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2011-10-28 07:51:30
ReutersBy Nita Bhalla | Reuters Thu, Oct 27, 2011
By Nita Bhalla
BAGHPAT, India (TrustLaw) - When Munni arrived in this fertile,
sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did
she imagine 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 I had to share myself with his brothers," said
the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village
community center in Baghpat district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat
me with anything at hand," said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after
three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor.
"Sometimes they threw me out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene
over me and burned me."
Such cases are rarely reported to police because women in these communities are
seldom allowed outside the home unaccompanied, and the crimes carry deep stigma
for the victims. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut
villages of the area.
Munni, who has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has not filed a
police complaint either.
Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal
culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India,
like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human
trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers.
Aid workers say the practice of female feticide has flourished among several
communities across the country because of a traditional preference for sons,
who are seen as old-age security.
"We are already seeing the terrible impacts of falling numbers of females in
some communities," says Bhagyashri Dengle, executive director of children's
charity Plan India.
"We have to take this 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."
SECRET PRACTICES
Just two hours drive from New Delhi, with its gleaming office towers and swanky
malls, where girls clad in jeans ride motor bikes and women occupy senior
positions in multi-nationals, 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 are telling.
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.
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
northern Indian states such as Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and Gujarat in the
west.
"In every village, there are at least five or six bachelors who can't find a
wife. In some, there are up to three or four unmarried men in one family. It's
a serious problem," says Shri Chand, 75, a retired police constable.
"Everything is hush, hush. No one openly admits it, but we all know what is
going on. Some families buy brides from other parts of the country, while
others have one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers."
Women from other regions such as the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal speak
of how their poor families were paid sums of as little as 15,000 rupees ($300)
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.
"I've got used to it," she says holding her third child in her lap. "I miss my
freedom."
Such exploitation of women is illegal in India, but many of these crimes are
gradually becoming acceptable among such close-knit communities because the
victims are afraid to speak out and neighbors 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.
Others add the shortage of women has, in fact, freed some poor families with
daughters from demands for substantial dowries by grooms' families.
Social activists say nothing positive can be derived from the increased
exploitation of women, recounting cases in the area of young school girls being
raped or abducted and auctioned off in public.
UNABATED ABORTIONS
Despite laws making pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census
indicated that efforts to curb female feticide have been futile.
While India's overall female-to-male ratio marginally improved since the last
census in 2001, fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under
six years old plummeted for the fifth decade running.
A May study in the British medical journal Lancet found that up to 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.
Sons, in traditionally male-dominated regions, are viewed as assets --
breadwinners who will take care of the family, continue the family name, and
perform the last rites of the parents, an important ritual in many faiths.
Daughters are seen as a liability, for whom families have to pay substantial
wedding dowries. Protecting their chastity is a major concern as instances of
pre-marital sex are seen to bring shame and dishonor on families.
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 Indian 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." (TrustLaw is a global news service on women's
rights and good governance run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. For more
information see www.trust.org/trustlaw)
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)