A Young Woman Says 'No' to Rural India's Child-Marriage Tradition

HIMATNAGAR, India -- Like many women in parts of India, Savita Chaudhry was a child bride, married at the age of 3 to a boy two years her senior, then sent home to grow up. In keeping with the customs of their agrarian caste, the two were expected to move in together after reaching adulthood.

No one anticipated that Chaudhry, 22, would decide to challenge the system.

Last year, the willowy young woman with the flashing dark eyes refused the entreaties of her "husband" and his family to join them in their village, several hundred miles from this small city in western India where she runs the family grocery shop. She is paying a steep price.

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.

"If they can't honor the commitment, society will ostracize them," said Bhawar Lal, a member of the council, which claims jurisdiction in the case. "The penalty will be a heavy one. She has to understand that she hasn't even lived with him for one day, and she's complaining about him. It's definitely set a bad example."

The young woman's dilemma shows the enduring power of India's caste system -- the rigid social hierarchy that is integral to the Hindu faith -- even in the face of modernizing forces such as globalization and rapid economic growth. In particular, it underscores the central role of the caste panchayats, which operate in much of rural India as a kind of parallel justice system, especially on family matters such as marriage and inheritance.

Typically composed of five men, these unelected councils have for centuries served as the main arbiters of life in villages across rural India. In the decades since independence from Britain in 1947, the central government has sought to replace them with a more representative system of elected village bodies called gram panchayats . The new system seeks to counter discrimination by reserving some seats for women and other vulnerable groups, such as the casteless Indians known as untouchables.

Combined with urbanization and improved education, such efforts have eroded the standing of traditional councils in some areas and help explain Savita Chaudhry's willingness to challenge an edict that once would have been heeded without question.

Still, breaking the stranglehold of the traditional councils on rural life is no easy task. In part, some experts say, that is because many politicians have come to rely on the councils to deliver blocs of votes at election time. About two-thirds of India's billion-plus people still live in rural villages, where caste loyalties are supreme.

Because of their undemocratic nature, the caste councils tend to be dominated by powerful local interests, such as landlords, and are frequently implicated in incidents of persecution and violence. Penalties are often directed against those who break the rules on marriage, perhaps by eloping with someone from a lower caste. Indian newspapers regularly carry stories of star-crossed "lovebirds" who have been stripped naked, shorn of their hair and sometimes tortured to death on the orders of local caste leaders.

"Everything to do with household and family, all the intra-family disputes, is still very much controlled by the caste panchayats," said Ranjana Kumari, the head of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi, who asserts that women are usually the victims in such cases. "This very undemocratic, very patriarchal and extremely hierarchical system should be abolished."

One of three children, Savita Chaudhry grew up in Himatnagar, a sleepy industrial city of about 100,000 people in the western state of Gujarat, about 300 miles southwest of New Delhi. She studied through the ninth grade, then joined her father in the family's grocery shop, which occupies a front room of their small brick house on a dusty street choked with motor scooters and ambling livestock. She took over the business after her father's death in March.