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Paro Chained

In the regions couched between Delhi and Rajasthan's state capital, violence against women is not always overt.

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In the regions couched between Delhi and Rajasthan’s state capital, violence against women is not always overt. Sowmya Sivakumar and Padam Saini uncover the deafening silence around ‘paros’.

Beneath the treacherous shimmer of the lush green and yellow speckled fields in Mewat, a region bordering Haryana in Rajasthan, there live women whose faces betray unspoken stories of violence, subjugation and sometimes, even hope. They are called ‘paro’. Paro – meaning - ‘Yamuna ke us par se’ (from across the Yamuna). This is their story.

Eight years old Samira (name changed), growing up in Bilasipara in Assam, was perplexed when four women and a man came up to her one day and said they would take her to her uncle (mama)’s house. She had lost her mother at a tender age, and knew her uncle lived far away. Before she knew it, she was in a tempo, robbed of her belongings and brought to Alwar district, Rajasthan. “They made me work hard, do all the cleaning, cooking, washing and feeding animals. When I could not do something properly, they starved me. I lived on only water on many occasions. An older man living nearby felt sorry for me and offered to “buy me” for Rs 5000. He then got me married to her present husband, his relative,” she recounts. Since then, life for her has been an unrelenting string of tribulations. She never went back, as she had no money nor the freedom, and doesn’t even if her father, a doctor, is still alive.

Samira must be about 30 now - she has a grown sixteen year old son - besides four other children. But she recalls what happened to her at eight like yesterday. Her son Hamid (name changed), his high cheekbones and distinct eyes making him stand out from the group gathered anxiously states with obvious affection, “I don’t let her go anywhere alone, lest she leaves us and runs away.” For his mother, just the thought of seeing her home someday transforms her otherwise troubled visage break into a radiant smile.

Brought from every conceivable part of India – from Assam, West Bengal, Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh,– to satisfy the procreation needs of men unable to find local brides, paros come with varied circumstances but have many aspects in common. Almost all these states have far higher sex ratios than Rajasthan.

“The paro system is the inevitable fallout of a deadly combination of attitudes towards women and girls in these areas, female feticide, economic poverty, dwindling landholdings and impoverisation. The whole system has been created to satisfy the sexual and labour needs of men,” he sums up Virendra Vidrohi, who runs Matsya Mewat Shiksha Evam Vikas Sansthan in Alwar.

In the market for cross region brides, demand and supply usually play out on the common denominator of poverty. Men who are ‘disadvantaged’ in some way – poor, old, widower or disabled - are the ones who don’t find local brides and actively start looking for them from outside. Families of the girls are also more often than not, poor and cannot afford dowry. A match is struck. But stories of deception abound, where parents of the child brides like Samira were not even aware that their child was taken away from them. In some cases, women themselves bring their relatives and arrange Back in Mewat, surprisingly, the otherwise fundamentalist khap panchayats seem to accept the practice of paro, no matter if the bride is not from the same community.

The number of human rights violations endured by these women cannot be counted even on two hands - child marriage, trafficking, kidnapping, abuse, child labour, marital rape, rape outside marriage, day-to-day violence, lack of freedom of movement and decision-making in child bearing.

“The paro practice is not just a ‘criminal activity, it has a social dimension. But the interesting thing is it has remarkably reduced in the last few years…it no longer has the social sanction and there is also more awareness,” feels Ashutosh A.T Pednekar, Collector Alwar.

But a section feels that the system is also spreading. A recent study “Tied in a Knot” by Reena Kukreja and Paritosh Kumar establishes that the practice is not only prevalent among the Meo Muslim community, but among Haryana Brahmins, Jats, Yadavs and other castes too. Says Mahesh Sharma, Haryana Gaur Brahmin, Kishori village in Thanagazi block, Alwar district, “my father’s brothers would spike any proposal that came for us. Then one of our relatives working in Mumbai got married to a girl from Maharasthra. We liked her behaviour and thought why not look for us also there. Pade-likhe ladkiyan humen izzat kam karte hein” (educated girls respect us (men) less). They don’t ‘support’ us the way these women do.” He and his two brothers are married to women from Parli, Maharasthra.

“Hum humare ma-baap ke izzat karte hein. Jo woh kehhte hein, hum karte he (I respect my parents. I do what they say; I would never go against their wishes). I have no complaints here,” says a young bride from Uttar Pradesh in the same village.

In Mewat, ‘izzat’ has a spectrum that could take on any of these ends, depending on who is defining it.

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