SOCIETY

Fatehpur men like polygamy

     Fatehpur (Uttar Pradesh): Men in Fatehpur village of Uttar Pradesh are getting used to having more than one wife. The Hindu marriage norm of monogamy has no meaning to them. And each man raises a family of 10 or more children. A villager, Ram Khelawan Mishra, who married three times, has 12 children. The villagers often opt for second or third marriages on trivial pretexts like, the first wife not being beautiful enough. "Here we have a tradition that most of the villagers get married twice. There are around 35 to 36 families, where multiple marriages have occured. There are a couple of reasons why people get married repeatedly. Sometimes, the first wife expires or she is not found beautiful enough. In other cases, the first wife is incapable of producing children. But, they do not leave any of their wives and all of them stay together," says Ram Khelawan Mishra, a villager. Providing things for many wives and feeding children may be difficult for many. But these do not stop looking for multiple- ?marriages. They believe in keeping all the wives and the children from each one of them together. "My first two wives died because of health problems which led me to marry the third one. I had no children from the first two wives," says Ranjit, a villager. The Hindu marriage Act annuls any second marriage if the first spouse is alive or not divorced. But the law clearly fails to prevent Fatehpur men from marrying more than once.
-July 18, 2005

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