Two Hatti brothers marry one woman in outdated tribal custom of polyandry

Two brothers in a Himachal Pradesh village have married the same women following their (now-outdated) tribal custom of polyandry.

The brothers belonging to the Hatti tribe married the woman in Shillai village, with hundreds of people witnessing the marriage being solemnised.

Bride Sunita Chauhan and grooms Pradeep and Kapil Negi said they took the decision without any pressure.

Age-old customs

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 as “Jodidara”. In this unique tradition, also 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 chants mantras in the local language with a sprinkling of holy water on the bride and groom, and offers them jaggery in the end, with blessings that their Kul Devta may bring sweetness in their married life.

In Badhana village in Trans-Giri, five such marriages have taken place in the past six years.

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No pressure, says bride

Sunita, who hails from Kunhat village, said 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, they are “ensuring support, stability and love” for their wife “as a united family”.

“We’ve always believed in transparency,” he added.

Clandestine marriages

Hatti is a closed-knit community on the Himachal Pradesh-Uttarakhand border and was declared as Scheduled Tribe three years ago.

Among 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.

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Practical reasons

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 tradition practised 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.

For a united, safe community

Another reason is to promote brotherhood and mutual understanding in a joint family by marrying 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 a bigger family, with 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 alive for thousands of years, though these traditions are slowly dying, Shastri added.

(With agency inputs)