Summary
Contents
Love, Labour and Law: Early and Child Marriage in India is a path-breaking book on an issue that has not been analysed in depth for a while, perhaps since it does not affect the elite. Today, the child brides are usually from poor families. They are of 1517 years as compared to much younger brides in the earlier times. The book discusses why child marriages persist despite numerous legislative and policy initiatives to eliminate the practice. The chapters examine social and legal reforms to raise the age of marriage; contemporary education and health-related policy attempts at prevention; relationship of child marriage with child labour, sex work, human trafficking and other issues. Increasingly, there is greater resistance to marriages arranged by parents from the child brides themselves who can now access institutional and bureaucratic support. How hopeful are these developments? The book goes beyond a simple policy focus on elimination and provides a much-needed understanding of marriage and womens agency within the context of the Indian marriage system.
Some Historiographical Challenges in Approaching Child Marriage in India
Some Historiographical Challenges in Approaching Child Marriage in India
THE TWENTY-FIRST century is witnessing massive efforts globally to eliminate child marriage. There is a special focus on countries like India since we have the largest numbers of women in the world who have married before the age of 18. The Indian state is under pressure to further amend its laws on the age of marriage; organizations on the ground are addressing child marriage in various ways, and new studies, many of them sponsored by international bodies, are emerging.
Child marriage in India has a very special relationship to history. This needs to be understood both in a historiographical and a strictly historical sense. Is there a story ...
