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

The Chaudhrys belong to a farming caste from the neighboring state of Rajasthan. Her parents were born in Rajasthan and moved here as a young couple. Like many Indians who migrate to urban areas, the Chaudhrys have retained their ties to their ancestral home as well as to their caste, which includes about 37 families in Himatnagar. By tradition, if not law, these families are answerable to caste panchayats in both Rajasthan and Himatnagar.

Savita Chaudhry's predicament dates to her early childhood, when one of her grandfathers in Rajasthan approached a neighbor and proposed, " 'Let's get your grandson married to my granddaughter,' " she said indignantly. Her grandfather then sealed the bargain by presenting the boy's family with a coconut.

Chaudhry and her parents then traveled to her father's village in Rajasthan, where she was married to 5-year-old Pappu, who uses just one name, in a ceremony performed by a Hindu priest. She was one of 26 children in the village who got married that day in 1985, which coincided with a Hindu festival considered auspicious for weddings. Child marriage is illegal in India but is still widely practiced in Rajasthan and several other states.

In symbolic consummation of the union, the bewildered 3-year-old spent the night at the groom's house, then returned with her parents to Himatnagar. "I don't consider myself married," said Chaudhry, who has no memory of the ceremony. "I was 3 years old. It was more like a game than a marriage."

Nevertheless, the families remained in loose touch; two years ago, Chaudhry decided that she wanted to get to know the man to whom she had been pledged as a child. For the first time in eight years, she said, the couple got together at the home of her uncle in the southern city of Bangalore, where Pappu worked in a sari shop. But the reunion did not go well.

For openers, she recalled, Pappu asked her to borrow $1,825 in rupees from her father on his behalf, then chided her for not covering her hair in his presence. "It made a very bad impression on me," Chaudhry said. "He was okay-looking, to be honest, but his conversation made no sense."

Soon afterward, Chaudhry tore up Pappu's photograph and told her parents she would not go to live with him, a decision they supported. But he and his family insisted that she honor her commitment and move to their village in Rajasthan, members of both families recalled.

Hoping for a peaceful resolution, Chaudhry's parents traveled last December to Rajasthan and offered the family $2,280 in rupees to end the relationship, according to Savita Chaudhry's mother, Patashi.

"It's a custom within our caste," she explained. "If the girl doesn't want to marry the boy, the girl's family pays them off." But Patashi Chaudhry said the man's family refused the offer, insisting on four times the amount offered.

In a telephone interview from Rajasthan, Pappu's mother, Kelki Devi, denied that the family had asked for money. But she acknowledged that they had pressed their "daughter-in-law" to join them in their village, and that they took the matter to the caste panchayat when she refused.

"Finding wives for my three sons wasn't easy," she said. "We didn't want to involve the caste panchayat, but what are we to do?" Pappu, now working in Bombay, could not be reached for comment.

The panchayat in Rajasthan sided with Pappu's family and referred the matter to the caste council in Himatnagar, which last month summoned the young woman's mother to its meeting place at a Hindu temple and threatened her with excommunication.

"These things are not good for the community," explained Lal, 38, the member of the Himatnagar panchayat and a labor foreman. "They have to understand it's not so easy to break off a relationship."

But Savita Chaudhry said she was determined to do just that, having fallen in love with another man. "It's very unfair," she said of the council's threats. "I'm not some cow or goat."

Special correspondent Muneeza Naqvi in New Delhi contributed to this report.