anti-caste

TWO CASES SHED LIGHT ON FORCED CHILD MARRIAGE

Two child marriages prevented in Sivaganga (The Hindu)

“Social Defence and Child Welfare Committee officials on Wednesday rescued two prospective child brides, including a 15-year-old Dalit girl, after stopping arrangements being made for their marriages in Sivaganga district. [...]

“At Singampunari near Tirupattur, a 16-year-old Class X dropout was about to be married to Manikandan, a 32-year-old hairdresser on Thursday.

“A 15-year-old Plus One student from T. Pudupatti was scheduled to marry her maternal uncle Sundarapandian (33), working as a bearer in a hotel in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, at Olugamangalam on Friday. [...]

“[The District Probation Officer, Department of Social Defence] said the 16-year-old girl’s stepmother had alleged that the girl was in love with a boy and she wanted to marry her off to a man of their community. [...]

“He said the 15-year-old Dalit girl had scored 450 out of 500 marks in Class X exams and taken up the first group in Plus One. Her father, who was working in Dubai, sent only Rs.6,000 once in three months to the family. Her mother, a construction worker, was finding it difficult to educate her.”

FORCED MARRIAGE TO SETTLE DISPUTES (SWARA) AND OTHER EXTREME FORMS OF WOMEN’S OPPRESSION IN PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Enslaved by tradition (IRIN)

“Despite the placing on Pakistan’s statute books of tougher laws against the practice of ‘swara’ or the ‘giving away’ of a woman to a rival party to settle a dispute, the tradition continues.

“The women’s rights advocacy organization Rahnuma, which guides victims, describes ‘swara’ as a practice “where a girl is given as an offering to `settle’ a conflict or dispute.” The practice is most common in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province (KP) and the southern Punjab, where it is known as ‘vani’, but also takes place in other parts of the country.

“A ‘swara’ exchange can be used to settle murder, adultery (a crime under the law), kidnapping or another offence. [...]

“‘Yes, the laws have helped but “swara,” “vani” and similar practices still go on,’ [activist Samar] Minallah told IRIN. ‘Estimates based on newspaper reports indicate there are hundreds of cases each year. Of course, there are many others which do not get reported,’ she said.

“She also said that tougher laws and arrests made under them had ‘led to people disguising the handing over of a woman or girl. The deal is not announced within the community as a “swara” or “vani” marriage, though within the families concerned it is known that the woman has been given away as “swara” and is treated accordingly,’ Minallah said.

“While ‘swara’ brides are wed to the men they are given to, these men are usually far older than the ‘brides,’ who are often mere children.

“The girls are also usually treated extremely badly or ‘like slaves,” according to Minallah, in the home of their in-laws.

“‘Honour killings’

“Other ‘traditional’ practices also harm women. According to the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRPC), there were 943 ‘honour killings’ in 2011. An ‘honour killing,’ according to HRCP, involves the murder of a woman who is deemed to have let down her family, or ‘dishonoured’ it in some way. This can involve an act such as alleged adultery, a marriage decided on by the woman herself or other trivial matters. Couples choosing to wed by choice frequently end up having to go on the run, as in a recent case reported in the media from Karachi in June this year.

“The kinds of threat women face was illustrated by a recent case from the remote Kohistan District of KP where four women were sentenced to death by a local ‘jirga’ (gathering of tribal elders) after being caught on video clapping as two men unrelated to them danced at a wedding.

“Child marriages

“‘Custom’ or “tradition” also works against women in other ways.

“According to figures presented at a seminar in Karachi by the Family Planning Association of Pakistan, 30 percent of all marriages in the country are child marriages though the law bars the marriage of a girl under 16 or a boy under 18.”

VILLAGE UPHOLDS CHILD MARRIAGE, THREATENING TO EXILE A WOMAN FOR SEEKING TO DISSOLVE A UNION SHE ENTERED AT THE AGE OF NINE

Jodhpur girl approaches court to annul marriage (TNN)

“When Shobha Choudhary, 23, expressed her wish to annul her marriage, which had been solemnized in May 1998 when she was barely 9 years, the caste panchayat threatened to expel her from the village and impose a penalty as high as Rs 9 lakh ($16,830). [...]

“Shobha, a well-educated girl of Rajwa village in Keru (nearly 25 km from Jodhpur) got inspired by Laxmi Sargara, who decided to call off her marriage, fixed in childhood, on Akha Teej, a day infamous for child marriages. [...]

“When asked the reason of annulment, Shobha said ‘The marriage was not my choice. The boy can hardly write his initials whereas I am a graduate, a computer literate working in an institute and am preparing for my B.Ed and RAS examinations.’

“She spent 2-3 days at her in-laws' house after her gauna [consummation ceremony], for which she was forced but she could not stay there and returned to her parents’ place citing the boy’s uncooperative and humiliating behaviour and his illiteracy as the reason. “Now, I am an adult and can take my life’s decisions and find a suitable match for myself,” Shobha said.

“When we tried to contact Shobha's husband, he remained inaccessible. Kriti said that, we also had a joint counselling session with him, but later on he disappeared and is intractable, perhaps on account of pressure from the village panchayat.”

MOVIE SHOWS HIDEOUS OPPRESSION OF WIDOWS

Married to Barbaric Custom (The New York Post)

The Hindi-language film Water by director Deepa Mehta, released this week in New York, exposes the custom of child marriage and the traditional treatment of widows as outcastes. Though it's set during the rise of the Independence struggle in the 1930s, these practices are still prevalent, particularly (but not only) in rural areas--see links below. We don't usually offer links to the right-wing New York Post, but their critical review (see link above) happens to get the politics just about right.

See also:

The film's initial production in India was called off in 2000 in the face of government harrassment and attacks by Hindu-right thugs. It was finally made in Sri Lanka after a long delay. Read this excellent first-person account of the thwarted shoot: The Politics of Deepa Mehta's Water (Bright Lights Film Journal, April 2000).

And see:

Indian widows focus on devotion, fatalism (The Mercury News [San Jose], April 2, 2006)

A Young Woman Says 'No' to Rural India's Child-Marriage Tradition (The Washington Post, September 5, 2005)

India Child-Marriage Laws Ignored (CBS News, May 13, 2005)

Poignant writings on widowhood in Hindu society (The Tribune [Chandigarh, India]), September 29, 2002)

India's neglected widows (BBC, February 2, 2002)

Though Illegal, Child Marriage Is Popular in Part of India (The New York Times, May 11, 1998)

India's widows live out sentence of shame, poverty (CNN, November 6, 1997)

CASTE AND WOMEN'S OPPRESSION

A Young Woman Says 'No' to Rural India's Child-Marriage Tradition (The Washington Post)

"Not only does Chaudhry accuse her would-be in-laws of demanding money in exchange for her freedom, but the leaders of her caste -- a powerful informal council known as a caste panchayat -- have also threatened Chaudhry and her family with the ultimate sanction of excommunication, or ejection from the caste. Such an outcome would rob the family of its social standing and damage the marriage prospects of Chaudhry's 18-year-old brother, among other things."