Fact-Check: Misleading claim on marriages posted by DMK IT Wing’s Deputy Secretary

On August 22,2021, DMK IT Wing’s Deputy Secretary Isai S D posted a video of a couple getting married on his feed. The caption read “Tamil Nadu is the only state that accepts the Hindu marriages without Brahminical rituals! They can be registered under Self-Respect Marriages (Suyamariyathai) /Reformation Marriages (Seerthirutha) HINDU MARRIAGE (TAMIL NADU AMENDMENT) ACT, 1967”  

Isai has over 73,000 followers on Twitter and is very popular on the application. The video posted by him has 1.8 Lakh views and almost 5,000 likes as well.

Fact-Check:

Upon looking up the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act of the Indian Constitution, we found that Tamil Nadu is not the region allowed to have such a special provision, a similar provision was introduced in Pondicherry in 1971. Loopholes still exist within the Hindu Marriage Act that prevent certain tribals and dalits who identify as Hindu to get married within the Act. The two provisions Suyamariyathai and Seerthiruththa, while not having the traditional requirements for a Hindu marriage still stipulate certain restrictions which are not the same as doing a court marriage. Therefore the claim posted by Isai S D is partially misleading.

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Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

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