age for marriage in india

vmetalz

Hi,
I got a question about marrying in India and hope someone can help me.
I am 19 with European passport and have been with my fiancee (Indian national) for 5 years.
Though we disagree with the idea of marriage, we realized there is no other way since we can never sleep together in one room and stuff like that. The last few years I have been in India on a student visa and still am.
He is (on passport...) 18 years old.

Now I have read through all the marriage acts and they all emply that the bride has to be 18 and the groom 21!

Now my question: Does this only count for a registered marriage?
We are both Sikhs, say we marry in a Gurudwara but dont register the marraige until he is 21 - is that against the law?
Other possible way would be a hippie marriage but I am not sure whether that will be accepted by his family.

Plase I need help!

Haylo

Yes you can sleep together in one room, and please please do not choose to get married for that reason.

breeze

Legally, your Gurudwara wedding will be void, even if your families accept it.
He has to be atleast 21 for your union to be considered a "marriage" in India.

breeze

Yes, Haylo is right...please think it over...

vmetalz

Haha no you got me wrong... we dont wanna marry for that, we wanna marry to be together forever coz we love each other. Which we would do anyway - even without marriage.
But in India thats just impossible... His family is against that (being together without being married and especially staying in one room!!!) and then one day even I'll run out of visas.
We even have a hard time travelling coz hotels dont wanna give us rooms.
Trust me this will be a marriage out of true love.
The only reason we had decided not to marry before was to go against society... but now exactly that has crossed the line and his family is making a huge thing out of it.

vmetalz

and thanks for the information breeze.

Nick-H

No, you are going to have to either wait or marry in Europe.

vmetalz

hmm so guess I'll wait then... and keep having fights with my father-in-law-to-be...
Marrying in Europe would be an option but I guess then you have to stay there for at least a month. I dont think thats possible for me.

Thank you so much though for your answers. Really helped me.

skk

19, and 18 respectively now and been dating for 5 years ! How truly sweet. Childhood sweethearts can work !

Good luck. I'll refrain from saying anything more.

-skk

rikko

Vmetalz,

You did not mention your family's take on your situation. I assume thay are still in europe and disapprove of what you are doing. I would suggest that age of marriage or finding ways to get married should not be important. Your families views and marriage age restrictions are there for a good reason. Listen to them and wait till you can get married legitimately (in India) with family blessings an important part.

__________________
Amrik

brishti

yup. for once i am saying and thinkings same things as skk

good luck.



:brishti

skk

I've looked for the Indian equivalent of Gretna Green( a place in Scotland where runaway sweethearts from England went to legally marry ); Nepal won't do - can't find out enough about Bhutan.. I can see an obvious scheme - convert to Islam and marry under the Muslim Marriage act - but that's just being creative, not necessarily sensible.

You might want to ask at places like shaadi.com


I'm definitely not encouraging this. Do your own due diligence. My child-hood sweetheart wife and I didn't marry till we were 28 - and we went to different universities and.. I'll leave it there.

-skk

vmetalz

First of all I'm really lucky because my family supports me in whatever I do and decide for. So I don't have to worry about that.
Then I also just researched that it is now possible to live together and have the same rights as a married couple in India.
That would be a great option.
And converting to Islam is no option. Though it is a rather creative idea...

And childhood love haha, that's true... we even started going out the day we met.

So next week we decided to talk about all this to his dad. Let's see what comes out of that.

By the way, actually he is older but unfortunately the wrong birth year is printed in his birth certificate... maybe we'll find a way to get it re-changed.

Becki

I have heard of this age rule. Why is the rule not that BOTH bride and groom has to be 18+ or 21+? Why is it that the legal age for marriage for the girl can be younger?

Nick-H

The thing is, many Indian people have temple marriages and never register them. They are considered, by themselves and their neighbours, married. When it comes to law, for whatever reason, there may be problems. This is especially true of stuff like visas and travel, and is unlikely that a mixed couple are never going to want to travel outside India.

There is nothing that you can do about the Indian law: is marrying in Europe really not an option?

(Of course, when I say there is nothing you can do --- many people, far too many people, just ignore the law. Marriages still happen between children. Really children, not young adults such as yourselves. But again, you can go to some village where nobody takes any notice, but it's only fine until some legal requirement crops up in your life)

Who knows? . Probably some medieval thing about maximising child-bearing years .