Summer vacation is a long rest for teachers as everyone
says, but it is not so. As a teacher, it’s a really boring phase of the year as
teachers are always concerned about their students – teaching, interacting and
conducting activities etc. All the summer vacation I was waiting for the month
of June to meet my students… went to the school on a Saturday with lots of
enthusiasm. However, the visit made me sad and disheartened. I heard that five
of our students from ninth and tenth standards got married in summer. “It’s all
due to parental pressure that they had to agree for the wedding” explained
their classmates sadly.
One of the girls has got married before board exams; however, she fought with her in-laws
and wrote the exams. It shows how challenging it is for these girls to pursue
higher studies in the future.
Most of the students belong to families where the parents
are illiterates and slum dwellers. In a typical Indian lower middle-class
family, girl children are seen as “bojh” (burdens) on the parents’ shoulders.
They want to get off their girl child by making them tie the knot with a person
who would give them security. Parents hardly care about the opinions of girls
about marriage, thus they often have to sacrifice their happiness to satisfy
their parents and be a good, obedient daughter.
Parental views on girl child marriage –
- We are worried about the society. They point fingers at us if we do not marry off our girl child even after her schooling.
- I have five children, my daughter is the oldest, and we have to perform her wedding immediately after seventh standard. We have four more daughters lined up for wedding.
- We really want to send our girl child to pursue higher studies, but we are afraid that she might side-track, fall in love or marry against our wishes etc. To be on safer side it would be good to perform her wedding after tenth standard. If her in-laws agree, she will continue her studies.
- My daughter got a nice match (groom). So though she is in tenth standard, we are ready to perform her wedding. She might not get a guy like this, and they are asking nominal (two – three lakhs cash+ home appliances + a motorbike) dowry.
Majority of Indians belong to the above-mentioned category. Child marriage is still prevalent in every corner of the state and this is the reason we are seeing constant child mortality rate from past many years (for more info). Also Indian women are more anemic compared to other countries.
These all are known facts
and are being debated since ages, but the reformation of perception is very
slow. The only missile to dismantle these social evils is education. If every parent is
educated, we wouldn’t see such cases. Here’s hoping the future generation,
being more educated, would take an active role in doing away with such
practices.
