T

he marriage of a pregnant 13-year-old village girl to a 39-year-old father of two in Bali has been met with reactions ranging from disgust to thinly veiled approval by the island’s scholars, activists and religious leaders.

According the police, the child bride was still in the fifth grade in Jehem, Bangli, in 2012 when I Wayan Cidra said that he loved her.

Cidra, however, was already married with two sons. His oldest was the same age as the girl.

The girl accepted Cidra’s advances, and told police that she, too, had fallen in love.

When the girl became pregnant, Cidra asked her family to marry the girl. The pair were married on Jan. 23 in a Balinese Hindu ceremony witnessed by the extended families of the girl and Cidra and Jehem customary village chief Made Widana.

The 13-year-old is currently in her third trimester. She is now in the sixth grade.

I Made Titib, rector of the State Hindu Dharma Institute of Denpasar, said he was shocked to hear of the marriage, although he conceded that Hindu scriptures did not state a minimum acceptable age for girls. Titib did note that the Manawa Dharmasastra compendium of Hindu law said boys were considered adults at age of 14.

“However, that’s for a man. I have never encountered a scripture that explicitly states the age at which a girl is considered an adult.”

Titib said that the Manawa Dharmasastra referred to a person’s physical — and not psychological — maturity.

“Just because a boy has the physical stature of an adult, it doesn’t automatically mean that he has the emotional stability, reasoning power or intellectual maturity of an adult. The same can be said about girls.”

Titib said that Hinduism divided life into four stages: brahmacarya (learning), grhasta (family building), wanaprasta (searching for spiritual truth) and sanyasin (renouncing worldly attachments).

“During brahmacarya, a Hindu devotee is prohibited from marrying or partaking in a sexual relationship. Devotee usually complete this stage when they are 18 to 20 years of age — the ideal time for a Hindu devotee to get married and start a family,” Titib said.

He described the case as a wake-up call for the island’s religious and traditional leaders on the need to enlighten the Balinese about drafting a customary law to prevent underage marriage.

“Let us make sure that the girl’s case will be the last time that we see this kind of marriage taking place in Bali,” Titib said.

Contacted separately, Udayana University professor of Bali customary law, I Wayan P Windia, disagreed. He said that the families of the girl and Cidra and the customary village had made the correct decision by allowing the marriage.

“The girl is pregnant. If the family and the customary village didn’t allow them to marry, the whole village would suffer from leteh,” Windia said, referring to spiritual impurity.

“When she delivers the baby, the newborn will shoulder the infamous status of bebinjat [bastard],” he added. “The baby and the mother would be prohibited from entering any place of worship.”

The ritual restored both the village’s spiritual purity and ensured the future status of the girl and her baby, according to Windia, who advised the police and activists to approach the case with caution.

“The marriage may or may not violate a specific national law, but the couple, their families and their village consider it a done deal,” he said. “They all accept it.”

Windia also echoed Titib’s comments, albeit from a different perspective, saying that Balinese customs did not specifically state an ideal marriage age for a girl.

“In the old days, the [marriage] parameter was the girl’s ability to carry stalks of paddy on her head, and if she had the body of an adult, then she would be allowed to get married,” Windia said.

However, women’s rights activist Luh Anggreni rejected Windia’s views, saying that local customs had been used to excuse a hideous act.

“We should focus on the fact that an adult man seduced, sexually abused and impregnated a minor. If we tolerate this, soon pedophiles and rapists will be able to escape punishment simply by getting married to their victims,” she said.

Anggreni and activists from various local NGOs have been invited by the Bangli Police to attend a dialogue on Friday with the girl, Cidra and their families.