This article is from WeChat official account:Partial observation (ID: jubuguancha)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: theatrical actress, title figure from: vision China
1. Every year, thousands of Indian men are brutally “robbed of relatives”
Lack of a groom? Go to the street and grab one back!
This is not a joke. In places like Bihar in northern India, “grabbing relatives” has been a bad habit for many years-it’s just that the bridegroom is robbed here, not the bride.
This is an ordinary weekend. The 22-year-old Kumar (Rajiv Kumar) walked on the country road as usual without paying attention The van by your side. Suddenly, the door of the car opened, and several big men rushed out of it, and without a word, they dragged Kumar into the car.
What Kumar didn’t know was that the nightmare had just begun.
He was taken to a temple, and a strange girl who had never met before was waiting for him in a bridal costume. The big guys who kidnapped Kumar beat him while dragging him out of the car and changing him into a groom’s costume.
“They pointed their guns at me and I stillIs there a choice? “Speaking of what happened to him at the time, Kumar wept bitterly. After the ceremony, Kumar was roughly pushed into the girl’s room and the door was locked.
Kumar is not the only victim of “grabbing”. In recent years, the number of men kidnapped and forced into marriage in rural India has been increasing.
In Bihar alone, more than 3,400 men were victimized in 2017. Locally, this kind of groom-abduction marriage has a special name called Pakadwa Vivah. In rural India, an average of 9 men are robbed of grooms every day.
▲The Indian movie Antardwand tells the story of a man being kidnapped to be a groom
In this kind of marriage accompanied by violence, crying, and physical conflict, men will fight to the death at the beginning, but the “mother-in-law” family beats and intimidates them while doing their best to comfort them. They put on him a “laurel wreath” symbolizing acceptance by the family, and then dragged on day by day until the woman gave birth to a child, cooked rice and cooked rice.
Many grooms have been like this among the many “grabbing” families visited by the BBC. In the hopeless struggle and waiting year after year, in the tears of humiliation and the inexplicable bewilderment of a wife, they accept A finished marriage.
▲”The Times of India” comic “Marriage at gunpoint”
In Bihar and other places, “grabbing relatives” has become a custom. If a family snatches a man to marry, everyone in the village will come to help them. If the police come, people from a village will go up and fight the police. This also makes the police fear the rescue of the “groom”, and only men with good luck will be rescued.
Raje(Rajesh Choudhary) is one of them.
When the police rushed in, the bride’s family and villagers rushed forward and fought with the police, and dozens of people scuffled together. Although Raj was able to escape from the clutches in the end, it was a pity that the wedding had already taken place and Raj became a “married person”-usually, the bride’s family would record the wedding as evidence.
The fact of “married” will make Raj’s subsequent marriage very difficult. After all, girls are unwilling to marry a married man, even if he is forced.
2. “The cost of grabbing a groom is much lower than paying the dowry”
India Today believes thatThe evil custom of “grabbing relatives” is related to India’s dowry tradition-It is precisely because they cannot afford the sky-high price of dowry that the families of Indian girls embark on the path of no return.
How high is the dowry in India?
The “New York Times” once reported the scene of an Indian girl’s wedding:
When the relatives and friends gathered, the bride’s father took out a huge iron plate. In the iron pan, 10 rupees and 50 rupees banknotes piled up into a hill.
The prospective father-in-law solemnly handed the dowry of 51,000 rupees(contract RMB 4,76.15) to the groom. In addition, newly purchased TV sets, sofas, kitchen utensils and jewelry are also displayed on the scene, so that every guest can know how rich the bride’s dowry is.
Unfortunately, for the 18-year-old bride Kamlesh, this dowry still did not meet the requirements of the man’s family.
In rural areas of India, the average monthly income of non-agricultural households is Rs 8,059(contract RMB 754.7), therefore, Kamlesh’s dowry It is equivalent to the income of a family for more than half a year, which does not include televisions, jewelry and other properties. For a large number of poor families, this may be equivalent to several years of income.
In India, the amount of dowry directly determines the bride’s future status in the in-laws. Violent crimes caused by too little dowry are very common, ranging from verbal violence to endangering personal safety. A bride was burned alive because her husband’s family was dissatisfied with her dowry.
Although India has introduced some laws that claim that it is illegal for a man to take a dowry, it cannot change this deep-rooted bad habit. In recent years, the “market price” of Indian dowry has increased, which has also led to more families reluctant to have daughters.
The book “The Essence of Poverty” mentioned a peddling clinic in rural India. It advertised-“Now it costs 500 rubles to get a baby, and I can save you 50,000 rubles in the future.”.
▲Indian women protest the dowry system-in India, every hour women are murdered for dowry
In “grabbing” marriages, generally speaking, in the end, the man’s family also has to accept the fact that the son “gets married”, and they will ask the woman to pay the dowry. But in this case, the woman becomes passive and has the right to speak. Usually, she only needs to pay a dowry of 1/4 of the market.
It is worth mentioning that the “quality” of the kidnapped men is quite high, and many of them are college students. Many victims stated that they were kidnapped on the way from school. _A policeman in Bihar was tied up to be a groom. However, after knowing his identity as a police officer, the gang released him because he was worried that his colleagues would come to make trouble in full force.
3. Bride: “My married life is like a funeral”
Although it seems to have taken advantage of it, the bride who has experienced the “marriage grabbing” is actually not happy.
The wedding was supposed to be one of the most anticipated moments in a girl’s life, but when she put on her wedding gown, it was Anita (Anita Singh) The darkest moment in life.
What’s worse than just meeting is that she has to entrust this person for life to resist fiercely until the moment she enters the bridal chamber, what she sees is the cold face that is far away. .
In the beginning, Anita believed that her virtuousness and warmth would always impress her husband. But for four years, she has been guarding her widowhood. When she finally followed her husband to her husband’s house, she found that everyone looked down on her and no one paid attention to her.
“I am married, but every day after marriage, I feel like living in a funeral.” Anita couldn’t hide her heartache. She began to wonder whether the marriage arranged by her natal family was correct?
Although there are rare cases where love occurs between the groom and the bride, on the whole, “grabbing” marriages are unhappy. Not only because of this violent form of marriage, but also because of the huge gap in education and family background between the man and the woman.
As a former victim, Raj said:
And his last sentence also expressed the aspirations of all the men who were victimized by “marriage robbing”:
In order to avoid misfortune, many golden bachelors from wealthy families have hired bodyguards, and during the peak period of marriage (August, September, October)< /span>Escape to a foreign country. And those men whose economic conditions do not allow them to go to the streets together in small groups.
However, as long as the unreasonable dowry system still exists, there will still be thousands of men in India who will become victims of “marriage robbing”.
Reference materials:
1. https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/bihar-abduction-marriage-