An 89-year-old legislation that allowed minorities to marry underage Muslims was repealed in the Indian state of Assam. Leaders of the minority communities opposed the move, seeing it as an attempt to divide votes along religious lines ahead of elections.
Assam, the state in India with the largest percentage of Muslims (34%), has stated that it would like to follow Uttarakhand’s lead and enact unified civil laws pertaining to marriage, divorce, adoption, and inheritance.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam said “As of February 24, the Assam Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act, 1935, was repealed.”
“This act contained provisions that allowed marriage registration even in cases where the bride and groom were not of legal age (18 and 21),” he stated. This action is a crucial step closer to Assam’s ban on child marriages.
A Uniform Civil Code is something that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has promised, but Muslims across the country are against it.
Sarma did, however, make it clear that Assam would delay implementing a Uniform Civil Code until after the forthcoming general elections, which are scheduled for May.
In Assam, where many Muslims can trace their ancestry to Bangladesh, tensions between Muslims and the primarily Hindu ethnic Assamese people frequently surface. The BJP, which is in charge of Uttarakhand and Assam, describes itself as an ally of ethnic communities.