RAJASTHAN : Saving a child’s future is her priority, says 28-year-old Sonu Kanwar of Bhanwta village in Pisangan Panchayat Samiti of Rajasthan’s Ajmer district.
For the past six years, she has been working tirelessly to prevent child marriages in her village and in around 17 neighbouring ones. Wonder why? Because she knows the pain of having your childhood snatched away from you.
“My childhood ended when I was married off at the age of 12 years. And I became a mother to twin girls when I was myself a child, just 16,” an emotional Sonu reveals, musing, “The burden of marriage and motherhood at such a young age shattered my own dreams.”
Opening up about her challenges, she explains, “I faced the worst consequence of child marriage. Being a mother of two at just 16 years of age, I couldn’t understand anything. I would cry constantly. I used to be sleepless and burdened with household chores. It felt like my life was over, as I couldn’t pursue studies beyond the twelfth standard.”
Reflecting on the orthodox tradition, Sonu rues, “It’s unfair how society expects a minor girl to play the role of a daughter-in-law. We need to stop following such traditions blindly,” Sonu says.
But instead of giving up, she decided to transform her pain into purpose. Wherever she learns about plans to marry off children, she rushes to alert the authorities concerned. In Dodiana village, she once chased a bus carrying a child groom for nearly 50 kilometres. In another instance at Nadi, she stopped eight marriages despite receiving death threats.
Her efforts to save minors from the clutches of child marriage have earned her a not-so-flattering moniker— ‘Shaadi rukvaane waali madam’ (the woman who thwarts marriages). Despite all the threats and taunts, Sonu remains undeterred. She joined an NGO called the Rajasthan Mahila Kalyan Mandal in 2021. Out of 16 social workers, she was the only one to achieve the target of preventing five child marriages. As part of her role, she went from one village to another, spreading awareness about the harms of the practice. For her, the fight will not end until the “biggest social evil in rural India” becomes a thing of the past.
