Marriage for the Bhils remains a loose arrangement to bring up progeny and there are umpteen pre-marital affairs as boys and girls and later on in life extra-marital affairs as men and women to add spice to their humdrum family life. Indeed as long as people do not get caught in the act every one winks an eye at this side current of free sex that laces Bhili marital life. But once such liaisons become known then Bhili society has to do something about it in order to keep some semblance of order and what they do provides them with great entertainment mostly at the cost of the women involved. Apart from this there are the forcible capture of girls and even married women by boys or men for marriage; cases of rape are rare because there is so much opportunity for free sex. Finally there are the inevitable divorces. All these disputes are traditionally resolved by sitting in panchayats where the main points of concern are the honour of the men and the amount of money that may have been paid as bride price and the rights of the women are given short shrift.
All the parties involved, two in case it is just a matter of resolving the elopement of a couple and three if it is a case of an extra marital affair or the carrying off of a betrothed or married woman or the desertion of one man by a woman for another or vice versa, get together to sort out the matter and normally sit at a distance from each other, communicating through messengers who are called "vatars". This is a safety device to prevent direct confrontation between the opposing parties, which could become murderous considering that often people come armed with bows and arrows and guns to these panchayats. But this means that the vatars have to bear the brunt of the abuses and taunts when they go from one side to the other with proposals for a solution, which are wild to begin with before they reach more realistic levels through bargaining. That is why there is a saying in Bhilali that the behinds of buffaloes and vatars regularly get taken!
The Bhils also have a system of arranged marriages to keep the youth under control and prevent the onset of unbridled sexual and marital anarchy. So though the custom of a girl running away with a boy to get married is quite common and has social sanction, nevertheless in such a case the boy's family has to pay a premium over the prevailing rate of bride price. The bride prices themselves are negotiable and go on increasing with time. In case of extra and pre-marital affairs the boy or man has to pay a fine, which again is negotiable depending on the seriousness of the offence and the prestige of the offended family. So the whole business of settling romantic disputes is an extremely patriarchal and materialistic affair, what with all the people hearing the colourful evidence, the hyperbolic demands for money and the choice gender biased epithets that are traded back and forth and sometimes may require quite a few sittings.
In the modern era the police have stepped in to add their own gruesome colouring to these disputes. According to the provisions of the IPC a boy running away with a girl can be indicted for abduction and rape in case the girl later lodges a complaint to that effect with the police. The Bhil community leaders or dalals have been won over by the police and they have together used this with vengeance to vitiate the atmosphere. So sometimes the girl's family instead of agreeing to settle the dispute in a panchayat listens to the dalals and lodges a complaint with the police. The police then arrest the boy and terrorise the girl into saying that she has been abducted and raped against her consent. Since in India at large the increasing incidence of rape cases has become a cause for serious concern, the courts are extremely strict in these cases and so the boy does not get bail until the case is disposed of. Eventually of course in most cases the girl's and boy's families come to an understanding so the girl and all the other witnesses become hostile and the boy is acquitted and they get married. But in the process the dalals and the police and lawyers earn hefty packets.
To the extent that women who become pregnant due to pre-marital or extra-marital sex and want to get an abortion have to take the permission of the police and pay them a fine to do so! Like in the case of all other reactionary oppressions patriarchal oppression too is ultimately maintained by the police. On one occasion after such a case had reached the police station the aggrieved party who was from a village that had not yet become part of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath came to Khemla for help as the police were demanding an exorbitant sum. Khemla in typical fashion went to the police station and scolded the police and came away warning them to desist from such extortionate practices. The police instead decided to arrest the girl's father and force him to make the girl give a statement that it was Khemla who had seduced her and made her pregnant. Somehow we got to know of this and in the nick of time before the police could get to them we brought the pregnant girl and her father to the SDM in Alirajpur to get their true statements recorded. Khemla almost drowned himself when he jumped into a stream in spate to swim across and get to the village of the girl by a short cut route to pre-empt the police. The last thing that Khemla poor fellow wanted was to be saddled with a false rape case against him!
12 comments:
this narration like many others does prove that men do settle scores with one another making use of their womenfolk or their laws. One hears of this mostly in dowry harassment cases and rape cases. When MP introduced compensation for SC/ST women against filing of rape related FIRs, women had to, apart from going through repeated torture of explaining the violence, had to face the igominy of having to withdraw cases when the men in the family decide to have an out-of-court settlement with her own family members parting with a share leaving the woman to deal with the shame and confusion.
of course the final statement from the police, who are an equal party to the whole deal, is that women abuse legal provisions specially made for them.
the bottomline in most cases is that if laws for the protection of women are indeed implemented it leads to the breakup of marriages and then the women have to live on their own. when there is no economic security this is a difficult proposition for women. our neighbour's daughter who is a dalit is going through a tough time and is separated from her husband who is a perpetual beater of women. luckily she has a job and so can cock a snook at him but it still involves a lot of emotional trouble for her as she has two small girls to bring up now on her own.
so with such cliched argument that women should have 'economic empowerment to deliver her from social oppression', micro-credit programmes, SHGs and what not get initiated. If one were to actually valuate women's work she contributes far more into the economy than her male counterpart whether to the country in the unorganized sector or in the homefront, which unfortunately does not get calculated.
Men who are not gainfully employed have no fear of being thrown out of home or having to look after his children singlehanded. /do they? It is this backing that needs to be challenged, which is patriarchy. With mere economic empowerment as a solution to women's road to independence, we would only be dumping upon her the responsibility of finding her own way out when the world outside is absolutely insensitive to her needs. And patriarchy brings with it a whole package deal of benefits doesn't it? - economic, social and cultural. And it is beneficiaries of the patriarchal society who also end up in prime decisive institutions whether State or Private where, instead of finding opportunties to break the shackles, have only strengthened patriarchal institutions.
In the context of your neighbour,i wonder if she made use of the DV Act. One good thing in the DV Act is that the woman gets the right to residence in the place where she lived with her husband and it clearly states that the aggrieved person shall not be evicted or excluded from shared household....DV Act is weak without this section. Your neighbour should make use of this and feel atleast partially relieved of having to relocate herself and her children.
your point is well taken. gender division of labour is one of the most repugnant aspects of patriarchy and must end and home making must get its due economic recognition so that men also take the responsibility. but that is a much more difficult task than women gaining economic independence. in fact it is doubtful whether in an economic dispensation that is capitalist, women's home making activity will ever be given economic value because it will never enter the market.
as for our neighbour's daughter she was living in rented accommodation with her husband and has now after separation bought a house of her own to stay in. she has got her husband jailed a few times before under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code but that has not had any effect. so now she has decided to sever all relations.
so deepset is patriarchy that men prefer to separate rather than let their wives be on equal terms with them. i know of many men who have done this.
You are right when you say – the market economy ‘will’ not valuate work related to home. I go a step further to say – it is so because market itself is patriarchal. And patriarchy benefits by keeping it so and keep it within the domain of women particularly. But when market finds avenues for capital growth in the strictly identified gender stereotypical work such as cooking, ironing, cleaning, etc. men have found their way into this actually ‘lucrative’ work, while the same in the home front gets a ‘spiritual’ domain of care, affection, love, warmth, etc and therefore not open for monetary valuation.
For that matter, one wonders how marriage which is a very personal, family and community event has actually allowed itself as an institution to be monetized with dowry, bride-price or even meher for that matter, although the interpretations for it could be in favour of women. Well, the fact of the matter is, marriage as an institution is patriarchal. I certainly do not wish to be clubbing all issues related to women only to patriarchy, but when a deeper analysis is done to all those occasions and events that benefits the patriarchs, there is a clear valuation of those in hard currency and related kind.
Further to your neighbour’s daughter’s case, the nature of residence is immaterial, under the DV act the magistrate could impose upon the accused to discharge of rent and other payments depending upon the financial needs and resources of the parties. What about custody of her children? Has she got them, is she fighting for it? In the same breath, it will be interesting to understand custodial rights over children in the customary laws of Bhil adivasis. Perhaps some post on your blog could carry information on this.
not only the market and marriage but every other institution in society is patriarchal. and at the root of this is the concept of private property. it is because of the need to ensure the legitimacy of inheritance of property to men's own male children that the institution of marriage came up and women were subjugated. the market too can function only if property rights are defined properly. bhil society being highly patriarchal has deprived women of all property rights and children too from a broken marriage belong to the husband.
our neighbour's daughter has custody of her daughters and she can if she wants proceed against her husband under the Domestic Violence Act and other statutes. However, as i mentioned earlier she has already taken legal action earlier and it has not yielded any results so she prefers to live her life alone now. In this context one has to consider the concept of masculinity that dominates society. men are constrained by having to look and act masculine and not give in to their women. that is why they will prefer to break up a marriage rather than make compromises for fear of being labelled a petticoat follower. In our housing colony I am generally called a weak man and am the laughing stock of all the women (even the women who work as maids in our house!) because I am my wife's petticoat follower!
if private property is the root cause of patriarchy, then tribal societies should have been saved from the influence of patriarchy, since as a society they are not familiar with private property!....
....as regards petticoat followers, the fact that one is using such a sexist,derisive term, it is clear one is fully aware of an image one is trying to create for whatever benefits that may hold. Everyone has his/her own 'weltanschaung' i guess....to each one's own...
cheers!
if private property is the root cause of patriarchy, then tribal societies should have been saved from the influence of patriarchy, since as a society they are not familiar with private property!....
....as regards petticoat followers, the fact that one is using such a sexist, derisive term, it is clear one is fully aware of an image one is trying to create for whatever benefits that may hold. Everyone has his/her own 'weltanschaung' i guess....to each one's own...
cheers!
it is a common misconception that tribal societies are free from the concept of private property. property rights are less stringently enforced than in other societies but they are still there. and in bhil society with which i am more familiar there is a very well defined right to property and its inheritance is restricted to males with women being excluded. historically the domestication of women, the control of their sexuality and the adverse gender division of labour have all arisen from the need to secure the right to property and ensure its inheritance to males.
i have found most activists deplorably lacking in a sense of humour. the sexist term "petticoat follower" (lahanga pakad in hindi) has not been coined by me but is a term in general usage in society and both men and women use it. in the same way as both men and women use sexist abusive language. i was just mentioning that i am called by this term to try and underline the extent to which both men and women are straight jacketed by the demands of masculinity on men. i have become a laughing stock of both men and women in our housing colony and even among the adivasis with whom i work because of having broken this mould of masculinity.
repeating the age old story our neighbour's daughter has now once again gone back to living with her husband in his rented accommodation. she came and told subhadra that she was scared with the proposition of having to bring up her two small girls all alone for the rest of her life. this was after subhadra had had a long session with both in the middle of the road where they were quarrelling one day over the fact that the man visited the girls in school and upset them no end. man - woman relationships and especially those strait jacketed into marriages are very complex and its not always possible to just get up and go.
your neighbour's daughter's decision is not difficult to fathom - a known enemy is better that the strange world outside. Besides one does not know what calculations are made in retaining a relation - emotional, financial, familial, children. Any decision made by an individual needs respect, I guess, but an assurance from friends and neighbours that they will stand by her even if she were to revisit this decision will go a long way to feel reassured and a window open to walk out if she wants to. I have also known families who after a breakup have come back on a more equal footing - the myth, especially for conventional men, that women cannot walk out of the families is broken and that is good.
I have always found intervention by neighbours, friends(esp. married couple) visiting the woman into her house from time to time builds her confidence and such visits also threaten the man.
I have personally advised most women who come to me to find a better way of life rather than adhering to the notion of marriage, but if they feel they wish to be in that relation, so be it, one must ensure she does not suffer even then.
Of course I do not personally believe that relationships (whether marriage or any other) need to be retained through threat or fear, but since marriages in our country are treated as entering into a contract for man and woman to fulfil one's duty in procreation and safeguarding the social unit, then perhaps norms need to be set in and space negotiated. I am all for the abolition of the institution of marriage..........
if there is a good communitarian and egalitarian alternative then there might not be need for the institution of marriage. after all marriage is concerned with bringing up children and securing property. in today's cutthroat commercial world we often find ourselves lonely. especially when there is a child to look after. its difficult not to think about the child's future and so provide some kind of a stable environment through marriage.
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