On a hot summer night, Nisha Vaishnav, then 14, was training football with her sister Munna, 18, when the two noticed five adults photographing them.
Nisha soon discovered the reason for the interest: they were all from the same family and included a couple looking for a wife for their son.
Nisha’s mother, who was also there, was in favor of the possibility of marriage.
The group headed to the Vaishnav family home, in the village of Padampura, in the state of Rajasthan, in northwest India.
“My mother asked me to touch their feet as a sign of respect,” says Nisha. “I refused.”
‘Village women pointed at us’
Although the law prohibits the marriage of girls under 18 and boys under 21 in India, child marriage is still common in practice.
Around 25% of women living in India were married before the legal age, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Still, the proportion of child marriages has fallen significantly over the past 30 years.
In 1992-93, about 66% of women in India were married before turning 18, according to the government-run National Family Health Survey.
In Rajasthan, where Nisha lives, child marriage rates exceed the national average, and girls rarely feel able to refuse proposals or defy their parents’ wishes.
However, Nisha developed the confidence to assert herself after discovering football — a sport to which she attributes the change in her life.
She was introduced to the game in 2022 by Munna, who had discovered the sport a year earlier through Football for Freedom, part of a statewide nonprofit organization aimed at improving girls’ lives through sport.
Munna was the project’s main advocate in her village, leading the fight for permission to travel to tournaments and wear shorts on the field instead of long tunics and baggy pants — a significant step in a community where married women cover their faces in the presence of men in public.
“For the first two or three days, women in the village would point at us and say, ‘Look at those girls showing their legs,'” says Munna.
“We ignored them, decided we didn’t care, and continued wearing shorts.”
Nisha quickly excelled in the sport and became a member of the Rajasthan state team for the 2024 National Football Championship.
She also cut her hair short, in a gesture of defiance in a village where girls are expected to wear their hair long.
When the marriage proposal came from the family watching her at football training, Nisha resisted.
She made it clear that she was too young to get married and that she wanted to continue pursuing her football dreams.
About a month later, that family withdrew the proposal.
In 2025, Nisha and Munna also rejected a joint marriage proposal made by another family, which involved the two of them and their younger brother.
The sisters are firmly opposed to child marriage and want to focus on careers in sport.
When their father asked Nisha if there was a boyfriend waiting for her at soccer practice, she says she replied, “There is no boyfriend. I’m going to play soccer, that’s my love.”
Finding a job through football
Girls who marry in childhood face a greater risk of sexual coercion, early pregnancy, malnutrition and health problems, according to several studies.
They also tend to leave school early, which reduces their chances of improving their living conditions.
Padma Joshi, from Football for Freedom, an initiative linked to the women’s rights organization Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti, says she wants to make families aware of these risks.
She says Football for Freedom has trained around 800 girls across 13 villages in Rajasthan since its inception in 2016.
“When we started talking to parents, we never said we were introducing football to stop child marriage,” says Joshi.
But, “when we work with girls and they learn about their rights and the harmful effects of child marriage”, they are able to take a stand, she adds.
Joshi also points out to parents that excelling in football can, in the future, help girls get a job, as Indian states reserve some public sector positions for athletes.
Poverty, in addition to tradition, is among the reasons why families in India continue to marry off their daughters, often seen as a financial burden.
Sometimes the marriages are with young men of similar age; in other cases, with adult men.
In general, girls start living with their husbands soon after marriage, no longer being the financial responsibility of their own families.
Nisha and Munna have an older sister who got married in 2020 at the age of 16, and their mother Laali was also engaged as a child.
Defending her decisions, Laali says, “I worry about my daughters. Villagers say that if girls leave home, they are exposed to bad influences and may run away with boys, so we have to marry them off early.”
When asked if she knew that getting her eldest daughter married at 16 was illegal, she nods and explains that no one gets caught: “We do everything in silence, we don’t print wedding invitations, we don’t decorate the house or set up a tent.”
The law, however, is clear: facilitating child marriage is a crime.
Adults who perform the ceremonies, as well as parents or guardians who authorize child marriage or neglect to interrupt it, can be sentenced to up to two years in prison and a fine of 100,000 rupees (around R$5,760).
However, Anjali Sharma, chairperson of the child welfare committee in the city of Ajmer in Rajasthan, says that in practice it is difficult to obtain convictions because witnesses are rarely willing to provide evidence to authorities.
“If families find out that we know [sobre um casamento infantil]they change the date before or after what we expected”, says Sharma, explaining that entire villages collaborate to hide the weddings.
If the bride or groom reports it to the police, a marriage involving a minor can be annulled, but it is difficult for them to file a complaint against their own parents, as they know it could result in a fine or imprisonment.
If child marriage is not reported, it can later be registered when the man and woman reach legal age, and no one will be prosecuted.
The number of child marriage cases reported across India has been gradually increasing as awareness and enforcement improve.
1,050 cases were registered in 2021, compared to 395 in 2017, according to the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
Still, that total represents a tiny fraction of the roughly 1.5 million girls under 18 who get married each year in India, according to Unicef.
Nisha, now 15 and still at school, hopes to one day play for the Indian national team.
If she doesn’t make the cut, getting a government job will allow her to achieve financial independence and freedom.
To qualify for one of the spots reserved for athletes, she must continue competing at the state level or higher until she completes university.
Munna, now 19, managed to escape child marriage, but the possibility of an arranged marriage remains.
His elder sister’s in-laws continue to push for an arranged marriage between their son and Munna.
She resists the proposal.
Munna hasn’t reached the same level in football as Nisha, but she helps coach girls in the Football for Freedom project and is pursuing a degree at university.
She hopes to become a physical education teacher at a school, a role that would guarantee her financial independence and freedom to make her own decisions.
Meanwhile, he advises the girls he trains not to accept child marriage.
“Whether I can stop their marriage or not, I want to help them become someone in life, to make their dreams come true.”
