Aug 02, 2024 09:19 PM IST
Over seven decades after Independence, after gaining hard-won rights, women are still being infantilised and treated as gullible people incapable of making their own decisions in love and marriage
Four years after it passed a law ostensibly to prevent fraudulent religious conversions, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to get tougher. The maximum punishment for marrying a woman by deceiving her or converting her religion is now life imprisonment, instead of the earlier 10 years. Earlier, only a family member could lodge a complaint, now anybody can. Bail conditions are at par with the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Versions of the anti-conversion law have been passed by eight Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states where, according to Census 2011, 40.34% of our population lives. The laws require prior permission from a state official to convert. Interfaith marriages without sarkari approval are null and void. And while such marriages aren’t actually banned, conversion for marriage is now practically impossible in these states.
Of course, there is the Special Marriage Act (SMA), 1954 under which couples can marry. However, the SMA requires a one-month notice to be posted in public with the names, phone numbers and addresses of the couple, making them vulnerable to vigilante groups and their own families. So, for an interfaith couple, according to the Law Commission in a 2018 report, conversion is often the more expedient alternative.
The anti-conversion laws are clear about their intent. The Uttarakhand version claims “several instances” where “people convert themselves to the other religion only for the purpose of marriage with the girl [sic] of that religion and after marriage, they got that girl [sic] converted to their own religion.” You get the gist. More than marriage, these unconstitutional laws curtail the autonomy of women. In modern India, the idea of a sexually independent adult woman is so frightening that khap panchayats in Haryana recently reiterated their demand for a law mandating parental consent for love marriages. This is not the loony fringe. The idea was also debated in the Gujarat assembly.
Eighteen months after the Supreme Court transferred separate petitions challenging the anti-conversion laws from eight states to itself, it is yet to hold its first hearing. Why is this not a priority in a country where parents kill their daughters in the name of honour?
Meanwhile, in January, the Allahabad high court (HC) refused to grant protection to eight interfaith couples, saying their marriages were not compliant with the anti-conversion law. In June, the Madhya Pradesh HC refused, bizarrely, to protect a Muslim man and Hindu woman seeking to marry under the SMA.
Over seven decades after Independence, after gaining hard-won rights, women are still being infantilised and treated as gullible people incapable of making their own decisions in love and marriage. This is the very definition of a nanny State taking control over citizens in the name of “protection”.
Manu, the law-giver, believed women must not be granted independence, and should remain under the control of their fathers, husbands and, finally, sons.
Manu is believed to have lived in the fourth century BC. We are now in 2024, but some ideas, it would seem, haven’t changed.
Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal
Story Saved
