In a rare show of unity, Gujarat’s legislators from both the BJP and the Congress are seeking an amendment to the Registration of Marriages Act, 2009. During the ongoing budget session, on March 17 BJP legislator Fatesinh Chauhan and Geniben Thakor of the Congress demanded that signatures of parents be made mandatory when adult children choose their own partners. They also want to ensure that such marriages be registered in the same taluka where the man or woman live. The demand was made during the Assembly debate on the budgetary allocations of the Legal Department.
The lawmakers pointed to the growing number of “elopement and love marriages” by boys and girls that they said required the government’s intervention. “Marriages solemnised without the consent of parents add to the crime rate in the State. If such marriages are registered with the consent of parents, the crime rate would see a drop of 50%,” said Mr. Chauhan, an MLA from Kalol and a prominent face of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
He added that girls elope with boys and register their marriage in the court of some other district. “Later either the girl suffers, or the parents of the girl have to kill themselves. Since the parents are busy in their professions, they sometimes cannot take care of their girls and hence anti-social elements take advantage of this and elope with girls,” he said.
Mr. Chauhan cited several examples of ‘love’ marriages that have gone awry in his constituency in Panchmahal district of central Gujarat.
Making a similar demand, Ms. Thakor said love marriages without parental consent must be discouraged. “We have been demanding for a long time that changes be made in the law about love marriages,” she said, adding, “Some boys lure girls and force them into matrimony.”
“We are not against ‘love’ marriages between a girl and a boy, but we are against the marriage where the consent of the parents has not been obtained,” she argued, adding that these marriages must be registered in the same taluka where the girl and her family live and have local witnesses.
The 30-minute Assembly discussion reflects the discussions and demands among the various communities in the State.
In 2022, members of the State’s powerful Patidar community demanded that the signature of at least one parent be made mandatory for the registration of a marriage, if a girl from the community tied the knot with the man of her choice.
R.P. Patel, president of Vishv Umiya Dham, a prominent Patidar organisation and the convener of the Patidar Organisation Co-ordination Committee, had said a representation for such a demand would be made to the State government. “The entire Patidar community is upset because girls from the community choose their life partners without informing parents and get married by arranging two witnesses. We have observed that very often, our girls are under pressure and instances of ‘love jihad’ (a term used by certain outfits to describe interfaith marriages) have also happened in the past,” he said.
In 2021, the Gujarat Assembly had amended the Freedom of Religion Act, 2003 penalising forcible or fraudulent religious conversion by marriage or ‘love jihad’, bringing in stringent provisions against forcible conversion through marriage or ‘allurement’.
Another contention Mr. Patel raised was that sometimes girls are also targeted for properties owned by their parents and lured into marriages that don’t last long and create ‘social problems’.
The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and Hindu Succession Act, 1956 recognise the legal rights of daughters to ancestral property. The fear is that women married to men from other castes would claim their share in the inherited property.
Similarly, community outfits of the Thakor Kshatriya caste, in a meeting in July 2022, discussed the growing instances of girls marrying without the consent of their parents and creating ‘social issues’ for them.
In a meeting of the Thakor community in Banaskantha in north Gujarat, a resolution was passed to ban unmarried girls from using mobile phones and from inter-caste marriages.
In 2019, in a community meeting, Congress legislator Ms. Thakor had raised the issue and said all parents must ‘control’ their daughters.
