By Flavia Agnes
18 June 2012
The recent Delhi HC judgment allowing a minor Muslim girl to marry her lover has caused much dissent. Flavia Agnes writes why a myopic perspective towards safeguarding a woman’s freedom won’t produce enduring results
A sense of doom and despair seems to be pervading among some women’s groups over the Delhi High Court judgment (Tahra Begum v State of Delhi Ravindra Bhat and S.P. Garg, JJ, 9th May, 2012 MANU-DE-2154-2012 ), which permitted a minor (almost 16-year-old) girl to marry the man of her choice rather than restore her to her parental authority. Some groups such as the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, that have been campaigning for codification of Muslim law, have used this occasion to campaign for 18 as the minimum age of marriage for Muslim girls (and 21 for boys), with the underlying presumption that all underage marriages must be declared as void.
Before we come up with a knee-jerk response to the hype created by the media and bite the bait, we need to have greater clarity on whose side are we (the feminists) batting in this confrontation between parental authority or the active agency expressed by a young, teenage girl. Also I wish to raise a connecting question—if the Muslim law was codified and minimum age for marriage was stipulated, as has been done under the Hindu Marriage Act, would the High Court have responded differently? Would the judges have sent the girl back to her parental custody? And the last question—could that have been construed as a “progressive ruling” by us claiming to be “feminists”?
