Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to amend­ing the reg­u­la­tions for the Hin­du Mar­riage Act to in­clude a woman’s oc­cu­pa­tion on mar­riage cer­tifi­cates and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed doc­u­ments.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Hin­du Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion, with the sup­port of 15 oth­er Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), held meet­ings over the dis­crim­i­na­tion is­sue with Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal over the past few months.

The most re­cent meet­ing took place yes­ter­day on the eve of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, which is cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly on March 8.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal con­firmed she par­tic­i­pat­ed in fruit­ful talks with the or­gan­i­sa­tion over the is­sue.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued short­ly af­ter, the min­istry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit not­ed that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour had al­ready tak­en steps to con­sid­er the change. It said he re­ferred the is­sue to the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, which is ex­pect­ed to ex­am­ine it and make rec­om­men­da­tions for pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tions.

“The Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has al­so di­rect­ed the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion to ex­am­ine the po­ten­tial for sim­i­lar pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tion for re­form in oth­er sec­tors of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, with a view to rec­om­men­da­tions for greater na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of the rights of women and recog­ni­tion of the val­ue of the core fab­ric of fam­i­ly life, as the piv­otal na­tion­al so­ci­etal in­sti­tu­tion,” it said.

In an in­ter­view at KR Lal­la and Com­pa­ny’s of­fice at St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, Hin­du Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Kam­la Tewarie ex­plained that they had been ad­vo­cat­ing for the change for sev­er­al years be­fore mak­ing re­cent head­way.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion, which was among the NGOs ad­vo­cat­ing for the end of child mar­riages be­fore Par­lia­ment unan­i­mous­ly in­creased the le­gal mar­riage age to 18 in 2017, re­tained at­tor­ney Om Lal­la, af­ter it wrote to for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Ar­mour about the lat­est is­sue and re­ceived no re­sponse.

Ex­press­ing hope that the change would be even­tu­al­ly ap­proved, Tewarie not­ed that it would not di­rect­ly af­fect mem­bers such as her, who were mar­ried decades ago.

“The peo­ple who would ben­e­fit from this the most are the younger gen­er­a­tions, who are in re­la­tion­ships and plan­ning to get mar­ried. It would re­dound to their ben­e­fit,” she said.

Lal­la not­ed that the omis­sion of the oc­cu­pa­tion of the wife did not ap­ply to Chris­t­ian and sec­u­lar mar­riages.

“So, un­like the Chris­t­ian mar­riage cer­tifi­cate which con­tains a pro­vi­sion for a woman to iden­ti­fy her oc­cu­pa­tion, this has been ab­sent. It is one of the un­for­tu­nate relics of colo­nial­ism that has not been ad­dressed for a very long time,” Lal­la said.

Lal­la said while the is­sue may ap­pear mi­nor to some, it high­lights the fact that women were still be­ing law­ful­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.

“Here we are in 2025, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is up­on us and women are still be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in that their oc­cu­pa­tion or the ed­u­ca­tion they have is not al­lowed to be put on their mar­riage cer­tifi­cate,” he said.

“While it may be an omis­sion that could be swept un­der the car­pet, it is un­for­tu­nate and un­fair that this has gone on for so long.”

Lal­la said the change would pro­mote greater equal­i­ty and could be viewed as a step­ping­stone to ad­dress­ing oth­er in­stances of in­equal­i­ty.

“These prob­lems that ex­ist have to be ad­dressed, as it is just the be­gin­ning of oth­er is­sues deal­ing with dis­crim­i­na­tion,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the omis­sion al­so ap­plies to Mus­lim mar­riages but was un­able to con­firm if or­gan­i­sa­tions re­lat­ed to that re­li­gion have raised sim­i­lar is­sues.

Le­gal sources al­so re­vealed the is­sue with the omis­sion of a woman’s pro­fes­sion on Hin­du mar­riage doc­u­ments was raised by the SDMS in le­gal cor­re­spon­dence sent to Al-Rawi in 2022, be­fore he was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in a cab­i­net reshuf­fle.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­neys Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Rhea Khan point­ed out that while the Mar­riage Act re­quires the oc­cu­pa­tions of both par­ties, the Hin­du Mar­riage Act does not con­tain the same re­quire­ment.

In tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Tak­lals­ingh said he was pleased the is­sue did not have to reach to lit­i­ga­tion.

“My client, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), is nev­er shy to lit­i­gate mat­ters on be­half of the cit­i­zens of T&T,” he said.