Savita’s Choice

Unless we desis start respecting our women, and doing it fast, there is no hope for us.

Actually, there may be no hope for us anyway!

Yeah, I`m in that kind of mood.....

The story is a little bit reminiscent of the movie “Sahib, Bibi, aur Gulam”.

If I understand the situation correctly, things have been improving over time, at least in Bihar, where child marriages are not so frequent any more – but they do happen.

In any case, virtually all marriages are arranged except in larger towns. An interesting annual event where such arranged marriages take place on a relatively large scale is the Saurath Sabha or Mithila marriage market:

In the summer of June, Mithila Brahmins prefer to gather in the vast mango grove in the village of Surath to explore the possibilites, discuss horoscope and finally to negotiate marriages within the community but at least five generations beyond the family. The people of Mithila are believed to have followed the Panji Prabhadha (system of recorded genealogy) since the fourteenth century.

It is my understanding that at this fair, the prospective grooms are displayed as wares and evaluated by their (hordes of) prospective fathers-in-law, until one of them selects them. The girls do not have a role in the decision-making or any need to attend the occasion, of course.

``What is worse, instead of coming to her aid, the village panchayat head, Mangilal Chaudhary says, ``She`s an immature girl. Our culture accepts child marriage and she`ll have to accept whatever the community decides.``

Jin pe takiya thaa vahi pate hava dene lage!
Shame! I hope he is removed from his job and declared disqualified for holding it in the future.

Chowk eds:

Ana is right.

The first para probably went as an intro in the `Hindu` as is the normal practice for newspapers-magazines. You can do away with it completely, or use it as has been suggested in bold, without the writer`s name repeated.

Re. ``instead of coming to her aid``, it is a curious addition. If it is there in the original, then I wonder if you have the permission to edit it out.

Kalpana and Azra

…women are at the bottom of the totem pole in desilands

…empowerment is the only game… a long term project and outlook is needed to turn the tables…something along the lines of micro-financed projects like the grameen bank and a mix of poverty alleviation projects

there is a fellow in karachi who was here in TO recently collecting donations for a project in karachi…his charity or foundation pays the young street beggars Rs.20 per day to get them off the streets and into the make-shift school room…

economic empowerment is the best hope for the women…the desi male’s (of which i am one) mentality is suspect, corrupt and vested and needs to be prodded sufficiently and intermittently to provide this empowerment

lve

t

dear chowk editors:

before i comment on this any further. . . i have a question or two regarding the editing/formatting of this article.

i take it that since this was reprinted with permission, that kalpana sharma will probably not be participating on this board. should the first paragraph not be in italics, since this looks to be more of a headline? and since this is an introduction to her article or summary/restating of something that is stated later in the article?

similarly, the paragraph beginning ``instead of coming to her aid`` might be one of those bolded/italicized quotes as well, since this too is repeated in greater detail in the second paragraph following it?

i don`t read ``the hindu`` on a regular basis and so i don`t remember how they format their articles, but it seems to make sense that the abovementioned while part of the article, are differentiated. unless the repetition is because the writer wrote her piece like that. i do not believe this to be the case.

just curious. and yes, sadly i`m aware that my being curious may have killed countless cats.

--ana