Child marriage exists in India amid a web of paradoxes, and it is perhaps this very complexity that has allowed the crime to survive and even thrive for centuries. Even as the country has moved onto a war footing to eliminate child marriage by 2030, the journey has remained uphill and deeply challenging. Child marriage is almost akin to an enemy that remains hidden within the very fabric of society, camouflaged by false perceptions, misplaced fears and enduring contradictions.

For instance, while child marriage in India is often explained as a product of rigid traditions and resistance to change, it rises most sharply during moments of change. Periods of climate calamities, family emergencies, economic crises or school closures create uncertainty, and in that uncertainty, early marriage is seen as a coping mechanism. When systems fail and stability collapses, families turn to marriage as the quickest way to restore control, even at the cost of a child’s future.

Moreover, when grassroots organisations and community leaders engage with villagers to explain the consequences of child marriage, they often encounter resistance. “Wouldn’t this help alleviate our poverty?” they ask. “Wouldn’t it mean one less mouth to feed?” families ask. Frontline workers often face such questions, stiff resistance, and often violence when they intervene and try to stop child marriage.

Families marry off their children to reduce immediate financial strain, believing that one less dependent will offer relief. The reality, however, is starkly different. Child marriage may look like a ‘mouth less to feed’ for one and ‘another pair of hands’ for another, in reality, it is only another brick in the wall of poverty. It cuts off education, limits earning potential, increases health and nutrition costs, and deepens long-term dependence that trickles across generations. What is perceived as short-term survival ultimately results in long-term economic collapse, not just for families, but for communities and the nation as a whole.

Another paradox that stares right back at us, and is one of the most alarming ones, is the idea of protection that is often attached to marriage. When a child is married, parents frequently justify the decision in the name of safety. Marriage, they believe, will protect the child from neighbourhood boys, from gossip, from hunger and from poverty. What this logic erases is the reality that marriage does not eliminate danger; it relocates it. In seeking protection, families overlook the certainty of abuse, loss of agency and lifelong trauma that early marriage brings to a child. Statistics and lived realities show that early marriage exposes children to marital rape, domestic violence and repeated pregnancies. The promise of safety collapses within the walls of the very institution meant to provide it. Even the Supreme Court of India, in its 2017 judgment, clearly stated that child marriage amounts to child rape and that this crime cannot be disguised under the garb of marriage.

These paradoxes are among the biggest hurdles in the fight to end child marriage by 2030. They are like hidden enemies that are difficult to locate because they often come disguised as friends and well-wishers. But they are not India’s alone. As per UN data, globally, one in every five girls is married before the age of 18, and an estimated 640 million girls and women alive today were married as children. Every three seconds, a girl is married somewhere in the world.

These numbers from around the world are driven by myriad reasons, ranging from poverty and safety concerns to a distorted understanding of the term ‘age of consent’. While in Africa and Asia, children are married by poor, marginalised families who live under the fallacy that marriage equals protection and a better life, or believe that their religion approves it, adolescents as young as 14 in developed countries are married to much older men because their states allow this crime with little more than the approval of parents or guardians.

If one looks at the larger picture and recent developments, India appears better placed and better armed in this fight. In the last year alone, NGO network Just Rights for Children, with state coordination and the administration’s support, managed to stop almost two lakh child marriages in 2025. This shows a shift. It shows that the enemy is finally being located and targeted.

India has child protection laws that much of the global community still strives to put in place. The country has government commitment as well as judicial backing in this fight. Civil society organisations, communities, village heads and frontline workers at the village level are increasingly on the same page.

But to eliminate this deceitful and tricky enemy, we need to play differently as well. India, the country that once challenged the mightiest British Empire and shook its very presence through the civil disobedience movement, now needs another movement. This time, the movement needs to be one of civil obedience. Obedience to, and understanding of, laws that clearly define child marriage as a crime must become part of everyone’s attitude today.

When Gandhiji’s Salt March began with less than a hundred satyagrahis, no one knew that this act would go on to become a turning point in the country’s freedom struggle. Today, we need more such people who can challenge harmful traditions, abide by the law and shred the paradoxes beneath which child marriage continues to breathe. The rest, as history has shown us always, will follow.

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