Students’ body to Asha worker to school principal: On the frontlines of Assam’s fight against child marriage

This public meeting, organised by the All Assam Minority Students’ Union (AAMSU) in an area where the population largely comprises Bengali-origin Muslims, was being held a week after 31 people from the district, Hojai, were arrested overnight in a police crackdown against child marriage. Thirteen of those arrested were men who had allegedly married underage girls and 18 were relatives booked for allegedly facilitating these marriages.

Eight months ago, in February, 219 people were arrested from the district over the course of a few days in an unprecedented crackdown on child marriage in the state.

While Assam’s punitive anti-child marriage drive has largely been viewed as affecting the state’s Bengali Muslim community, for long, campaigns such as the one AAMSU held in Hojai’s Kaki last week and community-led initiatives have worked to push back against the problem. The minority union is carrying out this campaign across the state.

On its part, at each of its meetings, AAMSU has been specifically underlining education — girls’ education in particular — as the only way forward. But they also claim to have intervened and stopped several child marriages.

At Ashinagar, a village in Hojai district, the topic of child marriage prevention is broached each time meetings are held by block-level officials in the village. (Express Photo)

Fakhrulin Islam, an AAMSU activist from Islam Nagar village in the district, said he personally intervened and stopped two marriages: one in 2019, and the other, that of a Class 9 student, last December.

“This is a matter we want to address within the community. So we try to convince families by counselling them. The last resort is to call the administration and the police… When we first started, there was so much resentment against us. One good thing that came out of the government’s drive is that many people were thankful to us and told us that if we hadn’t intervened, they would have been in jail,” he laughed.

A provincial school in the district too has been advocating against child marriage over the past few years. Badrul Islam Beg, the principal of Doboka Higher Secondary School, said the school has been talking about the issue during parent-teacher meetings, and health and hygiene workshops. However, he said, all efforts have been disparate and disorganised due to lack of institutional intervention.

Beg added, “Ideally, there should be intervention by the (education) department so that campaigns at the grassroots level can be organised at the school level on the lines of those conducted by anti-tobacco and eco-clubs. The arrests are preventing child marriages because of fear, not awareness. At the end of the day, without awareness, young girls will still be seen as a burden by their families.”

The government, however, said it has been doing its bit to change mindsets.

Between the two punitive crackdowns against child marriages, the administration held awareness meetings and appointed Gaon Panchayat secretaries as village-level Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs).

Shahabuddin at the gram panchayat office in Islam Nagar, a village in Hojai district. (Express Photo)

At Islam Nagar, Gaon Panchayat Secretary Shahabuddin said he had attended a meeting at the District Collector’s office a few months ago with other secretaries. At the meeting, he said, they had been told that they should check age certificates to issue no-objection certificates for marriages in their respective villages.

However, beyond attending that meeting, it is evident that nothing much has been implemented through this new role in the village. Since no written order or notification was issued regarding the new responsibilities, Shahabuddin said the panchayat too has not taken any steps towards building awareness.

At Ashinagar, a village in the same district, panchayat members said an awareness meeting had been held by block-level officials earlier this year.

ASHA workers too have been roped in. At the village level, ASHA workers work most consistently to spread the message and as grassroots health workers, they also have their ears closest to the ground.

An ASHA worker in a village in Hojai district says that before the February crackdown, she attended a training session at a local hospital. Apart from spreading awareness against child marriage, she said ASHA workers were instructed to make a significant change in the manner in which they collected data.

“Earlier, while maintaining our records on pregnant women, we would just ask their age and write whatever they told us. Now, we have been told to check their Aadhaar cards and write down their date of birth instead,” she said.

And although panchayat members in her village claim they were not aware of any arrests there as part of the state crackdown, she said she knew of a family nearby who had a case of child marriage registered against them but “the husband escaped before the police arrived”.

She also knew that an underage girl married into the village had given birth at her maternal village 15 days ago, after which the police arrested members of the family.

She said, “Whether I’m conducting a vaccination session or going from house to house checking on pregnant women, I always discourage families from marrying off girls who are too young.”

But this advocacy, she said, has resulted in suspicion and wariness from the village community. Thanks to the crackdown on child marriages, the community assumes that she will use the information she collects on the job to point the police in their direction.

“Not just me, even other ASHA workers operating nearby have mentioned instances of being shooed away when we go for home visits. Many people are reluctant to come to us now,” she said.