2 Himachal brothers adopt Hatti tradition of polyandry, marry same woman

Indian Express

3 days ago

Two brothers of the Hatti tribe tied the knot to a woman in Shillai village of Himachal Pradesh, with hundreds of people witnessing the marriage solemnised under the anachronistic tradition of polyandry. Bride Sunita Chauhan and grooms Pradeep and Kapil Negi said they took the decision without any pressure.
Local folk songs and dances added colour to the ceremony that began on July 12 and lasted for three days in the Trans-Giri area of Sirmaur district.
Videos of the wedding ceremony have gone viral on the internet.
Revenue laws of Himachal Pradesh recognise this tradition and named it 'Jodidara'.
In Badhana village in Trans-Giri, five such marriages have taken place in the past six years.
Sunita, who hails from Kunhat village, said that she was aware of the tradition and made her decision without any pressure, adding she respects the bond they have formed.
Pradeep, from Shillai village, works in a government department while his younger brother Kapil has a job abroad.
'We followed the tradition publicly as we are proud of it and it was a joint decision,' said Pradeep.
Kapil said he may live abroad, but through this marriage, 'we're ensuring support, stability and love for our wife as a united family'. 'We've always believed in transparency,' he added.
Hatti is a closed-knit community in the Himachal Pradesh-Uttarakhand border and was declared as Scheduled Tribe three years ago. In this tribe, polyandry was in vogue for centuries, but due to rising literacy among women and economic uplift of communities in the region, cases of polyandry were not reported.
Such marriages are being solemnised in a clandestine manner and accepted by the society but instances are fewer, elders in the village said.
According to experts, one of the main considerations behind the tradition was to ensure that the ancestral land was not divided while the share of tribal women in the ancestral property is still a main issue.
There are nearly three lakh people of the Hatti community who live in about 450 villages in the Trans Giri area of Sirmaur district and polyandry is still a practising tradition in some villages. It was also prevalent in Jaunsar Babar, tribal area of Uttarakhand and Kinnaur, a tribal district of Himachal Pradesh.
Kundan Singh Shastri, general secretary of Kendriya Hatti Samiti, the prime body of the Hatti community, said this tradition was invented thousands of years ago to save a family's agricultural land from further division.
Another reason is to promote brotherhood and mutual understanding in a joint family by marrying even two or more brothers born from different mothers with a single bride, he told PTI.
The third reason is a feeling of security 'if you have bigger family, more men, you are more secure in a tribal society', he said, adding it also helps in managing scattered agriculture lands in far-flung hard hilly areas which requires a family for a long time for care and cultivation.
These requirements of tribal families have kept the polyandry system for thousands of years, in practice, though these traditions are slowly dying, Shastri added.
In this unique tribal tradition of marriage known as 'Jajda', the bride comes to the village of the groom in a procession and the ritual known as 'Seenj' is performed at the residence of the groom.
The pandit chant mantras in local language with sprinkling holy water on the bride and groom and offer them jaggery in the end, with blessings that their Kul Devta may bring sweetness in their married life.