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| sharing wife |
What is the future of Indian marriage?
"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night.
When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand, sometimes they threw me
out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over me and burned me.” said Munni. When Munni arrived in a small village in UP of
north India as a young bride years ago, little did she know she would be forced
into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had
failed to find wives. "My husband and his parents said “Share bed with his
brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari,
sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in Uttar Pradesh.
Munni managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of
visiting a doctor. Munni has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has
not filed a police complaint either. Such cases are rarely reported to police
because women in these communities are seldom allowed outside the home
unaccompanied. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut
villages of the area. "I've got used to it," she says holding her
third child in her lap. "I miss my freedom."
This practice is gradually becoming acceptable among such
close-knit communities because the victims are afraid of speaking out and the
neighbours unwilling to interfere. Some villagers say the practice of brothers
sharing a wife has benefits, such as the avoidance of division of family land
and other assets amongst heirs. It looks
like the country is going towards matriarchal society. The turn of wheel of time may bring woman
dominant society. For example, 1900s began with privatization which changed to
nationalization and now the theme is again privatization.
Polyandry is not new to India. It is an age old tradition.
Polyandry's roots sink deep into the soil of Buddhist and Hindu culture here. This
tradition comes from the five brothers, Pandavas, of the Indian epic
called the Mahabharata. According to the legend, Pandavas
married one woman called Draupadi. Which means Polyandry. The Jaunsari tribes
in the Himalayas are still following the same
tradition. They claim that Pandavas are their forefathers. They say “we are
following what our ancestors did.” The tribal community is practicing Polyandry many
for generations. A Jaunsari woman can marry many men. Its their part of
life, if a guy marries a woman then she marries his brothers too. Once we
believed that polyandry was limited to jaunsuri community. But now we realized
that it is spreading through out the country insidiously.
Don’t judge the current situation by watching New Delhi where girls
clad in jeans ride motor bikes and women occupy senior positions in
multi-nationals. Just two hours drive from New Delhi, the mud-and-brick villages of
Baghpat appear a world apart. Here, women veil themselves in the presence of
men, are confined to the compounds of their houses as child bearers and home makers,
and are forbidden from venturing out unaccompanied. Village men farm the lush
sugarcane plantations or sit idle on charpoys, or traditional rope beds, under
the shade of trees in white cotton tunics, drinking tea, some smoking hookah
pipes while lamenting the lack of brides for their sons and brothers. The
figures speak. According to India's
2011 census, there are only 858 women to every 1,000 men in Baghpat district,
compared to the national sex ratio of 940.
Decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal
culture has led to a decline in the women population in India, which
has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence
of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers. The practice of female foeticide
has flourished across India because
of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.
A study in the British medical journal Lancet found that 12
million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a
skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with
962 in 1981. This kind of a trend prevails nowhere else in the world. No other
country in the world women is meted with such atrocious treatment. World
economic forum statistics reveal that there is little gender equality in India. India stands
in 217th position in gender equality among 234 countries. Despite laws making
pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census indicated that
efforts to curb female feticide have been futile. Fewer girls were born than
boys and the number of girls under six years old plummeted for the fifth decade
running.
Still traditionalists say that woman is respected in India. Indian
cinema highlights that India is
the country that defines mother and motherhood. Is this the way to respect
women? Leave alone respecting women we are not letting women live.
The terrible impacts of falling numbers of females should be
taken as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a
situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much
worse still leads to secret practices. "In every village, there are at
least a dozen bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three
or four unmarried men in one family. Everything is hush, hush. No one openly
admits it, but we all know what is going on “one daughter-in-law living with
many unwedded brothers.” Some people raise objections to this new culture while
others see polyandry as a way to woman empowerment. As a civilized
society, all over the world divorces and remarriages are acceptable. So
who knows in the future, there are chances of this tradition could be
popular surprise in the evolution of many surprises for humans.
According to Indian historian Sarva Daman Singh, who wrote
the 1988 book “Polyandry in Ancient India.” The husband in polyandry Kaza,
Baldev Nath, 50, said that “everyone is pleased” with their shared-spouse
arrangement, including his older brother and their common wife. Women's
rights activists say breaking down these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a
major challenge. "The real solution is to empower girls and women in every
way possible," says Neelam Singh, head of Vatsalya, an NGO working on
children's and women's issues. "We need to provide them with access to
education, healthcare and opportunities which will help them make decisions for
themselves and stand up to those who seek to abuse or exploit them."
While other women compare polyandry with polygyny( having
many wives at the same time) And question” when a husband can have two or three
wives at the same time why not a wife can have two or three husbands at the
same time. It is accepted and practised in Hindu culture as well as Islamic
culture. Many Hindu gods have more than one wife. Politicians and cine stars
and celebrities have them. They also question the logic of allowing Muslim men
to have more than one spouse while denying the same ‘right’ to women.
Dr. Zakir Naik says polyandry is prohibited in Islam. He explains
“A lot of people, including some Muslims, question let me first state
emphatically, that the foundation of an Islamic society is justice and equity.
Allah has created men and women as equal, but with different capabilities and
different responsibilities.
Men and women are different, physiologically and
psychologically. Their roles and responsibilities are different. Men and women
are equal in Islam, but not identical.
Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verses 22 to 24 gives the list of
women with who you can not marry and it is further mentions in Surah Nisa’
Chapter 4 verse 24 "Also (prohibited are) women already married"
1. If a man has more than one wife, the parents of the children born of such
marriages can easily be identified. The father as well as the mother can easily
be identified. In case of a woman marrying more than one husband, only the
mother of the children born of such marriages will be identified and not the
father
2. Man is more polygamous by nature as compared to a
woman.
3. Biologically, it is easier for a man to perform his duties as a husband
despite having several wives. A woman, in a similar position, having several
husbands, will not find it possible to perform her duties as a wife
Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom, has prohibited
polyandry.
One distinct advantage with polyandry is population control.
Husbands may be two or three but wife is only one to bear children. So the
population control takes place naturally. Apart form population controls the
economic and domestic burdens can be shared. The income of multiple husbands
helps family to tide over financial problems. Often one female will find it
very advantageous to have several males support her in childrearing, whether or
not they have outside sexual interests. Whether or not we care to admit it, a
lot of childrearing and household tasks tend to fall to women still, and this
seems to be a comfortable combination of traditional and disruptively new
problem-solving structure for a nice environment for a household. One should
wait and watch whether or not Polyandry is synonymous with female empowerment.
Who knows what is in store for women as men?
Child sex ratios in Baghpat are even more skewed and on the
decline with 837 girls in 2011 compared to 850 in 2001 -- a trend mirrored
across districts in states such as Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Women from Jharkhand and West
Bengal were paid sums of 15,000 by middle-men and brought
here to wed into a different culture, language and way of life. "It was
hard at first, there was so much to learn and I didn't understand anything. I
thought I was here to play," said Sabita Singh, 25, who was brought from a
village in West Bengal at the age of
14 to marry her husband, 19 years her elder.
Decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal
culture has led to a decline in the women population in India, which has resulted in rising
incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of
"wife-sharing" amongst brothers. The practice of female foeticide has
flourished across India
because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.
A study in the British medical journal Lancet found that 12
million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a
skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with
962 in 1981. This kind of a trend prevails nowhere else in the world. No other
country in the world women is meted with such atrocious treatment. World
economic forum statistics reveal that there is little gender equality in India. India stands in
217th position in gender equality among 234 countries. Despite laws making
pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's
2011 census indicated that efforts to curb female feticide have been futile.
Fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under six years old
plummeted for the fifth decade running.
Still traditionalists say that woman is respected in India. Indian
cinema highlights that India
is the country that defines mother and motherhood. Is this the way to respect
women? Leave alone respecting women we are not letting women live.
The terrible impacts of falling numbers of females should be
taken as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a
situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much
worse still leads to secret practices. "In every village, there are at
least a dozen bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three
or four unmarried men in one family. Everything is hush, hush. No one openly
admits it, but we all know what is going on “one daughter-in-law living with
many unwedded brothers.” Some people raise objections to this new culture while
others see polyandry as a way to woman empowerment. As a civilized society, all over the
world divorces and remarriages are acceptable. So who knows in the future,
there are chances of this tradition could be popular surprise in the
evolution of many surprises for humans.
According to Indian historian Sarva Daman Singh, who wrote
the 1988 book “Polyandry in Ancient India.” The husband in polyandry Kaza,
Baldev Nath, 50, said that “everyone is pleased” with their shared-spouse
arrangement, including his older brother and their common wife. Women's rights activists say breaking down
these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a major challenge. "The real
solution is to empower girls and women in every way possible," says Neelam
Singh, head of Vatsalya, an NGO working on children's and women's issues.
"We need to provide them with access to education, healthcare and opportunities
which will help them make decisions for themselves and stand up to those who
seek to abuse or exploit them."
While other women compare polyandry with polygyny( having
many wives at the same time) And question” when a husband can have two or three
wives at the same time why not a wife can have two or three husbands at the
same time. It is accepted and practised in Hindu culture as well as Islamic
culture. Many Hindu gods have more than one wife. Politicians and cine stars
and celebrities have them. They also question the logic of allowing Muslim men
to have more than one spouse while denying the same ‘right’ to women.
Dr. Zakir Naik says polyandry is prohibited in Islam. He
explains “A lot of people, including some Muslims, question let me first state
emphatically, that the foundation of an Islamic society is justice and equity.
Allah has created men and women as equal, but with different capabilities and
different responsibilities.
Men and women are different, physiologically and
psychologically. Their roles and responsibilities are different. Men and women
are equal in Islam, but not identical.
Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verses 22 to 24 gives the list of
women with who you can not marry and it is further mentions in Surah Nisa’
Chapter 4 verse 24 "Also (prohibited are) women already married"
1. If a man has more than one wife, the parents of the children born of such
marriages can easily be identified. The father as well as the mother can easily
be identified. In case of a woman marrying more than one husband, only the
mother of the children born of such marriages will be identified and not the
father
2. Man is more polygamous by nature as compared to a
woman.
3. Biologically, it is easier for a man to perform his duties as a husband
despite having several wives. A woman, in a similar position, having several
husbands, will not find it possible to perform her duties as a wife
Allah, in His
Infinite Wisdom, has prohibited polyandry.
One distinct advantage with polyandry is population control.
Husbands may be two or three but wife is only one to bear children. So the
population control takes place naturally. Apart form population controls the
economic and domestic burdens can be shared. The income of multiple husbands
helps family to tide over financial problems. Often one female will find it
very advantageous to have several males support her in childrearing, whether or
not they have outside sexual interests. Whether or not we care to admit it, a
lot of childrearing and household tasks tend to fall to women still, and this
seems to be a comfortable combination of traditional and disruptively new
problem-solving structure for a nice environment for a household. One should
wait and watch whether or not Polyandry is synonymous with female empowerment. Who
knows what is in store for women and men?
venkat poolabala
In summer 1992 when he came to 
In summer 1992 when he came to 
