Single and Suffering
NIRJANA
SHARMA
When she was thirty years
old, the people in her community said she wasn’t beautiful enough to attract
men and receive marriage proposals and perhaps would have to remain unmarried.
They proved to be right.
“It may sound odd now but
there was a time when families would be charged with selling the girl if they
approached a boy’s family with a marriage proposal,” says Reshma Maharjan, 40,
a resident of Chapagaun, explaining that only a boy’s family could send out
marriage requests to the girl’s family and the opposite was considered almost
immoral.
Even until a few decades
ago, girls from Newar families would remain unmarried if proposals for them
weren’t received. According to Laxmi Shova Shakya, a sociologist who has
carried out a special study on unmarried women in the Newar community, arranged
marriages were difficult, if not impossible, for girls if they didn’t receive
any proposals from the boys’ side.
This was precisely why
Reshma didn’t get married. She simply didn’t receive a marriage proposal and
her family didn’t look for a groom either because the tradition was such.
However, Reshma isn’t the only one who has had to suffer due to such social
prejudices. There are many single, old or middle-aged women like her in the
Newar community in the Kathmandu Valley, more so in Lalitpur, who live isolated
lives in their families.
PHOTOS: RIWAJ RAI
A study on the
socioeconomic status of women conducted two years ago by SNV, Nepal revealed
that 30 percent women in the Newar communities of 22 administrative wards of
Patan were unmarried middle-aged women. The research found the single women are
widows (54%), unmarried (30%), divorced (5%), and abandoned (11%). As a result,
single women are found in every alternate house in the Patan area.
However, women are often
single not by choice but by compulsion or custom. Reshma too had dreams of
getting married and having her own family someday. Her mother filled her head
with thoughts of marriage and a husband to share her life with. But her dreams
were shattered as she grew up and nobody approached her family asking for her
hand in marriage.
“Even if a man was 50
years old, he would always be scouring for a teenage bride,” she says, shaking
her head at the incredulity of it all, more especially for a custom that didn’t
allow a girl’s family to look for and choose a groom for their daughters.
The women who were
victims of prejudices decades ago are facing problems today. Culture expert
Uttam Kumar Joshi says that the custom was so readily accepted back in those
days that no one even questioned it at the slightest, let alone think about
breaking the norm.
Currently, Reshma lives
and takes care of the nine members of her brother’s family. But it’s a family
she can’t call her own. She always worries about having no one to take care of
her when she’s old.
“My brothers have their
own families and they have no obligation whatsoever to take care of me,” she
says, adding that this thought plagues her mind and is perhaps the only regret
she has of not being married.
According to sociologist
Shakya, unmarried women are more often than not involved in household
activities and give continuity to the family business when their brothers are
young, but their livelihood becomes uncertain as they grow older.
Shakya tells the story of
Shaila, a 46-year-old single woman of Patan who spent her life to bringing up
her two brothers after their father’s death when she was just seven years old.
She also handled the family business. But today, the new members of her
brother’s family take her presence as intrusion and she is often ignored and
left out.
“In most of the cases,
women living with their brothers’ families after their parents’ death are taken
as a burden and treated as unpaid slaves,” says Shakya.
According to
sociologists, there are more unmarried middle-aged or old women in Newar
communities as compared to other communities. But not all cases can be
attributed to the custom of their families not looking for grooms when they
were young. An inclination towards Buddhist convent as nuns is also another
reason.
Manahara Tuladhar, 49,
and a resident of Nardevi in Kathmandu is single and lives with her mother. She
resisted family pressure and decided not to get married but the decision came
with repercussions she never imagined. Her family doesn’t allow her to make any
decisions on her own and people in her community talk behind her back.
Even educated women who
choose to remain single are at the receiving end of verbal abuse in their
respective communities. According to Shakya, these women are even and often
termed as prostitutes.
The situation is not
likely to change unless women are more aware of their rights. Advocate Meera
Dhungana is of the opinion that many women in these communities are still
suppressed by their own people, and even such women don’t want to share their
stories due to the fear of causing further embarrassment to their families.
“Many women don’t know
that they can claim their share in the parental property and continue to live a
life of meek submission,” says Dhungana.
However, the new
generation does not accept this tradition, and as a result, many Newar
communities have seen significant reforms over the years, But the women who
were victims of this custom continue to bear the brunt of it.
Reshma has started
learning to read and write. She can now write her name, albeit with some
difficulty, but this small feat gives her a sense of self-respect and identity,
an individuality she had lost but is now slowly trying to regain.
(This
article was published in Republica Daily on June 6, 2014, Friday)
