Students pledge not to marry against parents’ wishes in Surat: Endorsing forced marriages? 

In a strange though not entirely unexpected move, nearly 10000 children in Surat have been given a pledge on Valentine’s Day that they would not marry against their parents wishes.

One does not know how seriously to take this oath on Valentine Day as the oath has been delivered by a person who heads the Laughter Club in the city.

The first question is obviously whether an oath taken publicly in school will hold good by the time that the child grown up to marriageable age. It immediately reminded me of an event in Dehradun where Swami Agnivesh asked a group of management trainees to take a pledge that they would not take dowry. The Jury is open to opinions as to whether such public display of noble intentions means some sort of commitment which could last a life time.

But the question here is more serious. It is not just a question of personal choices or telling the youth to follow the rules set by the elders on this day.

It is not only regressive but criminal to endorse or support forced marriages which most arranged marriages in Asia and Africa are. And I have always been surprised why the Indian government does not tell its people that forced marriages is an international crime since 2017.

In a hugely significant move by the Anti-Slavery International, forced marriage has been included in the new estimates of people in slavery by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Anti-Slavery has been fighting for the recognition of forced marriage as a form for slavery for years. It had backed its plea in 2013 with the report entitled ‘Out of the shadows’.

The ILO and the Walk Free Foundation and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), estimates that there are 40.3 million people in slavery worldwide, nearly double the figures from 20.9m in 2012.

The maximum number of modern day slaves are in child labour and number two at 15.4 million people are in forced marriage, the vast majority of these are girls and women. Over a third of the people who were forced to marry were children, of whom 40% were below fifteen at the time of marriage. India tops in child and forced marriages in the world second only to Pakistan and yet law makers are not serious about this crime.

"We welcome the inclusion of this form of abuse in the slavery estimates.” Anti-Slavery director Aidan McQuade says. “When we first raised the issue of forced marriage in the discussions around the preparations for this estimate we were a lone voice, so we are pleased to see it included.”

“The treatment of millions of girls who were forced to marry against their will finally should be recognised for what it is – slavery, hidden under the guise of marriage.

“The toleration of forced marriage, particularly that of children, represents such a fundamental denial of the rights of millions of girls that it provides a fertile ground for the evolution of yet more egregious abuses such as the misogynistic depredations of Boko Haram and Islamic State.

More than 90 per cent of all forced marriages have been recorded in two regions: Africa and Asia and the Pacific.

The reasons for forced marriage are well known. In some parts of the world, young girls and women are forced to marry in exchange for payment to their families, the cancellation of debt, or to settle family disputes. In countries with significant levels of conflict, they can be abducted by armed groups and forced to marry fighters, enduring all manner of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Forced marriages also occur in developed nations, with women and girls being forced to marry foreign men for cultural reasons, or in order to secure another person’s entry into the country. Once forced to marry, many victims are placed at greater risk of being subjected to other forms of exploitation, including, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and other forms of forced labour. Children are especially vulnerable in these situations.

We cut a sorry figure globally on this account. In UK forced marriages was criminalised in 2014 under the UKs Forced Marriage Unit (FMU). UK has placed India second after Pakistan in terms of countries of origin where British nationals are forced into marriage. While Pakistan with 38.3 per cent remains at the top , India comes second at 7.8 per cent followed by Bangladesh , Afghanistan, Somalia, Turkey, Srilanka, Iran and Iraq in that order.

In India, a perverse judgment by the Supreme Court not to disturb marriages of minor girls where there are grown up children drew a lot of flak from women activists.

Finally the Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that sexual intercourse by a man with his minor wife ,aged below 18, with or without her consent amounts to rape has upset another set of people who swear by Indian values.

But the statement of senior advocate Vishwanathan KV quoted on the judgement should be the final word,"The presumption when a man and a woman are living together is that they are not praying...In future the judgment acts as a deterrent against child marriage because it directly exposes the husband to criminal prosecution for rape."