Nava Thakuria
Assam in northeast India sets to ban the practice of polygamy. The upcoming State assembly session in February 2024 will witness a concerned bill to be tabled by the Bhartiya Janata Party led government in Dispur. After a series of consultations with a number of learned individuals and pro-active organisations, the bill has been developed. According to State chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the bill will surely be placed on the floor of assembly as the session will begin on 4 February.
In fact, when the nation was debating on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) a few months back, CM Sarma planned to go ahead with a law banning polygamy. The saffron leader stated that the government preferred to ban polygamy (bigamy) as early as possible, so that a man irrespective of his religion can be stopped from marrying more than one spouse at the same time. The polygamy incidents are high in number across Assam’s Barak valley. However, some areas in Brahmaputra valley also report regularly on incidents related to polygamy.
Among the mainstream Assamese families, prevalence of polygamy is almost zero, whereas it’s reported low among educated indigenous Muslim families in the State. Aiming to ban polygamy, which is considered as an important component of the UCC, Sarma formed a committee to examine whether the State legislature has the authority to ban the practice. Accordingly, the committee engaged in extensive discussions with various stakeholders before arriving at a logical conclusion, where it opined in affirmative to the authority of assembly.
Men having multiple wives (but never happen otherwise) was a common practice in ancient India. The Special Marriage Act 1954 and the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 outlawed the practice of polygamy among the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. However, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act 1937 allows a Muslim man to marry up to four women at a time. Even the conversion to Islam (from other religions) permitted a man to have more than one wife. However, the Supreme Court of India in 1995 declared this kind of religious conversion as unconstitutional.
Months back, Assam government cracked down on child marriages across the State and thousands of individuals were arrested. It also came to the notice that many elderly men married young girls taking advantage of their economic status. Sarma asserted that the drive will continue as the centuries old practice adversely impacts on the mother & infant’s health. The government will punish all perpetrators of child marriages as well as polygamy practitioners, asserted the hardliner government chief.
It’s understood that banning polygamy will be an important initiative to end the menace of child marriages. Now it’s time for the people irrespective of their caste, religion or party affiliations to come forward supporting the move. Without looking for political mileage, the opposition leaders should pursue with the Muslim leaders to join in the initiative. Need not to repeat that the banning of polygamy will help the women in particular and the larger society in general and it should be allowed to happen without much hindrance.
