AIDWA condemns the proposal of the Gujarat government to make the consent of parents mandatory for a girl or a boy to enter into a marriage. The state government has proposed an amendment to the Gujarat Registration of Marriages Act, 2006, which would require couples to declare whether they have informed their parents of the marriage, and authorities too will have the right to alert parents during the registration process. This is a most blatant attempt to control the choice, sexuality, and autonomy of young people, especially girls. It denies that an adult can have any agency and control over their body, even in intimate matters. The proposal is, in fact, reflective of the rules made in the Uttarakhand UCC, which also mandate that the parents should be informed about a marriage. It is shameful that even some AAP and Congress members supported this proposal. A Deputy Minister of the government tried to defend the proposal by saying
that it was meant to stop “love jihad”, and that young girls can get easily persuaded and “trapped” into these marriages. Though “love jihad” itself is a fiction created to stop interfaith marriages, the proposal of the Gujarat government is obviously intended to stop inter-caste marriages too. The proposal exemplifies the Manuvadi and Hindutva ideology of the BJP-led Gujarat government, which places even an adult woman in an unequal, subjugated position. It shows that the BJP is increasingly consolidating anti-women, sexist, and misogynist laws.
It is extremely sad and inhuman that in a country where crime, harassment, and killing of
100s of young people in the name of “honour” is taking place on a daily basis, this kind of law should even be proposed. It is well known that in our society, a large number of parents and relatives oppose any relationship by choice, and such a law will only result in further stifling of these relationships. In most of these crimes, the girl’s family reacts violently if she gets involved with a lower caste man, or with a man of different religion. Even today, it has been reported that a girl’s brother killed her because she married a man of a different faith.
The proposal is also in brazen violation of the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court also in the Puttaswamy case, clarified that the right to privacy included within it the right to choose with whom one should live and have a relationship with. One of the judges clarified that "Privacy includes at its core the preservation of personal intimacies, the sanctity of family life, marriage, procreation, the home and sexual orientation. Privacy also connotes a right to be left alone.
Privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognises the ability of the individual to control vital aspects of his or her life." This right to choice has been severely dented from 2014 onwards, where we are seeing more and more control over women and their sexuality. Other judgments like Lata Singh and the Hadiya case have also clarified that adults do not require their family’s consent to get married or even to convert. Lata Singh, in fact, laid down strict guidelines for the police to treat any obstruction to such a marriage as a violation of the law. This means that the state has no authority to intervene when adults decide whom to marry or not to marry. The Gujarat proposal is regressive and backward-looking, and must not be made into a law.
AIDWA therefore demands that the Gujarat government scrap the present proposal and treat young women and men with dignity.
