Two Himachal brothers marry same woman to adopt dying tradition

Shimla: 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 Trans-Giri area of Sirmaur district. Videos of the wedding ceremony have gone viral on the internet.

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.

The first chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Y S Parmar did research on this tradition and completed his Ph.D on the topic "Socio-economic background of Himalayan Polyandry" from Lucknow University.

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.