Himanta Biswa Sarma has often been accused of spreading lies about Muslim population and their customs.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – An analysis of census data belie Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s claim that 80% child marriages are found in minority communities.
Chief Minister Sarma made the claim on Thursday announcing the repeal of Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act, 1935.
“Today we have repealed the Muslim Marriage Act and will implement a new law for Muslim marriage registration. Child marriages happen 80% in minority communities, and 20% in other communities. For us this problem is not religious, but social. Soon efforts will be made to abolish child marriage in the state,” posted Sarma on X.
While making the claim about child marriages among minorities, Sarma did not cite any data and source of information casting doubts on the veracity of his assertion.
A report published by IndiaSpend, the award winning news website, punches several holes in Sarma’s claim. It states that 84% of the 12 million children married under 10 are Hindus.
“Nearly 12 million Indian children were married before the age of 10 years – 84% of them Hindu and 11% Muslim – reveals an IndiaSpend analysis of recently released census data,” noted the report by Devanik Saha published in 2016.
The report further revealed that 72% of all Hindu girls married before 10 were in rural areas, as compared to 58.5% Muslim girls, with higher levels of education correlating with later marriage.
Girls in the Jain community marry latest (at a median age of 20.8 years), followed by Christians (20.6 years) and Sikhs (19.9 years). Hindu and Muslim women have the lowest median age at first marriage (16.7 years), IndiaSpend reported earlier based on a seven-state report from Nirantar, a Delhi-based advocacy.
The report noted that literacy was the major cause behind child marriage and not religion.
“As many as 5.4 million (44%) married children under 10 were illiterate – 80% of them female – indicating how lower levels of education correlate with early marriage,” said the report.
Chief Minister Sarma has often been accused of spreading lies about Muslim population and their customs. Earlier this week, he claimed that Muslims were 14% of the Assam population in 1951 to show the big increase in the Muslim population in the state. Several leaders, including from Trinamool Congress and AIMIM supremo Asaduddin Owaisi, have relied on government records and data negating the chief minister’s claim.
“In 1951, the Muslim population was 24.68 per cent. He (Himanta) is a liar, and he hates Muslims of Assam. In 1951, there was Assam…Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya were not there,” the AIMIM chief said.
He further said that in 2001, the Muslim population was 30.92 per cent and in the 2011 census, 34.22 per cent. “Due to his lies, the entire administration hates the Muslims,” Owaisi noted.
