Hitlerian Mindset of Assam CM

Few can match Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarmarsquos delight in inflicting misery on the downtrodden On February 2 he tweeted about his governmentrsquos resolve to ldquoend the menace of child marriagerdquo citing as evidence the 4404 cases the police had registered against those who married women below 18 years old Even men with children and individuals including women who facilitated child marriages Action on the cases will begin on February 3 Sarma saidAs the police began to pick up people Sarma excitedly provided the countmdash1800plus have been arrested his tweet declared on February 3 Next day he tweetedmdash2211 arrested 2528 his February 8 tweet announced 2789 he gushed on February 10 Across Assam women howled fearing a future without their husbandsSarma did not hear their wails Or he did not care as Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay never did during operations to clear out slums or sterilise men during the Emergency Those with a Hitlerian mindset lay down their own rules as has Sarma who decreed that those who married girls below 14 years old would be booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences POCSO Act 2012 and those who wedded girls in the 1418 age group would be punished under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 PCMAPCMA was designed to bring down womenrsquos mortality rate and enhance the possibility of girls acquiring an education Men who marry girls below 18 the age of consent in India or family elders who facilitate their weddings can be punished for a maximum two years under it POCSOrsquos objective was to protect girls from sexual abuse The punishment under this Act can range from seven years to life imprisonment It is relatively more difficult to secure bail under POCSO than PCMAAsk not for the logic behind creating two groups of offenders Whether or not consensual sex with girls below 18 is deemed rape in India Both groups of men are guilty of the same offence yet the severity of punishment meted out to them would vary dramatically Whimsical leaders twisting laws is an aspect of authoritarianismAlso Read Diversity amongst BrahminsConsensual relationships with minor girls have prompted several high courts to take a lenient view of POCSO to provide relief to the men booked under it For instance in Teiborlang Kurkalang vs State of Meghalaya the high court ruled ldquoThough the POCSO Act has been rightly enacted to safeguard children from sexual exploitation buthellipthe rigours of the said Acthellipwould only result in the breakdown of a happy family relationship and the possible consequence of the wife having to take care of a baby with no support physically or financially from her husband who may be languishing in jailrdquoThis is precisely the lament of women whose husbands have been arrested in Assam In the January 2021 case of Vijayalakshmi the Madras High Court said this about POCSO ldquoWhat came to be a law to protect and render justice to victims and survivors of child abuse can become a tool in the hands of certain sections of the society to abuse the process of lawrdquo Think Sarmarsquos AssamAcademic Mary E John in a piece in The Indian Express explored data to try to figure out Sarmarsquos obsession with child marriage Using the National Family Health Surveys she showed that in 200506 in Assam 386 per cent of those between 20 and 24 years were married before they turned 18 This came down to 318 per cent in 201920 still quite high but lower than in states like Bihar West Bengal Andhra Pradesh etc This happened without the state taking draconian measuresShe said statistics by religion ldquomay explain the sudden adoptionrdquo by Sarma of the policy of ldquozero tolerancerdquo towards child marriage ldquoWhile the proportion of underage marriages among Hindus in Assam at 235 per cent is close to the national average 238 per cent the figures for Muslims 458 and Christians 238 per cent are much higher than their respective national averages of 264 per cent and 152 per centrdquo John wrote Poverty and early marriage are linked in India more so in Assam with ldquo42 per cent underage marriages in the poorest 20 per cent poverty classrdquoIt is far easier to imprison people than to improve their economic conditions Sarma has said the crackdown on child marriage will continue until 2026 when the next state Assembly election will be due Inflicting misery on the poor to garner votes of the classes is Sarmarsquos strategyI asked Raijor Dal president and MLA Akhil Gogoi what he thought of the crackdown Since Sarma became chief minister in 2021 Gogoi said 59 lives had been lost in ldquo172 fake encountersrdquo He said the crackdown is yet another method of targeting Muslims in addition to evicting them from their habitats and bulldozing their housesldquoNo thought goes into Sarmarsquos policies He is Assamrsquos version of Mohammad bin Tughlaq he is Adityanath IIrdquo Gogoi said Intellectuals advocating to Sarma that he can achieve his mission of eradicating child marriage by pursuing the prime ministerrsquos policy of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao instead of terrorising the poor are barking up the wrong treeThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper