Late marriages to infertility:  Clergy to launch awareness campaign, deliver Friday sermons on social issues in Kashmir

Srinagar:  Seemingly alarmed by the drop in fertility rate, Kashmiri clerics have decided to launch major awareness programme and deliver sermons on late marriages during Friday Namaz.

The clerics associated with the Mutahida Majlis-e-Ulema J&K (MMU), an amalgam of several religious organisations, will be meeting soon to chalk out a plan so that the issue and late marriages figures prominently during the Friday sermons.

“Late marriages have become common in Kashmir. Unfortunately, we come across a large number of unmarried men and women in their late thirties and even in their forties. Today we briefly discussed the issue and we are having a detailed meeting of religious heads on this issue soon. Later, we plan to have detailed Friday sermons on the topic in light of the Quran and Sunnah,” MMU secretary Maulana Syed Rehman Shams told The Kashmir Monitor.

He said the religious heads in Kashmir had dedicated Friday sermons to other issues like drug menace facing society in the past as well.

“In the past, our Friday sermons have talked about issues like drug menace facing society. We have also urged people to follow Covid safety protocols. Now, late marriages in Kashmir, which is counted among the leading cause of infertility, too has become a serious issue of late,” said the MMU secretary.

Pertinently, the National Family Health Survey data for 2019-21 revealed that Jammu and Kashmir had the lowest Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the country at 1.4. In 1991, the TFR in Jammu and Kashmir was 3.6. It later declined to 2.3 in 2007 and now it has started to ring alarm bells in the society.

Experts have blamed late marriages and lifestyle causes like age, stress, obesity to biological reasons like ovulation issues, hormonal imbalances or endometriosis for the low fertility rate in Jammu.

And with Kashmir seeing a growing trend of late marriages, experts have also stated that a woman’s ability to conceive starts reducing after 35 years of age.