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Child
Marriages.
The Law and Justice Commission
of Pakistan seeks the toughening of laws for the
suppression of swara, vani and child marriage
in general. However, is the increase of the period
of imprisonment to six months and the fine to
Rs25,000 the “harsher punishment”
the commission has in mind? Swara is practiced
in NWFP and the Pakhtoon areas of Balochistan.
Vani is another name in Mianwali in Punjab for
the same custom in which young women and female
children no matter how young are “married”
to family members of a murdered man. The village
of Abbakhel in Mianwali district shot to worldwide
notoriety in July 23, almost exactly a month after
the Meerawala gang rape, when a group of young
women and girls including some as young as three
were surrendered by their families for the peaceable
settlement of a vendetta. The nikahs were duly
solemnised by clerics. Government intervention
stopped the crime.
To ensure that swara and
vani disappear over time, they must be really
hit hard now – by the courts, since the
government has failed in the effort — because
the cancer has begun to metastasise to other parts
of the country. For instance, only recently there
was a faux swara in Sindh involving young children.
But to expect that six months’ in jail would
dissuade adults from marrying minors or children
or parents from giving underage daughters in marriage
to adults is to indulge in futile fantasy. Any
effort emanating from this fantasy will be equally
ineffectual. And this Rs25,000: it’s more
than laughable. Of course, deal with swara and
vani, effectively, and you automatically strike
at child marriage, an ancient curse all over Pakistan.
Such tragedies are common in our rural areas,
but there are cases even in cities like Karachi
of an unhappy mother of, say, 14 whose husband
is well into his middle age, if not an old man.
Karo-kari is usually the result of such tragedies.
The fact that Pakistan’s courts have become
active over the past few years for the suppression
of social crimes of this nature is one of the
finest developments in the country’s history.
Let the courts take effective action against swara,
vani and child marriages. But in a way that will
ultimately end the customs, not merely make them
a little harder to practice.
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