To 21, There Is A Rush To Marry Them Off

The Central government's move to raise the legal marriage age for women from the current 18 to 21, at par with men has resulted in what can be described as 'panic weddings'.

There has been an increase in the number of marriages of girls, aged 18-20 following the announcement to raise the marriage age.

Hyderabad's old city is reportedly seeing an increase in such marriages.

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According to a report in The Times of India, many girls in the age group of 18-20 have gotten married in the past few days as their parents fear that once the age is legally raised they will have to wait for 2-3 more years.

The brides at these hurried ceremonies are all between 18 and 20 years of age. Most were supposed to get married sometime in 2022-2023, but fear of the bill being passed has made their families wary of waiting until then, the report said.

"We had planned to have the ceremony in mid-2022 as her father recently went to Sri Lanka in search of a job. We were hoping he would come back with some money for us to arrange the wedding. But when we heard about the bill, we had to rush," a woman, whose 19-year-old daughter was married last week told the newspaper.

It is not just in Hyderabad, Kerala's Malappuram has also seen such rushed marriages in recent days.

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¡°Those who are working in the Middle East and elsewhere can¡¯t afford to come home now for marriage. Their families are petrified that they would land in jail if they marry off a girl who is yet to turn 21. The panic is so widespread that there has been a noticeable spike of marriages in the past couple of days,¡± Anwar Karakkadan, district coordinator of Childline in Malappuram told Malayala Manorama.

Safna Akbarali, a Kozhikode-based psycho-social counsellor, said a girl in her neighbourhood got married recently a day after she turned 18. ¡°The parents fixed everything in a week¡¯s time. They rushed to get their daughter hitched before the government officially raises the legal age of marriage,¡± she said.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which seeks to increase the legal age for women to marry to 21 years, bringing it at par with those of men was introduced in the Lok Sabha and has been sent to a standing committee.

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It seeks to amend seven personal laws -- the Indian Christian Marriage Act, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, the Special Marriage Act, the Hindu Marriage Act, and the Foreign Marriage Act.

Experts are divided on the issue of raising the age of marriage for women with some saying it will go a long way in empowering women and some others laying emphasis on addressing the root causes behind early marriages such as lack of education and poverty.

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