Author: Amrit Dhillon
Publication: Times Online
Date: August 28, 2002
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-396355,00.html
Introduction: Many girls are married
off as young as ten in India, though the law says they should be 18. Now
some Muslims want the legal right to wed girls at puberty
Sitting on the floor of her dishevelled
home, the size of a broom cupboard, in Old Delhi, Bano recounts her precocious
achievements. She was married at the age of 10 and had her first child
when she was 11. Her daughter was 12 when she married and 13 when she had
her own child, making Bano a grandmother at 24.
Bano's granddaughter also married
at puberty and gave birth when she was 14 - thus Bano became a great grandmother
at 38.
In another room, across a narrow,
dank, vertiginous staircase crawling with toddlers and goats, lives Bano's
neighbour, 16-year-old Rukshana, mother of three children. Her younger
sister Yasmin is 13. She too will be getting married any day now. In virtually
every house in this Muslim neighbourhood, it's the same story.
"I had no idea the minimum age for
marriage in India is 18. All our girls are married the moment their periods
start," says Bano, who, like many child brides who bear children early
and frequently, looks 70 although she is 48.
If Muslim conservatives in India
have their way, it could become legal for Muslim parents to marry their
daughters off at puberty. A national group, the All- India Muslim Personal
Law Board, is going to court, demanding exemption from the law. India has
set the legal age for marriage at 18 to root out the ancient custom of
child marriage. But the board says the law should not apply to Muslims
because their Personal Law permits marriage at puberty. The Shariat (which
guides Muslims in matters such as marriage, divorce and custody) is, as
the board general secretary, Mohammed Abdul Rahim Qureishi, says, "absolute,
final and non-negotiable".
Child marriage in India is not peculiar
to Muslims. Some Hindu communities also engage in it, despite many social
campaigns. In Rajasthan, child marriages happen en masse with miniature
brides and bridegrooms playing with dolls and marbles, sucking their thumbs
or sitting in their parents' laps during the nuptials.
Sociologists trace the origin of
child marriages here to Muslim invasions that began more than 1,000 years
ago. Legend has it that the invaders raped unmarried Hindu girls or carried
them off as booty, prompting Hindus to marry off their daughters early
to protect them.
But the custom refuses to die. Poverty
means that parents are relieved to have one less mouth to feed, especially
as the girl is usually not going to school and is just hanging around the
house. Culture demands a girl's speedy marriage lest she disgrace her family
and send them to perdition by having premarital sex.
Nevertheless, marrying girls at
puberty is much more prevalent among Muslims than Hindus. In addition to
the inexorable logic of poverty and culture, it enjoys the powerful sanction
of religion and the Prophet's own example. Muhammad's favourite wife, Aisha,
according to her biographer, was six when they wed, nine when the marriage
was consummated.
Now, for the first time in independent
India, the board is demanding that Muslim men be allowed to marry underage
girls, to the horror of women's groups only too aware of the catastrophic
consequences for girls of becoming pregnant while their bodies are still
maturing. It is not just that they are condemned never to experience personal
freedom or development (though that alone is an immeasurable loss), it
is sickly babies, a high infant mortality rate and mothers dying in their
forties. "Why do men follow the Koran only in marrying underage girls?"
says Sabiha Hussain, a Muslim academic in New Delhi. "If Muslim men want
to follow the Koran, why don't they do the other things the Koran encourages,
like marrying divorced women or widows? Muhammad's first wife was almost
twice his age, but I don't see any Muslim man following that particular
example."
Hussain and scores of Muslim activists
are seeking to bring Muslim Personal Law - designed for tribal, warrior
and nomadic Arabia 14 centuries ago - into line with modern sensibilities.
They are outraged (though not surprised), at the board's demand; its record
for supporting all the excesses perpetrated against India's 60 million
Muslim women in the name of Islam is unsurpassed.
India has the largest number of
Muslims in the world after Indonesia but the condition of Muslim women
is far worse than in many Muslim societies, mired as they are in poverty,
ignorance (two thirds are illiterate) and perpetual pregnancy.
A report by the National Commission
for Women in 2000 depicted Muslim women as "bearers of children and beasts
of burden". No education, married at puberty, mothers of six to nine children
because husbands and mullahs forbid birth control as "anti- Islamic", constant
fear of husbands taking a second wife, and victims of "instant" divorce
with no accompanying alimony or maintenance. Islamic laws, the report said,
are being used by men as "instruments of torture".
Decades of research show that Muslim
men in India ignore all the Islamic tenets intended to protect women's
rights in divorce, maintenance or mehr - the money a Muslim man pledges
to his wife at the time of marriage, intended to give her security in the
event of divorce. For example, men divorce their wives by saying "talaq"
(I divorce you) three times - the woman does not even have to be present
- and then refuse to give her the mehr, leaving her penniless.
"Many Muslim men are cynical. They
ignore what doesn't suit them - such as giving a woman her mehr if they
divorce her - but they enthusiastically follow laws allowing them to marry
girls of 10 or 11," Hussain says. "Now they want to make it legal. Tell
me, would they ever make such a demand in the UK or the US?" The custom
of getting girls married the moment they menstruate has made the predominantly
Muslim city of Hyderabad in south India a favourite hunting-ground of rich,
old Arabs in search of Lolitas. Most Indians still remember the 1992 scandal
of Amina Fatima, 11, who was married to a 70-year-old Arab by her father,
a poor auto- rickshaw driver. An alert air hostess on the flight between
Hyderabad and New Delhi noticed Amina crying and on landing called the
police. The wrinkled bridegroom was arrested, Amina sent back to her parents.
Wealthy Arab pensioners still come
to Hyderabad looking for pubescent brides to satisfy their paedophiliac
lust, but these cases come to light only in the rare instance of a girl
complaining to the police. In some cases, these men "marry" an underage
girl, have sex with her in a hotel for a week, "divorce" her with a quick
talaq, dump her back at her parents' and fly home. In fact, as part of
efforts to stamp out child marriage, the Hyderabad authorities recently
made it mandatory for all marriages to be registered.
If parents cannot provide proof
that the girl is 18 or above, the marriage will not be registered. The
board has opposed this move.
It is also resisting a recent court
ruling on divorce that cheered Muslim feminists by challenging the instant,
arbitrary and unilateral talaq method. Some Muslim wives are divorced by
their husbands for cooking badly, losing their looks, refusing to have
sex, speaking back, bad breath, or for having some grey hair. "One man
in Chennai, who caught his wife dyeing her roots, divorced her on the spot,"
says Shanta Reddy, a member of the National Commission for Women.
The ruling says that in future men
will first have to prove that the divorce is justified and do it in the
courts. At the moment, the man can say talaq in the living room, on the
street, by e-mail, post, fax or telephone. The board has rejected the ruling
as "intolerable interference" in Muslim Personal Law.
Feminists shrug. They have learnt
not to expect any better from the board. Rani Jethmalani, a lawyer, describes
the religious leaders on the board as paranoid. "The board believes that
any attempt by the law or the Government to make them evolve and progress
is an attack on their faith. They must realise that India has laws and
a constitution enshrining equal rights that must be respected."
Nishad Hussain, the president of
the National Women's Welfare Society in Jaipur, Rajasthan, argues that
Muslim Personal Law must be reformed. She accuses Muslim men of double
standards: "They refuse to follow Koranic injunctions such as cutting off
a thief's hand on the ground that it is inappropriate for the 21st century,
but if a woman talks about modernising 7th-century customs, she is branded
a heretic."
The board's view that it is fine
for girls to become pregnant at the first biological opportunity nauseates
Hussain: "No girl this age is ready for marriage or motherhood. It's a
terrible burden. The girl is mentally, emotionally and physically immature.
For me, any man having sex with a girl of this age is guilty of sexual
abuse."
Evidence that early childbirth is
a disaster is personified in the girls who walk into Dr Nileema Zutschi's
clinic in Nizamuddin East, a Muslim neighbourhood in New Delhi. "What you
have is a child bearing a child. Also, the girl is usually malnourished.
Because Muslim women marry so early, I see cases where both mother and
daughter are expecting," says Dr Zutschi. Some doctors have treated families
in which grandmother, granddaughter and great-granddaughter are all pregnant.
Kamal Faruqi, a chartered accountant
and board member, is unperturbed by feminist indignation. He maintains
that the demand for lawful marriage at puberty is not a licence for men
to have sex with underage girls. Rather, it is designed to give the parents
of unmarried girls a more "honourable and reasonable alternative" to the
humiliation of bearing a child out of wedlock. "A teenage, unmarried girl
will be shunned by society if she has a child, so isn't it better if she
marries?" he argues. "If she does this now, she will be breaking the law.
But why not allow this option for exceptional circumstances?"
Liberal Muslims disagree. "A shotgun
marriage is hardly a solution to teenage pregnancies," says Maimoona Mollah,
an activist and software professional. "If he is concerned about unmarried
pregnant girls, why not campaign for a clause in the existing law for such
exceptional circumstances, rather than seeking total exemption?" Though
early marriage is common in most Muslim societies (in Iran, the legal age
for marriage is nine), several countries prohibit marriage at puberty.
In Algeria the legal age is 18, in Egypt 16, in Jordan 17, in Morocco and
Turkey 18 and in Tunisia 20. In other Muslim countries, religious law has
been substantially reformed. In Pakistan, for example, a man cannot take
another wife without his first wife's written permission; all marriages
have to be registered with the authorities and instant divorce of the kind
seen in India is not permitted.
Why, then, do Muslim men, in secular
India, want the right to marry girls at puberty? Leaving aside the board's
reputation for obscurantism, its demand has to be seen against the backdrop
of the recent Gujarat riots in which more than 1,000 Muslim men, women
and children were killed by mobs of Hindu fanatics.
As Hindu fundamentalism rises in
India, so does Muslim fundamentalism. Both sides bait each other constantly.
Women and their bodies are the first casualties, because this is the preferred
territory for opposing camps to settle scores. Hindu fanatics say that
Muslims deliberately have several wives and huge families because they
want to "overtake" Hindus in number. Muslim fanatics say that this hate
propaganda is aimed at making it difficult for Muslims to live in India.
So, asked why he wants Muslim girls
in India to be married at puberty when the legal age in Muslim countries
is higher, Faruqi falls back on the argument of not wanting to give an
inch in case the floodgates open, drowning one's identity: "If we concede
5 per cent on issues like this, they (Hindus) will demand 50 per cent,"
he says.
Syeda Hameed, the president of the
Muslim Women's Forum in New Delhi, claims that the board is probably making
this demand as a deliberate provocation to Hindus, post-Gujarat. She also
understands Muslims instinctively seeking further refuge in their faith;
after all, the pogrom in Gujarat has left even educated, urban, professional
Muslims feeling insecure.
Yet Hameed believes that moving
forward is essential. "I know Muslim women and girls were raped in Gujarat,
but that doesn't mean to say that we should regress and sink into retrograde
practices," she says. "Hindu fanatics will have a field day with this demand
for marrying underage girls. All the board is doing is giving them another
stick to beat us with. What happened in Gujarat is not an excuse for not
putting our house in order."
For Saeed Naqvi, a distinguished
Muslim columnist, the board's behaviour is a cause for profound despair.
For years Naqvi has been saying that the board consists of unelected extremists
who falsely claim to represent the views of India's 140 million Muslims.
He says that the board is perpetuating Hindu stereotypes of Muslims.
"They already say we are backward,
devoid of any sense or modernity, have four wives and breed like rabbits.
Now they'll be saying we want to have sex with underage girls, too," he
says. "It's so boring because it's not getting any of us anywhere."
