It is trickery at its very finest, criminal at its worst. The funny thing, as well as the scary part, was that it had turned into a ritual. An honourary beginning to a lifelong journey put to start by force. They call it Pakadwa Vivah. Kidnapping men and threatening them into marriage with women they do not wish to spend their lives with. And how casually they allow this disposition to be a lifelong responsibility.
It is a practice majorly prevalent in western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Bachelor men eligible for marriage are abducted and forced to marry at gunpoint. They are not offered the choice to refuse, as that might result in the fulfillment of a threat that is too awful to be put through. With no options left, these men have to agree and are wed off without their consent.
In this practice, girls who are too young in age and are not ready to get married are forced to marry a groom of their family’s choice, who is also unwillingly going through with the union. Because of the societal pressure that has been created in the cradle of patriarchy that has been rocking in our country for centuries, dowry is a given when it comes to a girl’s family wedding her off to another.
It has been seen that in many cases, to skip this recurring tradition of huge amounts of dowry which later turns into a curse for the bride and her side of the family, Pakadwa Vivah is preferred. There are certain bachelors in the community who are employed in high-paying jobs. They expect their bride-to-be to be from a well-off family as well and demand a heavy dowry which can only be fulfilled by someone with big money.
Their dowry amounts are ridiculously high, ranging from 20 lakh to 1 crore rupees. Families who wish to have these grooms for their daughter but cannot afford to pay such huge prices to their daughter’s husband-to-be hire local goons who charge comparatively lower amounts to kidnap these men. These kidnapped men are then adorned in the getup of a groom and wed off to an unknown or perhaps unrequited girl in ceremony.
The kidnapping can be either forceful or gently luring into an unrecognisable trap. Either the groom is threatened to go along with the hired grooms or they are chastised peacefully to accompany someone he knows but isn’t aware of being involved in such a plan, and then he is treated as a hostage. He is verbally or physically threatened so that he doesn’t have a choice but to accept the bride they have chosen for him.
These poor men are violently taken to become part of a wedding ceremony that is all about him, and yet he has no part in decorating the venue. He knows nothing, wishes to know nothing; the only thing he knows is that he was unfairly stripped of his free will and handed a responsibility that he didn’t want for himself.
A union that ought to be tied with trust and woven with wholesomeness begins on such a negative note that it seems impossible for such a marriage to last. Even viral videos of a sobbing groom applying the sacred pint of vermillion into a bride’s forehead bring pity and concern to people as to how awful this tradition is. And yet in a surprising fashion, many of these marriages endure the hardships that others do not have the power to overcome.
It is a very strange phenomenon that has been noticed in these marriages. Once again, in the name of social pressure, these men are trapped into feeling guilty and responsible for their wives, who will not be accepted by any other if they are divorced by their current husbands. The man is once again stripped of making a choice that satisfies his own self and runs on the fuel of societal pressure and expectations.
Since this practice had slowly shifted into the category of commonly practised tradition, there wasn’t much legal action taken against it. Each time a man went to court or a legal jurisdiction to complain regarding the nature of his forced marriage, he was dismissed or treated with negligence. But soon enough, the turning point for this unfair means came as well.
In November 2023, a significant landmark declaration was made. While thousands of cases had been presented annually for so long, no satisfactory decision was made to impose restrictions on such a criminal and life-changing so-called tradition.
The Patna Court declared a Pakdwa Vivah held over a decade ago as legally void. It was implied that because of the “Saptapadi” ritual, which required seven vows around the sacred fire, not being properly attended to, it wasn’t a legally valid marriage. This decision was a breath of fresh air to the victim, who had been living in the claustrophobic cell of forced marriage. Even though the social battle remains, there is hope brought to the terrorised ones.
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