Child marriages and betrothals originated in the pre-Mughal era of Indian history as a means of creating a tangible bond between two families. It was practiced by both high and low castes as a means of social interaction. When Indian indentured immigrants began arriving in Trinidad in 1845, this ancient and odd (to Westerners) marriage custom was brought wholesale to the island.
Children as young as five were often engaged, but in Trinidad, the average range of ages appeared to have been 11-15 with a girl of 18 being a veritable old maid. Since there was a scarcity of Indian women in Trinidad, dowries (tilak) were rare. This would be a payment in compensation to the family of the dulaha (groom) by the dulahin's (bride) family. Instead, a bride-price (dahej) was often paid by the dulaha's people in a complete role reversal.
Sometimes the dahej and tilak were nominal and comprised a set of lothar and tharia (brassware) or could be quite lavish and include cattle, land, cash and even jewelry.
The author Charles Kingsley (who was an Anglican cleric) described a child bride in 1870 thus:
"Among them, by the bye, was a little lady who excited my astonishment. She was, I was told, twelve years old. She sat summing away on her slate, bedizened out in gauze petticoat, velvet jacket–between which and the petticoat, of course, the waist showed just as nature had made it–gauze veil, bangles, necklace, nose-jewel; for she was a married woman, and her Papa (husband) wished her to look her best on so important an occasion.
This over-early marriage among the Coolies is a very common evil but one which they have brought with them from their own land. The girls are practically sold by their fathers while yet children, often to wealthy men much older than they. Love is out of the question. But what if the poor child, as she grows up, sees someone, among that overplus of men, to whom she for the first time in her life takes a fancy?
Then comes a scandal; and one which is often ended swiftly enough by the cutlass; wife-murder is but too common among these Hindoos, and they cannot be made to see that it is wrong.
'"I kill my own wife. Why not? I kill no other man's wife,"' was said by as pretty, gentle, graceful a lad of two-and-twenty as one need see; a convict performing, and perfectly, the office of housemaid in a friend's house."
Even though writing with the bias of a European, Kingsley pointed out that marital discord as a result of over-early matrimony often ended in wife-murders, the husband either committing suicide or being executed. Even though Hindu and Muslim marriages were not legally legitimate until the 1940s child marriage persisted. Though no longer frequent, child-brides are still to be found where girls as young as 14 can be wed to an older man with parental consent.