[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seung-woo] On the first day of a crackdown to eradicate the harmful practice of child marriage in Guwahati, Assam, in northeastern India, more than 2,000 men were reportedly arrested for illegal child marriages.
According to AFP, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the governor of Assam, announced on the 3rd (local time) that “a two-week crackdown to abolish the harmful practice of child marriage has begun,” and 2,044 people were arrested on the first day.
Governor Sarma stated that in Assam, one in eight women marry before the age of 18 and give birth before the age of 15, which is a major cause of high maternal and infant mortality rates.
In India, there have been continuous calls to eradicate child marriage to restore women's right to education and reduce maternal mortality. In early 2021, hundreds of girls from Haryana, near New Delhi, sent letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting that the legal minimum age of marriage for women be raised to 21.
Reflecting this, in December 2021, a revised bill raising the minimum legal age of marriage for women to 21 passed the parliament. Previously, the minimum marriage age was different for men and women: 21 for men and 18 for women.
However, in poor rural areas, many underage girls are still forced into child marriage because they are considered economic support for their families. According to a UNICEF survey, as of 2020, approximately 1.5 million underage girls were married illegally in one year.
Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, with government lockdowns across cities for quarantine, cases of forcing teenage girls into child marriage in poor households have sharply increased.
A 2018 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet revealed that 38.6% of women who commit suicide worldwide are Indian. Most of these women are married and under 35 years old, and the patriarchal culture in India, which pressures forced child marriages, has been identified as a major cause driving women to death.
Meanwhile, among the men arrested in the Assam child marriage crackdown, 52 were reported to be religious leaders and judicial officials who officiated illegal child marriage ceremonies. The police stated, “Among the arrested men were believers of various religions, including Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity,” and confirmed that “the harmful practice of child marriage is widespread regardless of religion.”
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