There are a hundred different kinds of rituals followed by people in the name of tradition. But the tradition of a woman sleeping with her brother-in-law is something bizarre and the worst.
Kalpana Meena is in her teens but has already been married and has slept with three different men in a span of a few months. And she is not alone.
There are thousands of other women like her in the villages of Alwar, Tonk, Bhilwara and Chittorgarh districts of Rajasthan where a short-lived child marriage is followed by a cynical and emotionally wrenching merry-go-round of relationships which involves money and has a social sanction under the label of nata.
This unique custom, prevalent in areas inhabited mostly by the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, allows a woman to marry another man after her marriage breaks down.
That sounds reformist- except that, in most cases, it’s the husbands who break the marriage and pass on their wives to others in return for money. This money, the “bride price”, they then utilise to “buy” themselves new wives.
While the Government ignores the practice, even fathers at times force their daughters into one marriage after another, making money from each deal, with the protection of the panchayats and the police who get a cut of the bride price.
PNN