Illegal Child Marriages Flourish in India

At midnight, the priest lighted a sacred fire and called for the bride and groom.

The bride was nursing at her mother’s breast. The bleary-eyed groom, burdened with a huge turban, a sword and marigold garlands, was yawning.

Sonu, the 2-year-old bride, and Arjun, the 8-year-old groom, were among an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 children who were married across India’s Rajasthan state during a the weekend in violation of a law banning child marriage.

The marriages are held on the first and second days of the full moon cycle in the month of May when village elders, in keeping with a centuries-old tradition, study the stars and predict rain--the source of life in a state where 80% of the land is desert.

These auspicious days also are celebrated as a weekend harvest festival.

Such weddings normally are kept secret from outsiders, lest the parents be prosecuted for marrying their children so young. If convicted, an offender can be jailed for three months, fined about $330 or both.

But there is no record of a single conviction in Rajasthan, which lies between New Delhi and Bombay. Local journalists and Naryan Lal Tak, a tourist guide who is writing a book on Rajasthan weddings, said they knew of only two cases in which complaints were filed, but no one was charged.

“I have nothing to fear. I am just following what my forefathers did,” said Sonu’s father, Narayan Prajapati. His four other children, none older than 14, also are married.

“I was married when I was just six years old and my wife only one year old,” said Prajapati.

“For me, it is but natural that my children should get married according to our tradition,” said Prajapati, who earns $4 a day working as a carpenter in Vorawas, 19 miles east of the ancient city of Jodhpur where India’s famed Rajput, or warrior, clan thwarted the might of 16th-Century Mogul invaders.

A 1978 Indian law set the legal marriage age at 18 for women and 21 for men, but enforcement has been limited--especially in Rajasthan, where Hindu traditions are deeply rooted. Many of the child marriages take place in areas where there are few law enforcement officers and where disruption of custom could trigger violence.

In and around Vorawas, 17 other marriages were conducted in recent days. None of the brides was older than 14.

“I am getting four of my daughters married,” said Udham Singh, the head of the neighboring village of Gujrabas.

The youngest of his four daughters was 3-year-old Jamuna, who was playing hopscotch with older children in the courtyard of the family’s mud-plastered house.

“If you travel through Rajasthan today you will find (child) marriages being held everywhere,” said Tak, the tourist guide.

“By conservative estimate at least 40,000 to 50,000 marriages are solemnized in the state during these days,” he added.

“The parents of the bride think that they are doing what they should do,” Tak said. “They do not understand, or do not care to understand, all the nice legal things.”

As Sonu and Arjun fought sleep amid heat from the sacred fire and loud songs of the village women, the elders held their own rite: the opium ceremony.

The oldest man made a watery paste of opium, which he offered to all.

“You are required to drink it from his hand and then bless the newly wedded couple,” said a member of the group. “When he offers you the opium, he is the giver. In return you can give your blessings.”

But the blessings must accompany some money, another man advised. “Just 51 rupees (about $3.30),” he whispered.

The groom is required to take an oath in front of a fire that personifies the fire god, Agni Devta. Then the bride and the groom walk seven times around the flames.

Hindus believe the fire god is the most powerful after the holy trinity of Shiva the destroyer, Vishnu the protector and Brahma the creator.

“If either of them budge from the vow of being man and wife he or she will face the anger of the fire god,” said Ratan Lal, a wedding guest.