'Child Marriage Is Nothing But Child Rape'

'People don't believe that a 15-year-old girl subjected to sexual intercourse within a marriage is a victim of rape.'

Child marriages in India are as high as 23.3%.

The state that tops the chart is Jharkhand with 32.2%.

Working relentlessly to stop child marriages is Just Rights for Children founded by child rights activist Bhuwan Ribhu.

Just Rights for Children has a network of over 250 civil society organisations operating in 458 districts across 28 states in India.

Just Rights for Children has stopped 474,951 child marriages from 2023 to 2026.

"If a child is subjected to sexual intercourse in a marriage, it is treated as child rape under POCSO," Mr. Ribhu tells Rediff's Shobha Warrier.

The prevalence of child marriages in India is shockingly high at 23.3%.
Why do child marriages happen in India even today? Is it poverty or lack of awareness?

I think it is a combination of 3-4 factors working simultaneously.

The first is the social acceptance of child marriages, and also looking at child marriages from the lens of patriarchy, in the sense that a girl is a burden on the family so she has to be send away as early as possible.

The second factor is a lot of people believe that a girl should be married off at the earliest because they attach virtues like virginity, chastity and things like that to their own family honour.

The third factor is that once a girl reaches the age of 14, she is denied education. As you know, education is free and compulsory only till 14. A family prefers to spend money on the education of a boy rather than a girl as they believe that a girl is paraya dhan!

So, after 14, a girl has to sit at home, and not study.

In the case of Muslims, as per the Muslim Personal law, a girl has to be married off once she reaches the age of puberty which gives a kind of social sanction to child marriages. So, a lot of people believe that it is permitted in their religion, but it is not so.

Now, I will talk about the most important factor. As a society, we have not realised that child marriage is nothing but child rape, and that it is a crime.

The main reason is, people don't look at child marriages from the lens of crime.

They do not believe that a 15-year-old girl subjected to sexual intercourse within a marriage is a victim of rape.

Of course, there is poverty. And poverty means ignorance.

Poverty, lack of education and child marriages form a vicious circle.

So, a girl getting married at the age of 13, 14 or 15 is subjected to all sorts of abuse.

She loses children and develops health issues. Thus she becomes a burden on society.

Also, as she doesn't have any skill, she doesn't participate in the economic workforce of the nation.

The tragedy is, her own daughter also will be subjected to the same fate tomorrow.

'Till recently, child marriage was not perceived as a crime or as a criminal issue'

Does that mean patriarchy and poverty are two of the main reasons?

I would say lack of enforcement of the law, and lack of understanding of the law are the main reasons.

If the law was enforced, then the awareness would increase automatically.

So, lack of awareness which is a direct result of lack of enforcement is the main reason.

Then comes patriarchy.

I would say, not having access to education till 18 is the next reason.

I would put poverty as the last reason.

Why do the authorities not enforce the law even when so many child marriages happen in the villages?

Till recently, child marriage was not perceived as a crime or as a criminal issue.

You know in 2011 or 2012, I had received a phone call from a director general of police in Andaman. I was told that a child was going to be married. She had approached the police. The police had intervened and stopped the child marriage. But no case was registered.

A month later, this child was taken to Chennai from Andaman and she was married off in Chennai.

After the marriage, she called the police again, and said, you failed me.

I do not know the child but I feel as a society, we failed her.

In 2015, I was in the drafting committee of the Juvenile Justice Act and it was going to be amended.

I proposed that when you say, a child is in need of care and protection, it should also include a child who is at the impending risk of marriage.

It basically means that the State can intervene and take the custody of the child away from the parents.

What I am saying is that even when people wanted to act, they could not because the law wasn't there, and the policies weren't there.

We made an amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act saying that the act of giving a child in marriage should be treated as an act of crime, punishable by five years.

Then we went to the Supreme Court, and said that sexual intercourse within child marriage should be treated under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act 2012 as child rape.

And the Supreme Court agreed with our definition.

Is sexual intercourse in child marriage treated as rape now?

Yes, it is.

If a child is subjected to sexual intercourse in a marriage, it is treated as child rape under POCSO.

Now it is part and parcel of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Three years ago when we realised that the policy framework alone is not enough. It required a nationwide resolve at a societal level.

I then found that in 257 districts in India, the prevalence rate was over the national average of 23.3%.

These 257 districts are spread all over the country.

The north-eastern part of India, it was over 50%. In Purba Medinipur, it was 57%, and in Lakhisarai, it was 56%.

We thought if we are able to do intensive action and stop child marriage in these districts, we will reach the tipping point of 6% in 6 years.

That was how we created a framework in my book called When Children Have Children and the tipping point to end child marriage.

What I did was, instead of releasing it as the author, I sent it across to various NGOs across India. I then asked them to get a survivor of child marriage to release the book by the district magistrate so that the DM could adopt the strategy.

'Mothers are never a part of child marriages'

What kind of strategy did you propose?

We called it strategy PICKET.

Picket means policies for prevention, protection and prosecution.

I for creating the institutional framework like child marriage prohibition officers, and let them act.

C was community participation and convergence of action.

K for knowledge and awareness amongst the people.

E for the economics of child marriages with an ecosystem level approach for ending child marriage.

T for using technology to stop child marriages, like monitoring attendance, identifying hot pockets of child marriage using global positioning systems and AI.

This is the idea we had proposed.

But the actual work on the ground was with the support of over 200 NGO partners across India.

Our approach was twin-pronged. One was to go to the communities and get them take pledges. In India, there is this saying, Pran jaye par vachan na jaye!

Then we approached the state governments and said, let us prosecute those who indulge in child marriages. For example in Assam, after large scale action in 2022 against child marriages, the prevalence rates fell by 84% now.

You mean action against the parents?

I would not say parents because mothers are never a part of child marriages.

So, action against the father, action against all the people who are enabling the child marriage, and many times it is the middlemen.

Sometimes, action against the grooms too.

When you think of child marriage, you think it is a 15 year old marrying a 16 year old.

It is not the case always.

Does that mean only girls are subjected to child marriages?

Over 90% are girls.

And majority of the cases we are fighting in the courts have like 25, 30, and even 40 year old men as grooms.

We have a case in the Supreme Court right now, where a 42 year old man was married off to a 15 year old, and then he raped her.

The high court allowed him to go scot-free saying this was a case of a love affair, a consensual relationship.

Child marriage prohibition officers see a leap from 600 to over 54,000 after SC judgment'

Is he not a paedophile then?

Of course, he is a paedophile.

Any person with a little bit of common sense will say, he is a paedophile.

This kind of deviant sexual behaviour, this kind of paedophilia cannot be allowed to continue under the pretext of child marriage.

So, we went and took injunctions. Till then, nobody had ever taken injunctions and stay orders against performing child marriages.

We then went to over 328,000 religious leaders, priests, maulvis and maulanas and local people with folded hands and requested them, 'please put a message outside your temple and mosque saying that no child will be married here as it is a crime'.

Then SEWA, the Odisha-based partner of Just Rights for Children, went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment on 18th October 2024.

In the judgment, the Supreme Court agreed with our view, and also directed the central government to launch the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat campaign which we were already running in India.

After the judgment, our campaign was adopted completely by the central government.

And when the government put in their might, their name, their money, their resources, it changes everything.

A couple of months ago, the central government has allocated 5 lakh rupees for every district and 8 lakh rupees in the 257 districts which I talked about earlier.

So in those districts, the government has put up these signs outside temples and at various places in the villages that even a tent wala or a halwai or a caterer who is involved in organising the marriages of children, will go to jail.

After the Supreme Court judgment, the number of child marriage prohibition officers across the country has been increased from around 600 to over 54,000. These officers can actually stop child marriages before they happen at the panchayat level.

In the last three years, we have been able to physically stop over 4,70,000 child marriages.

In which states are child marriages rampantly happen?

In Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan... In fact, everywhere.

When I say we are currently working in 458 districts across 28 states in India partnering with 271 NGO partners, you can understand where they happen. Child marriages happen everywhere.

Now the prevalence rates have fallen. In Assam, they have fallen by 84%.

In Jharkhand, in the areas where we are operating, they have fallen by 70%.

In Maharashtra, they have fallen by 55%.

I am certain that by 2027, the national average of 23% will be reduced to less than 15%.

In fact, I would go on to say that it will come down to anywhere between 10 to 13%.

'We have prevented over 470,000 child marriages'

The Bal Vivah Mukht Bharat campaign started by the government had its first anniversary now. Would you say this campaign has been successful?

We launched this campaign first in 2020-23.

And it was adopted by the government in 2024.

I think the biggest success of our campaign has been that the government adopted it.

So, if you ask me how successful it has been, an outsider might say, it had mixed results.

But when I look at it from inside, the Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat campaign launched by Just Rights for Children in 2020-2023, has saved over and prevented over 470,000 child marriages.

It is not your campaign versus my campaign. It is our campaign.

This campaign is a national resolve. It requires the entire society's and the government's support and together, we can end child marriages by 2030.

On the day that my book came out three years ago, the United Nations secretary-general expressed his fear that it would take 300 years for the world to end child marriages.

UNICEF came up with a report saying that India would reach the prevalence rate of 10% by 2050.

Today, after three years, the world believes that India will reach the prevalence rate of less than 10% by 2028-2029.

I am sure India will most definitely reach the tipping point of less than 6% before 2030.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff