New Delhi: Sporting a white bindi might make for a style statement but the quirky trend is now being used to speak up against the practice of child marriages.

To mobilise public opinion against child marriages, an NGO yesterday kickstarted a "No Child Brides" campaign here by unveiling an interactive art installation fashioned out of thousands of white bindis.

The artwork comprises a portrait of a 15-year-old girl from Jharkhand, decorated with a total of 39,000 binds - to match the reported number of child marriages taking place daily across the world.
 
"A red bindi worn mostly by married women, connotes love and prosperity and also bindis are believed to protect a woman from anything evil. While coloured bindis have seeped into popular culture but no one wears a white bindi. So we thought of using the white bindi as a symbol of protest against child
marriage," says Prakhar Jain, who conceptualised the project.

Jain, along with friends Sumit and Nikhil, travelled to Jharkhand and Haryana to research and photograph child brides and over a period of six months came up with the installation for Child Survival India, an NGO which works towards reducing child marriages in India.