The secret world of child brides.

By Cynthia Gorney




Because the wedding was illegal and a secret, except to the invited guests, and because marriage rites in Rajasthan are often conducted late at night, it was well into the afternoon before the three girl brides in this dry farm settlement in the north of India began to prepare themselves for their sacred vows. They squatted side by side on the dirt, a crowd of village women holding sari cloth around them as a makeshift curtain, and poured soapy water from a metal pan over their heads. Two of the brides, the sisters Radha and Gora, were 15 and 13, old enough to understand what was happening. The third, their niece Rajani, was 5. She wore a pink T-shirt with a butterfly design on the shoulder. A grown-up helped her pull it off to bathe.

The grooms were en route from their own village, many miles away. No one could afford an elephant or the lavishly saddled horses that would have been ceremonially correct for the grooms' entrance to the wedding, so they were coming by car and were expected to arrive high-spirited and drunk. The only local person to have met the grooms was the father of the two oldest girls, a slender gray-haired farmer with a straight back and a drooping mustache. This farmer, whom I will call Mr. M, was both proud and wary as he surveyed guests funneling up the rocky path toward the bright silks draped over poles for shade; he knew that if a nonbribable police officer found out what was under way, the wedding might be interrupted mid-ceremony, bringing criminal arrests and lingering shame to his family.

It's a long read.

As a father myself of four girls, I had a hard time with my anger at the parents (fathers) of those child brides. Just sickening.


more: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/child-brides/...

HERE

PB

I know many here don't like Oprah, but she said something that is so true and
is so sad, "If you are a female and you are born in America...consider yourself
lucky."

We take so much for granted here. There is enough abuse and mistreatment of women
here in the United States, but compared to other countries where forced marriages
are common--we truly are lucky to have been born and to grow up here.

This article is so sad.

This children are caged birds, and most of them don't even realize that they are caged.

The author does a fantastic job presenting the complex realities of the situation rather than taking the easy route by offering nothing but empty western culture moralizing and platitudes.

The foundation of the problem, I believe, is religion. Even here in the west our nations are founded on religious traditions that assign men all power. Men, by God's command, own all wealth, all property. Women and Children are expected to cheerfully obey, like a good natured Golden Retriever, the commands of their men. Including, in these cultures, marriage.

And even here in the west, where woman are now beginning to win their freedom (and only recently), we still see the remnants of this system. Children here are "protected," not empowered. And as is the case in India, moral and right-thinking people defend this insanity.

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Unfortunately, these practices are so deeply ingrained in the culture it will take generations and marked increases in the education of women to undue this.

I am sickened by the cries of "cultural relativism" (not noted in this thread) ... the subjugation of women (any human being)is ALWAYS wrong.

Cries of "cultural relativism" made me refuse to identify as a liberal for a number of years.