Should UK schools teach Indian languages? Are arranged marriages better than love marriages?

The United Kingdom has raised the legal age of marriage to 18 from 16. Why has Britain taken steps to curb child marriage?Are arranged marriages better than love marriages, asks new film directed by Shekhar Kapoor and written by Jemima Goldsmith, Imran Khan’s ex-wifeWhy do members of the Indian diaspora want 10 Indian languages to be taught in British schools?In London Live, the weekly buzz from Britain, from a desi perspectiveIn this episode of London Live, we discuss why the legal age of marriage in England and Wales has been raised to 18 from 16, a new Shekhar Kapoor-directed film promoting arranged marriages, and the Indian diaspora’s call to include 10 Indian languages in England’s school curriculum. UK raises legal age of marriage This came into force on 27 February and it was a bill which had gained royal assent last year. Now it's illegal to get married unless you're 18 or above in England. Anybody getting married under the age of 18 is now being classed as a forced marriage. So, even if there is no coercion involved by the people organising the marriage, it is now coming under the forced marriage legislation. Anybody that causes a child to marry under the age of 18 could now face up to seven years in prison. That includes a non-legal marriage; so, even if it's just a religious ceremony that's still counted as breaking the law. The UN Sustainable Development Goals state that every country who signed up to them should end child marriage by 2030. In Britain, there are issues with forced marriages and child marriages; one charity said it had 49 cases of child marriage last year and the forced marriage unit had 118 cases of child marriages last year. The majority, 47%, of these forced marriages are linked to Pakistan. The next country is Bangladesh, followed by Somalia, Kenya and Iraq. India only makes up 2% of the cases that the forced marriage unit deals with. What’s love got to do with itIt's interesting that while Britain has just bought out this rule that comes down on forced marriages and child marriages, Jemima Goldsmith’s film -- that she wrote -- has just been released in the UK. The film, What's Love Got To Do With It, is about cross cultural relationships and is largely set in Pakistan. The film promotes arranged marriages against love marriages. Jemima herself has said in interviews after this film that she wishes she could have had an arranged marriage. The film explores the problems that young people have with dating apps and trying to find your own partner because it’s becoming more and more difficult because of the way society is heading. The film talks about whether arranged marriage is a better option, and in some respects some western people might be jealous of the arranged marriage system that they don’t have. The film also explores how arranged marriage is often viewed negatively by non-Asian people in the UK because they don't really understand them and they think that’s backward. Call to teach Indian languages in UK schoolsAn event was held last week on International Mother Language Day at the Indian High Commission in London. The Bangladesh high commissioner was also present. Some people from the Indian diaspora, including Harmeet Singh Bhakna, director of the Punjabi Language Awareness Board, UK, presented a letter to the UK Department of Education, addressed to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, requesting that 10 Indian languages be added to the UK national curriculum the local authority-maintained schools have to follow. The languages they chose are the ones that came out as the top 10 in the most recent census as being spoken in English households. Punjabi is first, and then Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Nepali Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu and Marathi. At the moment in most schools in the UK you can only learn French, Spanish or German, and possibly Latin. That's it. There's hardly any other languages on the syllabus. There is the odd exception -- say you go to a real expensive school like Eaton College or Winchester College you can study Mandarin and sometimes Russian or Japanese, but certainly no Indian languages are available at any of these schools. The only exception probably is a school called Saint James Prep School in London which actually teaches Sanskrit to every child in primary school. And its compulsory; it's not optional. The school believes that Sanskrit is the source of all Indo-European languages, has a very clear grammatical structure and is a great way for a child to learn that language and then it will help them learn other languages. (Listen to the podcast to hear the children speaking Sanskrit, and the teacher explaining the rationale).The community members who want 10 Indian languages added to the UK school curriculum said they want these languages taught to every single school in the UK, including parts of the UK where there is not a single Indian ethnic person living; because they think it's important for the future, for this post-Brexit global Britain. They talk about how the UK is doing a trade deal with India, strengthening business ties, working with India in all sorts of areas especially tech. And they say that if you can speak the language of the other person then it really helps in understanding their culture and in business deals. The UK has a terrible reputation for learning foreign languages compared to other countries in the world. What British law says about languages in schoolsThere isn't actually a law that says that you can only teach French, German or Spanish in UK schools. The law actually says that a school has to teach a language to children from the age of 7 to 14 but after 14 it's no longer compulsory. This was a law that was changed when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. So until 2004 children did have to take one model language at the GCSE, the exam schoolchildren in the UK take at age 16. But then Tony Blair changed that and students could drop all languages at the age of 14. Since then the number of children taking modern languages at the GCSE has halved. Host: Sumit BhattacharyaAudio production: Sahil Gupta