Prof. Satya Narayan Misra in Bhubaneswar, January 25, 2022: A task force headed by Ms. Jaya Jaitley has suggested that the age of female marriage should be increased to 21, at par with men, which will foster gender equality, better access to education and empowerment among women. The cabinet has approved the recommendation which is presently being examined by Parliamentary Standing Committee.

There is mixed reaction to the proposed move to do away with legal duality in marriage age. While many observers believe that this is a move in the right direction to ensure improved access to schools and colleges for girls, inculcate requisite skill sets in them for employment, lower maternal mortality rate and improve nutritional level amongst adolescent girls who suffer from anaemia (50%), others believe that the bill has a communal motivation to bring the Muslims within the ambit of universal civil code, which is one of the major electoral promises of the BJP.

Coming on the heels of the scrapping of special status to Jammu and Kashmir and building a temple at the disputed Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, the Muslims believe that the present bill will undermine Muslim personal law which permits girls to marry once they attain puberty.

The first attempt to introduce social reforms in respect of women was made during the British rule though the Sarada Act 1929. As per the Child Marriage and Restraint Act 1929, the age of marriage of the girl was fixed at 14 and 18 for boys. However, as Nehru writes in Discovery of India, the British did not implement the act with due sincerity as they did not want to earn the displeasure of communities belonging both to Hindus and Muslims. In the 1931 census was found that the number of wives whose age was less than 15 had increased from 8.5 million to 12 million. After independence the govt. introduced the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act of 2006, as per which the age of marriage was increased to 18 and that of boys to 21.

Lack of Gender justice and equality with man has been one of the major distressing areas in India, despite the constitutional stipulation that there should be no gender discrimination (Art 15) and that special care should be taken to uplift the status of women (Art 16). As per the Global Gender Gap Report (2020) India’s ranks 122 amongst 153 countries. The largest gap is in terms of political empowerment (77%) survival and sustenance of woman, India is witness to very high level Maternal Mortality Rate of 177 per one lakh as against a target of 80 by the Sustainable Development Goals.

The labour force participation is only 24.8 % as against 81.5% for men. Besides participation of women in Parliament, senior management positions are around 14% as against 86% for men. While the Constitution guarantees equal pay for equal work for men and women, the gender wave gap is as high as 35% as per the Global Gender Gap Report.

Anthony Giddens brings out how ordinary women would seek equal opportunity and join workforce and education sector as an outcome of globalisation. As women enter workforce, societies will witness late marriages. In India it is noticed that the percentage of highly educated women is as low as 17.3%. Education of children suffer from three major constrains viz. infrastructure barriers when girls students have to cover considerable distance to reach their schools. There is lack of gender sensitive environment, since many schools do not have usable toilets for girls. Motherhood also is a key deterrent in women’s carrier trajectory.

Interestingly,  the Kerala government has launched “She Pad Project” in 2017 by providing incinerator, sanitary pads and almirah to girl children, States like Bihar, Rajasthan and Odisha, though economically underdeveloped, have adopted gender sensitive initiatives like providing of cycles and Scotties to girl children. This has helped bringing down dropout rates among girl children.

As regards the apprehension that this Bill will lead to UCC, it may be recalled that there was bitter debate on this in the Constituent Assembly. While K N Munshi called for restriction of religion to the private sphere and promotion of unity and social integration based on civic national identity, Mr. Karimuddin and Mohani pleaded against such uniformity, as Muslim person law provides the modality for divorce, marriage and inherent. Dr. Ambedkar in a significant intervention observed that “there is no obligation upon the state to do away with personal laws”. By five to four majority the provision of UCC was included as a wish list under Article 44.

In a significant judgement in Saha Bano case (1985), Chief Justice Y V Chandrachud held that Section 125 of Cr PC which provides for inheritance to deserted & indigent women would apply to Muslim women also. This was a bloody blow to the Muslim Personal Act of 1937. The CII went further to exhort the state to implement article 44 which has remained a dead letter. The judges were of view that “a common civil code will help the cause of national integration, by removing disparate loyalties to law which have conflicting ideologies”.

However, in the Sarada Mudgal judgement (1995) the Supreme Court issued a cautionary note by suggesting that ‘UCC can concretise only when the social climate is properly built by the elite of the society and statesmen instead of gaining personal mileage’. The Law Commission to whom the matter was referred to also has been less than emphatic regarding implementing UCC. They were of the view that it is better to deal with law that are discriminatory rather than introduce a UCC “which is neither necessary nor desirable”.

It must be remembered that mere increase in marriage will yield gender justice or reduce MMR & improve nutritional level amongst the girl child. Equal access to quality education, skill, provision of proper infrastructure in the school & greatest care is taking nutritional care of girl children will bring down the presently distressing trends in IMR & MMR. It has been clearly seen that gender budgeting has become mere tokenism. The Beti Padhao Beti Bachao movement has remained a political rhetoric only. The present bill, though well intended, is an exercise in political tokenism.