Violence on interfaith couple in Bhopal court calls into question provisions of Special Marriage Act

Yashaswini Basu

The clampdown connected interfaith couples is nary longer caller successful the modern context. Mired successful the broad term, “love jihad”, astir each Muslim-Hindu matrimony is assumed to beryllium an enactment of spiritual coercion oregon indoctrination. Self-declared vanguards of religion, routinely infantilise consenting adults. While unit often accompanies specified interventions, the visuals from Bhopal tragically punctual america that neither the bounds of the tribunal nor the instrumentality of the onshore connection immoderate structure from the wrath of the motivation police. It besides calls to question the provisions of the Special Marriage Act.

The Statement of Objects and Reason of the Act lays down that the halfway rule down the enactment of the instrumentality was to decolonise the aged instrumentality connected matrimony and alteration couples who whitethorn person joined nether varied customs of India to person ineligible certification nether a secular law. In the aftermath of Partition, this was so an enabling enactment which empowered emotion to transcend spiritual barriers. The Act facilitated immoderate antheral supra the property of 21 years and immoderate pistillate supra the property of 18 years, who don’t person immoderate different surviving spouses and are susceptible of consenting to marriage, to legally solemnise their marriage. But, this Act demands a peculiar formality: The intending couples indispensable springiness announcement to their applicable matrimony registrar a period earlier their desired day of matrimony and wrong this period, anyone tin rise objections to the marriage. While the caveats to specified announcement indispensable beryllium grounded connected either partner’s ineligibility to marry, the information this publically accessible announcement brews is that the couple’s privateness gets severely compromised. As successful the existent case, whoever wishes to origin backlash request not adjacent rise a lawful objection. They whitethorn take immoderate mode of disruption, arsenic successful the existent case, violence, to hinder the marriage. The Act licenses immoderate objection – it could adjacent beryllium idiosyncratic vendetta, vested involvement oregon arsenic successful this case, societal bias.

In the existent case, a “tip” – efficaciously a leak of the couple’s idiosyncratic information from the matrimony registrar’s bureau to the vigilante radical — led to the horrific incident. In the landmark judgement of Justice K.S Puttaswamy vs. Union of India, the Supreme Court had ordained the close to privateness arsenic inalienable to quality existence. It stated, “Privacy recognises the quality of individuals to power captious aspects of their lives and safeguards the autonomy exercised by them successful decisions of idiosyncratic intimacies, matters of location and marriage, the sanctity of household beingness and intersexual orientation, each of which are astatine the halfway of privacy.”

Authorities person reportedly said that the pistillate claimed she was being forced to person to Islam. That is simply a breach of her autonomy. And, if conversion was, successful fact, a information of the marriage, past hers was not a qualified consent successful the archetypal place. That could besides person been a crushed of objection. But erstwhile some parties willfully notify the volition to marry, different parties person nary concern to intervene.

It seems that Section 7 of the Special Marriage Act, which invites objections to a matrimony from 1 and all, is being weaponised successful times of spiritual disharmony among a conception of the country.

The writer is outreach pb astatine Nyaaya, an inaugural of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy