Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Using stick isn't the way to deter child marriages

On the face of it, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is fighting the good fight against the social evil of child marriage in the state as he ordered the police to arrest people responsible for the marriage of girls when they were less than 14, and who now are either between the ages of 21 and 24 with two children, and those between 15 and 19, who are either pregnant or mothers of a child.

Apparently, the decision was based on National Family Health Survey-5, which showed maternal mortality and infant mortality rates in the state higher than the national average. The report came out in September last year, and the police was asked to make inquiries through the village and community elders, Hindu priests and Muslim qazis to gather data on the offending parents. On January 23, the Assam Cabinet decided to launch a crackdown, which began on February 2. Based on over 4,000 FIRs, more than 2,000 persons are now in police custody. And occupying the moral high ground, the self-righteous Mr Sarma thundered: “I have asked the Assam police to act with the spirit of zero tolerance against the unpardonable and heinous crime on women.” So, the arrests were made under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 and under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

Mr Sarma is no passionate social reformer as he may wish to pretend. He is using naked state power to arrest hapless people — it is not known how many are Hindus and how many Muslims — and without any plan on how they will be dealt with because in all the cases the crime — marrying off under-aged girls — has been committed, and in many cases several years ago, and the others not too many years ago. The correct way is to deal with the crime as it was being committed or as it was about to be committed. But the provisions of the law can of course be used to punish people long after the crime has been committed. Mr Sarma has followed the letter of the law in his zeal to fight the social evil of child marriage.

A generous interpretation of this mindless act would be to call it quixotic, after the great fictional character Don Quixote, created by Cervantes in his classic 16th century Spanish eponymous novel.

But there is more than mere eccentricity in the act of Mr Sarma. He is less quixotic and more the ostentatious strong leader of the BJP, with its vindictive Hindutva tinge. Mr Sarma is playing true to the role that the BJP expects, and there are precedents to be found in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Union home minister Amit Shah. Mr Modi, Mr Adityanath, Mr Shah and Mr Sarma are only too keen to wield the naked power of the State vested in the police force. The motto of the BJP leaders is “arrest the people”, and only later would they decide whether the use of police power is any solution to the problem being addressed.

We have seen Mr Shah thunder against the Delhi riots of late-February 2020 and having students and other residents, all of them Muslims, arrested, and kept in prison for two years before the courts ordered them to be released. Mr Adityanath has been confiscating properties of people believed to be involved in rioting before the Allahabad high court had to issue orders asking for due process to be followed. The government can’t play the roles of judge and executioner.

One can hear middle class supporters of BJP governments’ rowdy ways arguing that the courts are inefficient and ineffective, and that the laws are useless if crimes cannot be prevented, and if those who commit the crime are not hauled up and punished peremptorily. The motto of the supporters of the BJP is “to hell with the law”. The high-handedness of Mr Sarma’s drive against child marriages is not an adolescent outburst of a vigilante hero, portrayed in mainstream popular cinema in the country, but a diabolical strategy to terrorise those who belong to lower economic strata and many of whom are Muslims. There is no sidestepping the Muslim angle in all the conspicuous acts of BJP governments. Many of the Muslim politicians, with their weak-kneed rationalisation about the economic plight of the community, feed into the communal politics of the BJP. Mr Sarma would not be able to explain whether he has any plan of dealing with the issue, whether the parents would be warned or would they be punished, and what would be done with the girls who are now mothers, whether the government feels the need of social counselling of the families, whether there should be an awareness campaign to check the social evil. The motive for the dramatic crackdown ordered by Mr Sarma is more to make the headlines, win brownie points for the party and the government, and also prove that BJP governments would not tolerate social evils in the Muslim community. It is no secret that the plain motive is to wield the stick against the minority community to win Hindu votes.

All-India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) general secretary Amnul Islam would not acknowledge the evil of child marriage in the Muslim community, but he would want to consolidate the Muslim vote by saying that the BJP is against Muslims. Mr Islam would not acknowledge the need to root out the problem in the community because that would weaken his reactionary party’s hold on the community. The communal politics of the BJP and of the hard-line Muslim parties feed off each other. Local observers of Assam politics have pointed time and again that the two major political parties in the state, the Congress and the BJP, have never hesitated to play the Muslim card to win the Hindu vote. The issue of child marriage will remain unresolved in the crossfire of Assam’s communal politics. Mr Sarma must learn that you do not tackle a social problem by wielding the stick and the power to arrest people. It is not democratic governance by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, Mr Sarma has the option to declare that he does not believe in democratic politics, and his chosen line, as well as that of his party, is shameless despotism.