Share wife save land
Ramesh Vinayak | Kinnaur, May 15, 2008 | 20:13
Ranjit Singh, 33, and Chander Prakash, 30, are brothers who live in Sangla Valley in Himachal Pradesh. They share a close bond but that’s not the only thing: they also share a wife.
As do other members of their family and other locals in this picture-postcard beautiful apple-growing area, some 200-km from Shimla in the mountainous Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. Sangla is a favourite destination for honeymooning couples who find inspiration from the romantic surroundings— but even more from the local women.
Sunita Devi, 28, is the petite woman Ranjit and Chander are both married to and five years after she plunged into polyandry—illegal as per law—she is the picture of wedded bliss.
“I am lucky to have the affection of two husbands,” says the mother of two daughters, shyly glancing at her spouses. They live in Boning Saring, a quaint cluster of dwellings amidst apple orchards on the edge of river Baspa.
Outsiders may feel uncomfortable coming face to face with a custom that is not just outlawed but seems out of place in the 21st century but Ranjit, a part-time postman, and Chander, who runs a grocery shop, do not feel uncomfortable about sharing a wife.
Nor, in fact, do the 15-odd other families in the hamlet who actually take pride in upholding the ancestral custom. Their elder brothers—Amarjit Singh and Sovan Singh—both have a common wife.
Brothers Ranjit Singh (Left), Chander Prakash (Right) with their wife Sunita Devi and childrenIn fact, all four siblings had a single mother and two fathers.
They are emblematic of the polyandrous tradition still in vogue in the tribal territory of Kinnaur.
Though steeped in antiquity and local mythology profoundly imbued with the Mahabharata legend of five Pandava brothers sharing wife Draupadi, brothers married to one woman is seen as the best way to prevent division of ancestral agricultural lands.
Though there are no cases of female foeticide, the district has a skewed sex ratio, with 857 girls for every 1,000 boys—another factor favouring polyandry. It has also been a socially-mandated tribal practice to facilitate economic sustenance.
Take, for instance, the case of Tashi Tsering, 65, and Namgayal Tsering, 62, the ironsmith brothers in Katgaon hamlet in the Bhaba Valley, who have been sharing a wife in 60-year-old Karam Dasi for the past three decades.
With four common offspring, they eke out their living mainly from the four bighas of land they had inherited. “Had we married separately, our family would have spread but the land would have shrunk. Having a common wife has saved us from penury,” says Namgayal.
If economic sustenance was the raison d’être for siblings sharing a wife in the past, the practice has meant a big economic spin-off for many.
Half a century into sharing his wife, Ram Bhagati, 59, with his brother Himmat Singh, 55, Lakshman Singh Negi, 70, waxes eloquent on the virtues of polyandry.
The two brothers, who had inherited 25 bighas of ancestral land in Kuppa village in Sangla Valley, are today a picture of prosperity, owning 80 bighas of apple orchards, a string of properties and a flourishing fruit trading business in Chandigarh.
All their eight children—four sons and four daughters—are well-placed in government jobs and private enterprises. “The common marriage has kept our family together and multiplied our fortune,” says portly Negi, supervising the construction of his latest venture, a hotel near Sangla.
Brothers Namgayal Tsering (Left) and Tashi Tsering (Right) with their wife Karam DasiThe extreme form of fraternal polyandry in which four to five siblings have a common wife is now mainly confined to the remote interiors of Pooh and Yangthang areas of upper Kinnaur, but elsewhere the practice has evolved into a more practical equation of two brothers sharing a spouse.
Rattan Singh, 43, a boxing coach with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and his brother Jogdayal, 41, entered into wedlock with Sumriti Devi in 1989. While Rattan, a graduate, has taken upon himself the responsibility of the education of their four common children, Jogdayal looks after the family orchard back home in Kafnu village.
“Common marriages involve a division of love and labour,” says Rattan. Sumriti, 37, takes pride in observing karva chauth fast for her two spouses. “It takes a lot of mutual understanding and sacrifice,” she adds.
The polyandrous wedlock has its own codes of privacy. For instance, the male sibling’s Kinnauri cap hung outside the bedroom door is a sign that he is having sex with the common wife, which other siblings respect.
Barring denial of the right of inheritance, the Kinnauri women have traditionally enjoyed cultural freedom in the matter of choosing life partner or partners. “The girl’s consent is a paramount prerequisite for a common marriage,” says Ranchan Devi, up-pradhan of Katgaon.
That is also reflected in the age-old practice of Daroch Phimu, in which an adult boy takes away an adult girl of his liking from the village fair or public place.
The runaway couple consummate their relationship before the male’s relatives make a formal proposal of marriage to the girl’s parents by presenting a bottle of local brew Fasur in a ceremony called botal pooja.
Once the girl’s family agrees, which it invariably does, the formal marriage is solemnised. A boy refusing to marry the runaway girl invites the wrath of the panchayat which imposes a fine on the boy’s family depending upon its social status.
Higher the status, more the fine, in a practice called izzat wapsi karna. In many cases, the runaway couple graduate into a polyandrous relationship by roping in one or more brothers of the spouse.
Exemplifying the trend is the case of Sunita Devi, who was 17 years old when she was taken away by Kirpa Ram from a fair in Kamru village in 1990. Later, she tied the nuptial knot with both Kirpa Ram and his younger brother Amar Singh.
Native of Katgaon, the trio now has four children that has prevented the fragmentation of their meagre land. “It’s a tough job to keep two husbands happy but I have learnt the trick with time,” she says, with an impish glint in her eyes, serving home-made brew rak to her spouses after their day-long toil as orchard workers.
Times, however, are changing and so are traditional practices. Says Ranchan Devi: “Outside culture has invaded Kinnaur, leading to more single spouse weddings”.
The outside culture has come with the advent of tourism and growing prosperity and education. “The educated Kinnauri youth look down upon polyandry as an uncivilised practice and prefer monogamous marriages,” says Digvijay Singh, a 36-year old post-graduate and up-pradhan of village Kafnu.
“Not more than 20 per cent of marriages nowadays are polyandrous,” says Chandermani Negi, the cell-phone flaunting woman activist and chairperson, Zila Parishad, Kinnaur, who had three fathers-in-law.
“Modernisation has ushered individualism into our tribal society and weakened its conservative cultural moorings.” While the female literacy rate in Kinnaur has almost doubled since the 1991 census figure of 42 per cent, a more defining change has been in terms of prosperity levels, largely due to an apple-powered economy pegged at Rs 100 crore a year.
Apart from flourishing tourism, the area has also reaped the benefits of the Scheduled Tribe status, sending a substantial number of its educated youth to the Central and state services. No wonder Kinnaur, with a population of 78,000, now has the highest per capita income among the 12 districts of the state.
{mosimage}The new socio-economic reality has also exposed the perils of polyandry which is now leading to family discords and legal disputes also over inheritance.
The genesis of such cases lies in the breakdown of common marriage when a spouse, who prospers or gets educated and a job outside Kinnaur, walks out of a polyandrous relationship and remarries, disowning the common wife as well as the offspring. In such cases, the deserted woman has little option but to approach the village deity.
There have been cases where Kinnauri men, who had polyandrous marriage before they got selected for the elite civil services like IAS and IPS, snapped conjugal ties with the common wife and got re-married to suit their new-found status.
Even more complicated is the legal wrangling over inheritance of moveable and immoveable property among the male progeny of common marriages.
“As the names of the fathers of legal heirs in common marriages recorded in revenue records are at variance with the ones mentioned in panchayat records, legal conundrums occur on their paternity,” says P.S. Dulta, tehsildar at Sangla.
In the last five years, more than 600 cases questioning the paternity of the offspring of common marriages have appeared in local courts. And, their number is on the rise, according to local revenue officials.
There is a growing demand that the government clearly define and document common marriages to preserve the sanctity of the tribal custom.
Clearly, with the economic changes sweeping the tribal region of Himachal, the conflict between tribal laws and constitutional law is becoming more glaring than ever before and could well sound the death knell for polyandry which has little relevance or legality in today’s reality.
Share wife save land : Media: News India Today
sir its more people than living in many countries
