Many probably know that earlier in most countries women played the last role in society and they did not even dare to think about their rights. The main task of a woman was to please her husband, give birth to children and run the household. Roughly speaking, the woman was a slave. Also, you probably know that in the Middle Ages they practiced early marriages and a young unmarried girl of about 18 was already considered an old maid.

Fortunately, these harsh times have passed and now women have the same rights as men. However, in some parts of the Earth, a woman is still a commodity. For example, in Muslim countries in small villages early marriage is the norm and here parents give their daughters in marriage almost from the cradle.

The photo below shows the couple. The girl in pink is Tagani, who got married at the age of 6. Tagani recalls her early days of marriage to 25-year-old husband Majid: “Every time I saw my husband, I tried to hide because I hated to look at him.” The second girl in the photo, Ghada, is also Tagani's young wife and former classmate.

For some girls, early marriage is an escape from total family control. The following photo shows how, after celebrating with relatives, the newly-made Yemeni wives Sidaba and Galliah are sent to their new husbands, having previously put on a veil.

Many girls who entered early childhood at the age of 14-16 have never even attended school, but they still have hope that they will still be able to get an education.

The next photo is Asia. She is 14 years old and already the mother of two children. Asia still bleeds after giving birth and feels weak, but she still washes her newborn daughter with her 2-year-old daughter playing nearby. She, like most young mothers, has no education and she has a vague idea of ​​​​how to take care of herself and her health now.

In this photo Nujod Ali and she looks happy as she ran away from her tormentor husband when she was 10 years old. She made it to court in Sana'a (Yemen) and eventually managed to get a divorce and return to her family and school. This young girl became a national heroine and a brave fighter for women's rights in the country.

Here, Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar arrests a husband who systematically stabbed his 15-year-old wife for refusing to obey him. According to Kakar, nothing will be done with this "non-humans" and most likely they will let him go, since the man in this country is the king and God.

It's already dark outside and most people are asleep, but not this little girl, Rajini, who has been woken up to be taken to her wedding. In India, child marriage is illegal, so ceremonies are held mostly at night or in the early morning. The marriage itself becomes a secret that is kept by all the inhabitants of the village.

The little bride Rajani and the same little groom practically do not look at each other, while they are led in front of the sacred fire. Here, according to tradition, the girls of the bride continue to live with the family at home until they reach puberty. After that, another ceremony is held, which transfers the girl to the full possession of her husband.

And this is a small Nepalese village where early marriage has long been a common practice, but 16-year-old Surita sobs and screams in protest at her wedding, but no one here takes into account her desire.

And again India, in the photo Sunil. When she was 11 years old, her parents decided to marry her and even prepared for the wedding, but the brave girl threatened them that she would inform the authorities about them and they had to make concessions to the girl. Now she is 13 and goes to school. The education she received would give her an advantage over other girls and perhaps a brighter future than her parents wanted her to.

To be honest, this is just shocking information for me. Surprise parents who agree to early marriage their children, giving them into the hands of an unknown adult man. In our country, this is called pedophilia, and such people would be put in prison, where they would hardly have lived for a week, but in Muslim countries this is a normal phenomenon. Crazy world.

Wedding rituals in Rajasthan are usually performed at night. And this time, the dark time of the day was generally the only possible for the ceremony - the wedding was illegal and therefore a secret for everyone except the invited guests. Toward evening, the brides, preparing for the wedding, doused themselves with water right on the street. There were three brides: 15-year-old Radha, 13-year-old Gora and Rajani, their niece. Girl five years old.

Neighbors helped baby Rajani pull off a pink t-shirt with a butterfly painted on the shoulder and covered the bathing girls with a makeshift curtain of sari fabrics. The suitors, meanwhile, were traveling from a distant village. None of them were wealthy enough to arrive on an elephant or on a horse in luxurious harness, as tradition requires. I had to settle for cars. It was expected that the suitors would arrive quite tipsy.

None of the villagers had seen them before, except for the father of the two older girls, a thin and straight as a stick gray-haired peasant with a long drooping mustache. This peasant, whom I will call M., watched the line of guests shelter from the scorching sun under an awning of bright silk, and pride and anxiety were written on his face. He understood very well that if an honest and incorruptible police officer knew what was happening here, the wedding would be interrupted, he would be arrested, and the family would be covered with disgrace.

When a teenager is married off, neighbors often remain silent and government officials turn a blind eye, not wanting to dishonor the family.

If a girl marries very young, the gauna is performed when she reaches adolescence, so that Rajani will live in his grandfather's family for a few more years. And M. is doing very well, they told me: by marrying off his granddaughter, he provides her with protection for the years of growing up.

This story takes place in one of the sun-dried villages in the Indian state of Rajasthan during the Akha Teej holiday. The holiday is celebrated in the hottest time of spring, before the monsoon season, and it is considered a good time for weddings. We look helplessly at Rajani. A five-year-old barefoot bride in a T-shirt runs around with pink plastic sunglasses someone gave her.

The man who led us to the village spoke only of her sisters. True, it was also dangerous to talk about them, since the law forbids marrying girls under the age of 18. But teenage brides are treated more condescendingly. When a teenager is married off, neighbors often remain silent and government officials turn a blind eye, not wanting to dishonor the family.

Marrying minors is more dangerous, so the participation of the smallest in the wedding ceremony is usually not advertised, their names are not mentioned in invitations, and at their own wedding they are on the sidelines. Rajani fell asleep before the ceremony began. Her uncle carefully lifted the girl from the bed, pressed her to his shoulder and carried her under the moonlight to where the Hindu priest was waiting, the smoke from the sacred flame rose to the sky and the guests and the groom, a ten-year-old boy in a golden turban, were sitting on plastic chairs.

Ten-year-old Nujood Ali found her way to the city court and demanded a divorce from her husband, who was in his thirties and whom her father had married her to.

Child marriage is common on different continents, among representatives different peoples, religions and classes. In India, girls are usually passed off as boys four or five years older; in Yemen, Afghanistan and some other countries, young men, middle-aged widowers, and rapists who kidnap their victims and then declare them wives can become husbands, as is customary, for example, in some parts of Ethiopia.

Some of these marriages are open deals, practically undisguised. You can, say, exchange the forgiveness of a debt for an eight-year-old bride or settle a conflict between families by offering a cousin, a 12-year-old virgin in return. When the tip of this iceberg, isolated cases become public, they cause an explosion of anger around the world. In 2008, newspapers in many countries wrote about Nujud Ali, a ten-year-old Yemeni girl: she herself found her way to the city court and demanded a divorce from her husband, who was in his thirties and whom her father married her to. Later, the book "I am Nujood, I am ten years old and divorced" was published.

Many adults, such as Rajani's fellow villagers who sing mournful songs while young brides bathe, see nothing wrong with child marriage. Girls' education will still be interrupted, one way or another. If not because of marriage, then simply because in rural areas, a nearby school may have only five classes, and then you would have to travel to school every day on a bus full of horny men. The school itself may not have a lockable toilet that a teenage girl needs from a hygienic point of view. Besides, schooling costs money – and practical parents they are kept for their sons: it is believed that they will bring more benefits. So, in Hindi, daughters living with their parents are even called "paraya dhan", which means "foreign wealth."

Well, all the arguments that a girl herself has the right to choose her groom and that marriages should be made for love are still perceived as stupid and absurd in many parts of the world. So, in India, most marriages, as before, are concluded at the will of the parents. A strong marriage is seen as a union of two families, not two personalities - and therefore, the choice must be carefully considered by many adults, and not by young lovers who obey fleeting impulses and the call of the heart.

Therefore, where poverty reigns, where girls who have lost their innocence are considered unsuitable for marriage, where many generations of ancestors married against their will, where old relatives insist that girls get married faster - they say, it was like that with me, so and it should be the same with her - even the most convinced fighter against early marriages will be confused, not knowing where to start.

“Our employee was approached by the father of a teenage girl,” says Srila Das Gupta, a New Delhi-based physician and formerly of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), one of several non-profit organizations active in the fight against early marriage. "He said, 'Well, if I decide to marry my daughter later, will you take responsibility for protecting her?' Our employee came to us and asked: “What will I tell him if his daughter is raped when she is 14?” We don't have answers to these questions."

Married each other's daughters
In India, child marriages are prohibited, at least formally – in Yemen, this is not the case either. All attempts to officially protect girl brides have so far ended in failure. “If early marriage was any risk, Allah would have forbidden it,” Yemeni MP Mohammed Al-Hamzi told us. We talked with him in Sanaa, the capital of this state. “We cannot forbid what Allah Himself has not forbidden.”

Religious fundamentalist and conservative Al-Hamzi is a fierce opponent of any attempt to legislate the marriage of girls under a certain age (under 17 in the latest draft). Islam does not allow marriage until the girl is physically ready for it, says Al-Hamzi, but the Holy Quran does not speak of specific age restrictions so this matter should be in the hands of the family and religious mentors, not the laws. As families are aware of this issue, we had the opportunity to see in one of the villages in the western part of Yemen.

A man, also named Mohammed, took us to this village, because he was deeply disturbed by the events in it. “There lives a girl, her name is Aisha,” he seethed with anger. She is ten years old, she is very small, just a baby. And her husband is fifty, and he has such a belly, ”Mohammed showed with his hands which one.

Muhammad described a deal here called shighar: two men supply each other with brides by exchanging female relatives. “They married each other's daughters,” Muhammad said. “If the age gap between husbands and their new wives were more acceptable, I don't think anyone would report it to the police. But girls should not get married when they are nine or ten years old. 15 or 16 - still all right.

In the village, surrounded by thickets of cacti and sun-dried fields, five dozen families live in houses made of stone and concrete. The elder of the village, a sheikh, squat and red-bearded, on his belt next to the traditional dagger hung mobile phone. He led us to a low-ceilinged house where many women, some with babies, and girls sat on carpeted floors and beds. More and more women entered the door, bending over so as not to hit the lintel. In the thick of it, the sheikh was squatting, frowning and hissing to make the audience quieter.

The Sheikh looked at me suspiciously. "Do you have children?" - he asked. When I answered that yes, two, his face showed bewilderment. “Just two! - the sheikh nodded towards a young woman who was breastfeeding a baby, next to her two more toddlers were scurrying around. “This young woman is 26 years old and has given birth to ten children.” Her name was Suad, and she was the daughter of a sheikh. Suad was married to a distant relative when she was 14. “I liked him,” Suad says quietly under her father's gaze.

The Sheikh made several statements regarding the marriage. He said that no father would force his daughter to marry against her will. He said that the danger to health allegedly posed by early marriage is greatly exaggerated. He said that the first physical contact with her husband is indeed not always easy for the bride, but worrying about this is pointless. “Of course, every girl is scared on the first night. But she'll get used to it. It's a matter of life." Then the sheikh's cell phone buzzed, he took it off his belt and went out into the street.

I pulled the handkerchief off my head - I had seen my translator do this before when there were no men around, and women started a confidential conversation. We quickly asked a few questions: how are you preparing for wedding night? Are brides told what to expect? The women looked in the direction of the door and, seeing that the sheikh was completely absorbed in the conversation, leaned in my direction. “The girls don't know anything,” one of them said. “Men force them.”

Could they tell us about little Aisha and her fat 50 year old husband? Then the women started talking all at once: this is a terrible story, this should be banned, but there was nothing we could do about it. Little Aisha screamed in fear when she saw the man she was to marry, said a woman named Fatima, who turned out to be older sister Aisha. Someone informed the police, but Aisha's father ordered her to put her shoes on high heels to appear taller and cover your face. In addition, he threatened that if he was sent to prison, he would kill Aisha when he got out. The police came and left without taking any action, and now - the women spoke more quietly and faster, as the sheikh had already begun to say goodbye to his interlocutor - Aisha is married and lives in another village, two hours away. “Every day she calls me and cries,” said Fatima.

"Do you know that a child has grown in you?"
Deputy Al-Hamzi, in response to this story, would probably repeat the thought that he had already expressed to me: the beloved wife of the Prophet Muhammad, also Aisha, was nine when she got married - this is what one of the hadiths says, legends about the life of the prophet. However, other Yemeni Muslims say that there is another opinion among Islamic pundits: Aisha was older when she first entered the marital relations. Maybe she was a teenager, or maybe she was in her twenties. Be that as it may, the exact age of Aisha is not so important, my interlocutors firmly said; nowadays any man who wants to marry a little girl is dishonoring his religion.

“In the Islamic tradition, the human body is of great value,” said Najib Saeed Ghanem, head of the Yemeni parliament's committee on health and demography. “Like a diamond.” He listed several health consequences of forcing girls to have sex and give birth before they are physically mature: rupture of the vaginal walls, the formation of internal tears ...

Nurses sometimes have to explain what childbirth is to girls who are in labor: “They ask, 'Do you know what's happening to you? Do you know that a child has grown inside you?”

In Yemen, it is not customary to talk about sex life, even educated women do not have such conversations with their daughters. The fact that some parents give their little daughters to adult men has never been a secret to anyone - but if they talked about this, it was in a whisper. Three years ago, the situation changed a little - when ten-year-old Nujood Ali became the world's youngest fighter against early marriages.

For the Yemenis, the surprising thing about Nujood’s story was not that her father forced her to marry a man three times her age, not that her husband entered into a violent relationship with her on the very first night (although he seemed to promise to wait until his wife grew up), and not that the next morning the girl's mother-in-law, together with the wife of her other son, first examined the bloody sheet approvingly, and then lifted Nujud out of bed and carried her to wash. No, there was nothing unusual about all this. What was surprising was that Nujood dared to strike back.

"Won't get a divorce - too small!"
A ten-year-old girl ran away from her husband and returned home. She was not afraid of the cries of her father, who shouted that the honor of the family depended on how she performed marital duties. Her mother was too intimidated to intervene. But the father's second wife wished Nujud good luck, gave money for a taxi and told him where to go.

When an astonished judge asked a ten-year-old girl what she was doing alone in court big city, Nujud replied that she came to get a divorce. She was represented by a well-known Yemeni lawyer. Articles about the case began to appear in the English-language press, first in Yemen, then around the world; the publications aroused great interest, especially since Nujood herself was charming - and when she finally got a divorce, the decision in the courtroom was greeted with a standing ovation by a crowd of people. Nujood was invited to the United States - and there, too, halls full of sympathizers were waiting for her.

Everyone she met was amazed by the seriousness and self-control of the little girl. When we saw her at the editorial office of one of the newspapers published in Sana'a, she was wearing a black abaya - this completely concealing figure, adult Yemeni women wear when they appear in public, but there was a little girl in the abaya.

Although Nujood had been across the ocean, where dozens of overly curious adults talked to her, she was so sweet and open, talking to me as if my questions were new to her. At dinner, she settled down next to me on a prayer rug and told me that she was again living at home (her father, severely condemned by public opinion, reluctantly but allowed her to return), goes to school and writes an open letter to Yemeni parents in her school notebook: “ Don't marry your daughters. By marrying too early, they will be deprived of education, deprived of childhood.”

In the theory of social change, there is a special term for people like Nujood Ali: "positive deviant." They are societal loners who, thanks to both the confluence of circumstances in their lives and their inherent determination, are able to reject tradition and try to propose something new - perhaps radically new.

Among the positive deviants involved in campaigns against early marriage in different countries, there are mothers, fathers, grandmothers, school teachers, village doctors... But the most stubborn fighters are the rebel girls themselves. And each of them has followers. In Yemen, I met 12-year-old Reem, who got a divorce a few months after Nujood; at the same time, she managed to convince a hostile judge who became famous for declaring that such a young wife was still too small to decide on a divorce. In India, I met 13-year-old Sunil, who was wanted to marry when she was 11. Sunil firmly told her parents that she would reject the groom who was already on the way - and if they tried to force her to marry, she would report to the police and break his father's head.

Of course, child marriages are much more likely than teenage marriages to cause public outrage. “The public loves stories like this where it's immediately clear what's black and what's white,” says Saranga Jain, an adolescent doctor. – However, the majority of underage brides are between 13 and 17 years old. We want society to realize that it's not just the little girls that need to be protected."

"I got it as a gift new clothes. I was happy"
Researchers estimate that between 10 and 12 million girls in developing countries are married underage every year. And the reason is not always the pressure of tyrant parents. Girls make decisions because everyone expects them to, or because where they live, they simply have no other choice. The most successful programs are those based not on reading morality, but on increasing the motivation of the poor not to marry their daughters too early. This is a direct encouragement of families that send girls to school, and the construction of the schools themselves.

In India, the government trains and sends medical workers, who are called sathins, to the villages. They look after the health and well-being of local families; it is their duty to remind the villagers that by giving girls in marriage, they are not only committing a crime, but also causing serious harm to their own children. It was the Rajasthani sathin, with the support of her enlightened father-in-law and mother-in-law, who finally convinced the parents of 11-year-old Sunil to abandon the idea of ​​marrying off their daughter and allowing her to return to school.

Fantasies about “grab the girl and run away” inevitably run into the question: what then? “If we take a girl out of her usual environment, isolate her from her relatives and friends, what will her life turn into? asks Molly Melching, founder of Tostan, a Senegalese non-profit organization. “You cannot change the norms accepted in society if you fight them with force and humiliate people by calling them backward. We have seen first hand that entire communities can choose to change – and change very quickly. It's inspiring."

But the path of gradual change is painfully difficult. The example of Shobha Chaudary convinced me of this. She is 17 years old and lives in Rajasthan. When I first saw her, on Shobha was school uniform: a dark pleated skirt and a white blouse tucked into it. A stern look, a straight back, shiny black hair gathered in a ponytail. Shobha was in her last grade high school was one of the best students. Years ago, she was noticed by a visitor to the village from Veerni Project, a non-profit organization that seeks talented girls across North India and offers them free boarding school in Jodhpur.

“They gave me nice new clothes,” Shobha smiles sadly. “I didn’t know what marriage was. I was very happy".

Since then, Shobha has had only a fleeting meeting with her husband, who is several years older than his wife. While the girl manages to delay the gauna, after which she will be obliged to move in with her husband. When I asked Shobha what impression her husband made on her, she looked away and said that he was uneducated. We looked at each other and Shobha shook her head, no, there is no way she could dishonor her family by giving up the gauna, “I should be with him. I will make sure that he will learn and develop. But I can't leave it."

Every time I visited Shobha's home village, her parents would make spiced tea and pour it into the best cups, and the stories about Shobha changed a little. There was pride here, and a desire to hide something, and anxiety: who knows what this foreigner needs? It wasn't a wedding, it was just an engagement! Oh, okay - it was a wedding, but after all, everything happened before the Veermi Project made its offer, and before the girl surprised everyone with her abilities. It was Shobha who figured out how to get electricity into the house so she and her younger siblings could do their homework after dark. “I learned to sign,” Shobhi’s mother boasted to me. “She showed me how to spell my name.”

But now, her parents hinted unequivocally, this sweet episode of her life was coming to an end - and even then, it's time to say. The husband called Shobha on the phone and demanded a date. Her grandmother wanted the gauna to take place before she was completely decrepit. Classes in Jodhpur were both a passion for Shobha and an excuse to delay the inevitable - but the Veerni Project only funds education until the end of high school.

And Shobha dreamed of a college, after which she could join the Indian police and enforce the law against child marriage. In her diary, the schoolgirl wrote in neat Hindi letters: “I will never allow girls to be married off in front of my eyes. I will save everyone." But I had to pay for education, but there was no money.

After consulting, my husband and I contributed the amount necessary for the college. Shobha's post-secondary education continues more than a year: computer literacy courses, english, preparation for police entrance exams… I get e-mails from her (her english is weak but improving), and recently a hindi translator who worked with me in jodhpur rented a video camera, filmed a video message from Shobha for me. The girl is preparing for the next exam, lives in the city, in a safe hostel for women. Her husband still calls her often, but the gauna has not yet taken place. At one point, Shobha smiled directly at the camera and said, “Nothing is impossible, ma'am Cynthia. Everything is possible".

And two days after I received this video, Yemeni newspapers reported on a girl who was taken to the hospital four days after her wedding. As a result of sexual intercourse, her internal organs. The girl died from blood loss. She was 13 years old.

Choosing a marriage partner

The greatest event in India is marriage. After the wedding, the life of a Hindu changes radically: youth is replaced by maturity. According to tradition, the choice of a spouse does not depend on the bride and groom, but on the interests of the parents. Some parents agree on the marriage of the child already at birth, but most agree later. In the past, marriageable age was very small. In Rajasthan, marriages were even entered into between children under the age of five. Throughout India, it was customary to marry off girls between the ages of 8 and 12. Boys were also married early. So, Mahatma Gandhi and the first President of the Republic of India, Rajendra Prasad, married their peers at the age of 13. The 1921 census recorded over 600 brides aged 1 to 12 months. . Upon learning of these data, Gandhi persuaded the lawyer Haar Bilas Sharda to prepare a bill to discourage early marriage. It is curious that the lawyer himself was married at the age of 9 years. The Sharda Law, limiting the age of marriage to 14 for girls and 18 for boys, went into effect in 1929.

In 1955, India passed a law allowing marriage at the age of 18. In 1978, the law was amended to allow men to marry from the age of 21 and women from the age of 18. These restrictions are still in effect today. However, the law is only partially enforced. While members of the upper castes and most of the townspeople abstain from early marriages in order to educate their children, the rural poor and members of the lower castes continue to have child marriages. Giving daughters in marriage early age parents thereby reduce the cost of their maintenance. The groom's family, in turn, acquires a free work unit from the household. AT large families parents, in order to save money, try to marry all the children at the same time. According to a 2007 survey, 47% of Indian women are married before the age of 18. At the same time, 13% of women in labor were girls aged 17 or less. Social help and propaganda are gradually reducing the number of early marriages, but slowly - the established traditions are strong, especially in the countryside.

Orthodox Hinduism does not forbid polygamy: among the high castes, polygamy was common. "Kama-sutra" (III - IV centuries) and subsequent manuals on love - "Ratirahasya" (XIII century) and "Anangaranga" (XV century), describe polygamy and even harems. The Kama Sutra advises taking a second wife in the following cases: “Another wife is taken when [the first wife] is stupid, bad-tempered, unhappy, does not give birth to children, gives birth only to girls, or when the husband is fickle. Therefore, let her strive from the very beginning to avoid this, showing devotion, good disposition and intelligence. If she does not give birth to children, then let her herself induce him to take another wife. And being replaced by [another], let her try, as far as possible, to give [the new wife] a higher position in comparison with herself ... When she is replaced by many wives, then let her unite with the one that is closer to her. Wealthy Indians often had two wives until the twentieth century. This practice ceased after the passage of a marriage law in 1955, which prohibited polygamy.

According to the approach to choosing a bride, India can be divided into two vast regions - the Indo-Aryan north and the Dravidian-speaking south. In the north, they are looking for a marriage alliance with families not related by blood. Blood marriage is prohibited. Parents choose a bride for their son outside the village and even neighboring villages from a family of the same caste that does not have blood ties with them. As a result, the inhabitants of one village enter into marriage alliances with the inhabitants of hundreds of other villages. After the wedding, the young wife finds herself in an unfamiliar house where she does not know anyone. She is lonely, her family and friends are far away, and she is forced to obey the demands new family. In Central India, the North Indian system of marriage also prevailed, but in a milder form: sometimes marriages occur in one village and residents of neighboring villages often marry. The exchange of brothers and sisters is allowed - the groom's sister marries the bride's brother.

Unlike the northern Indo-Aryans, the Dravidian family of South India seals already established family ties by marriage. There is no division of relatives by blood and by marriage. But marriages in the south take place within a limited circle of families, and all their members are blood relatives. In the South, marriages between cousins ​​and even between uncles and nieces are common. The main thing is that the family, giving a bride to another family, expects a return bride, if not now, then in the next generation. The purpose of such marriages is to create a small, tightly knit group of relatives. After the wedding, the young wife ends up in the house of her grandmother or aunt and she is comfortable among her relatives. The husband, most often, is a cousin whom she has known since childhood. It happens, of course, that the bride leaves the circle of relatives (if there is no suitable groom among them), but even then her position is better than in North India.

Finding a marriage partner is not an easy task. Parents are looking for a bride or groom through acquaintances or through newspaper advertisements that indicate religion, caste, education, the beauty of the bride (with a hint of the size of the dowry) and the income of the groom. In villages, parents arrange marriage without the participation of the bride and groom, they do not even see each other. In cities, in the cultural strata of society, the bride and groom exchange photos and may be allowed to meet in the presence of the bride's relatives. More and more young people with higher education decide their own destiny. Today, love marriages are acceptable in the upper strata of society, if the bride and groom belong to the same caste or close in rank and have a similar educational and professional level. A completely different attitude of parents in the case of the marriage of their child with a person of a different religion (especially a Muslim) and, moreover, a low caste.

In India, especially in the north, the bride's family is considered as if inferior to the groom's family and must give her gifts for a generation, or even two. The main gift is, of course, a dowry. Its size is negotiated before the wedding. The dowry includes not only Jewelry. Initially, as a dowry, the bride brought with her everything that was needed for arranging life in a new place: linen, dishes, household items. Since the end of the 20th century, the bride's dowry has increasingly been made up of money and valuable household appliances: motorcycles, cars, etc. Sometimes the groom's parents insist that the bride's family pay for the cost of his higher education and even several years of future earnings. Often the attitude towards the newlywed in the house of the husband's parents is determined by the size of the dowry. There are cases when the bride's relatives are not able to pay the dowry, then the demand for the dowry is repeated after the wedding, and in case of delay or refusal, the young wife's dress may "negligently" flare up, and she herself will die. Such murders are rarely investigated. However, in the vast majority of cases, marriages in India are strong and often happy, and weddings are not only pompous and colorful, but have a sacred meaning.

Hindus believe that the wedding ceremony binds husband and wife for the next seven lives, being one of 16 sanskar- the most important sacrifices in the life of a Hindu. Integrity is of great importance here. Marrying a girl deprived of virginity is excluded as completely useless. People entering into this kind of marriage and their children fall into the category of outcasts. The fact is that, according to Vedic ideas, a woman there is a field - kshetra, and the man is the owner of the field - kshetrin. The first one who sows the field with his seed becomes its owner and the owner of everything that will ever grow on it. Therefore, if you were not the first sower of the field, then the fruits (children) born by this field do not belong to you, and you are just a thief who sowed someone else's field.

Engagement and wedding

They like to celebrate weddings in India in February: at this time it is spring in the country, it is already warm and dry, but there is still no sweltering heat. A wedding consists of pre-wedding ceremonies, the wedding itself and post-wedding rituals. The treats served during this period consist exclusively of dairy-vegetarian dishes. Meat, fish and eggs are prohibited. The parents of the bride bear the main expenses for arranging the wedding. The first ceremony is the engagement - tilak. The male half of both families participate in this ceremony. The father of the bride, along with relatives, goes to the groom's house to put on the groom's forehead tilak(sacred sign from kumkuma- powder of red turmeric or saffron) as a sign that he is accepted as a son-in-law. First Brahman chanting mantras puja- ritual worship of the gods. Then the bride's brother puts tilak on the forehead of the groom and bestows gifts on him. The same ritual is performed by all men from the bride's family. The groom's family, for their part, gives gifts to the bride. Usually during the engagement, the groom puts the wedding ring on the bride's finger.

After the engagement comes the time of preparation for the wedding, which lasts from one to two months. Approximately 15 days before the wedding, the worship of the god of wisdom and prosperity is held - Ganesha(depicted as a fat man with an elephant's head). Ganesha is asked to remove obstacles during the wedding. The remaining days before the wedding, the families of the bride and groom will worship Ganesha. The next stage is a fun ceremony reserved for women - Sangeet. The bride's family invites relatives who, having gathered together, to the accompaniment of a wooden drum - dholak, sing songs dedicated to the wedding and the bride. During the fun, all women dance and sing, joke, tease the bride, remember their youth and wish the bride well-being in family life. Sangeet ends with a rich meal.

Then comes the time mehndi- drawing patterns on the hands and feet of the bride with henna. The ceremony is held at the bride's house in the presence of relatives and friends. According to belief, the darker the patterns mehndi the more the future husband will love his wife. The bride's hands should be painted to the elbow. The groom is symbolically depicted on the right palm, the bride is symbolically depicted on the left. Their names are hidden among the patterns: it is believed that if the groom finds his name on the bride's palm on the wedding day, their marriage will be happy. In addition to the hands, the bride's feet are painted. The ceremony is accompanied by singing and music. According to tradition, after marriage, a woman should not work in the house until the patterns disappear. After the mehndi the bride does not leave the house until the wedding. On the wedding day or the day before, a ceremony is held Haldi, during which turmeric paste is applied to the face, hands and feet of the bride and groom to make the skin glow. On the same day, in the homes of the bride and groom, a rite of remembrance of the deceased ancestors is held.

On the day of the wedding, the bride wears a wedding sari, red in the north or green in the Marathas. There are many decorations on the sari - gold threads, beads, rhinestones, pendants. The total weight of the wedding dress can reach 12 kg. The bride's hands are decorated with bracelets and rings. The bright red color of the bracelets indicates that the girl is getting married. The ceremony of marriage takes place in the evening at the bride's house, where the groom arrives, accompanied by relatives and friends. Previously, the groom would come on horseback or on an elephant; car is now more commonly used. The groom is wearing festive attire. In the north is a camisole shervani, decorated with gold embroidery, tight pants churidars, red belt and bright turban . In the south on the groom white dhoti(loincloth) and angavastram(cape made of light fabric). The mother of the bride meets the groom at the gate. She bows to him and puts on his forehead tilak that protects from all evil. The groom follows mandapu- a tent decorated with elegant fabrics, banana leaves and flowers; a sacrificial fire burns in the center of the tent. There he is waiting for the bride to hold Var Mala (Jai Mala)- flower garland exchange ceremonies.

The bride appears with a flower garland in her hands. Facing each other, while singing sacred mantras, the bride and groom exchange garlands, which means they accept each other as husband and wife. Other rituals performed in the mandala follow. One of the main rituals is Kanya Daan. Kanya means "virgin" daan- "gift". During the Kanya Daan the father of the bride puts right hand to his daughter in the right hand of the groom and, while singing mantras, makes a libation of sacred waters in their palms, symbolizing the transfer of his daughter to the groom. The sacred marriage must never be destroyed, so the Brahmin ties the end of the bride's sari to the groom's sash in a knot that must not be untied even after the wedding. Then the young people, holding hands, should go around the fire burning in the center four times. mandaps. Bypassing the fire, they take seven steps together. Like the circles around the fire, each step has its own meaning, is an oath.

The final ritual wedding ceremony is Sindurdana, during which the groom puts on the parting of the bride sindoor -- red powder from cinnabar, which means his acceptance of the bride as his wife. He also gives her a wedding golden necklace, symbolizing his love for her. Then the newlyweds feed each other sweets, as a sign that they will take care of each other. At the end of the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds bless the brahmin - purochitis, parents and close relatives. After the completion of the wedding ceremony, a rich treat awaits everyone. The celebration is accompanied by songs and dances and lasts all night, and then the guests accompany the newlyweds to their husband's house, where gifts and blessings await the newlyweds. The next day, they arrange a reception for the wife's relatives - they accept gifts from them, they sit at the table and the wedding celebration continues.

Status of women

The Indian family is numerous - sometimes up to sixty people live in the house. The tradition gives the daughter-in-law to the full power of the mother-in-law, and if a girl marries the youngest in the family, then the power of the older daughters-in-law also applies to her. Until recently, the position of a woman depended on her caste. In the lower castes, women are employed outside the home; they are independent and can divorce and remarry. In the higher castes, a woman should not work for pay and once again appear in public. According to the Brahmins, she should be an obedient wife, a dutiful daughter-in-law and a caring mother. She cannot demand a divorce, but, having become a widow, remarry. Now the situation is changing: many women from the upper castes are educated and go to work. Accordingly, they marry later. The ban on the marriage of widows was also weakened. This leads to the gradual emancipation of women from the higher castes.

Back in the 19th century, the rite was widespread in India. sati, when widows burned themselves in the funeral pyre of their husbands. As a rule, women from the upper castes committed sati: there were especially many self-immolations in Rajasthan and Bengal. The Great Mughals tried to ban the savage rite, but only the British were able to overcome it (and even then partially), who began to hang everyone who contributed to the self-immolation of widows. The response of General Charles Nepier to the complaint of a Brahmin who was dissatisfied with the fact that the British were interfering with the traditions of the Hindus is known. Sir Charles then said:

"So be it. It is your custom to burn widows; prepare a funeral pyre. But my nation also has a custom. When men burn a woman alive, we hang them and confiscate their property. Therefore, my carpenters will build gallows to hang all those involved in the death of widows. Let's follow - you to yours, and we to our customs."

Despite prohibitions, first by the British and then by the Indian government, sati still occurs today. Since 1947, about 40 self-immolations have been recorded in India, most of them in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. Harsh measures have been taken against sati, outlawing all who watched the ritual. The law does not distinguish between observers and instigators - they are equally recognized as guilty. Yet the position of widows in the higher castes remains difficult. According to ancient Indian canons, immediately after the cremation of the deceased husband, the widow (vidava) should go to the pond and wash off the paint of marriage - sindoor, from your parting, break your bracelets and put on a white mourning sari. She should never wear jewelry again beautiful outfits and have fun. In the higher castes, widows are treated with disdain, especially if their husbands have died of illness. The presence of a widow at celebrations and celebrations is undesirable: it is believed that misfortunes follow her. Widows are not allowed to participate in religious ceremonies.

The custom of celibacy of widows in the Brahmin caste is especially strictly followed. Much better position widows in the lower castes, where they are allowed to remarry, and in the South of India, where women are generally freer than in the North. Women in southern India occupy approximately the same position in society as in Southeast Asia, while the northern regions of India are similar in this regard to the Islamic countries of the Middle East. For example, in the north of the country it is customary to cover the face, and in the south only Muslim women cover their faces. Compensation for an Indian woman comes with age. If, after marriage, she does housework under the critical supervision of her mother-in-law, then after the birth of a child, her status rises. As the children mature and marry, she herself becomes mother-in-law and head of the household, taking the place of her predecessor. In all layers of Indian society, the mother is a symbol of love and protection, an object of respect and good feelings.

They just brought me the Yemen Observer newspaper. past

I can’t get through the articles on the last page - I must definitely retell you! Questions on this topic are often asked.

An article about an early marriage in Hajj province. While I was reading, plus a photo (this is how our children dress on yemen day) did not let go of the feeling that this was a staging, although I personally know one idiot who married a 13-14-year-old girl at the age of 30.
PHOTO FROM THE NEWSPAPER.

Here. I'll run through the article.

11 year old Sally got married to a 25 year old man last Thursday. Almost all Sally's classmates and friends 10-13 were invited to the wedding. While the guests' children were playing games and having fun in every possible way, the girl's mother and her friends shed tears over the event. Let me remind you that women's wedding and the male part of it pass separately from each other. Sally's sister, who, in turn, was married at 13, and now she is 27, tried to somehow prevent her sister from getting married early. But who will listen?

When the groom, along with his father and younger brother, came to pick up the bride, the girl naively asked if it was possible to get a younger husband as her husband? Naturally, it was refused. That's where it ended.

In preparation for the wedding, the groom gave the bride's father money to buy new clothes, including Wedding Dress and 2,000 rials for pocket expenses for the bride herself ($10). younger brother and sister Sally(6 and 7 years old) cried bitterly, because they also wanted to get married in order to get new clothes and pocket money!

ransom (which, however, is called dowry-dowry) was paid to the fatherbride. 150 thousand rials – 1 dollar = 198-200 rials. The money, according to Sally's mother, was taken by her father. Also, as a gift to the bride, as expected, gold jewelry was bought - a necklace, bracelets, rings. All this was also appropriated and sold. With this money, the father of the bride bought a satellite dish and a receiver.

Here I will say that somehow there was a dispute with my husband in a magazine - that the father does not take the money. We communicate with the locals, because we know that, yes, money should not be taken. Some families do. But in most cases, the father (seya) takes the money for himself. And here it was not said by me, but, according to the author of the article, by the girl's mother. Therefore, please do not argue. This is how things stand here and this is first-hand information.

On Friday morning, Sally was taken from her home in the old part of Sana'a (from herself - such “dense” families live there - we saw it ourselves) and taken to the province hajj.

Yemeni law prohibits the marriage of girls under the age of 16. And even according to the existing new amendment - from 18(!!!). During registration marriage contract father and indicated age as 18 years old, no one bothered to check, of course.

There are no “registry offices” here, everything is done in offices, even without a bride. The men shook hands, the deal was made.

Now the poor girl lives far from her parents' house. And she will not be able to contact her relatives in any way to complain about her fate ....

And I'm thinking, what is the parental home for her? A mother who does not have the right to vote or a father who sells daughters like cattle to profit???

But thank you for writing about it.

Photographer Stephanie Sinclair has been covering the issue of early marriage for 13 years. In 2012, she founded Too Young to Wed, an NGO that fights to end the practice around the world.

“I hid every time I saw him. I couldn't stand him,” Tahani (in pink) recalls her early days as Majed's wife. She was 6 at the time and he was 25. In this picture, Tahani poses for a photograph with her former classmate Ghada, also married as a child, outside their mountain home in Hajja Governorate, Yemen. More than half of Yemeni women marry in childhood.

Surita Shreshta Balami, 16, screams in protest as she is taken to her new home with her husband, Bishal Shreshta Balami, during a wedding ceremony in Kagati village in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, January 2007. Early marriages are a common practice in Nepal, and the village of Kagati is known for its indulgence in this phenomenon. Many Hindus believe that the gods will bless their family if they marry a girl who has not yet had her period.

Araceli, 15, breastfeeds her baby, 2014. According to a study conducted by the United Nations Population Fund in 2012, 30% of women in Guatemala between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before the age of 18. This percentage is higher in rural areas. Teenage pregnancies are so common here that there is a law that women under the age of 14 are required to C-section because their hips are too narrow for childbirth.

After celebrating their wedding with relatives, Yemeni brides, 11-year-old Sidaba and 13-year-old Ghaliyahu, are escorted to their husbands in Sana'a, Yemen, where the girls will begin new life, 2010

17-year-old Durga Bahadur Balami sprinkles red powder on the head of 14-year-old Niruta Bahadur Balami, who is nine months pregnant, during their wedding in Kagati village in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, January 23, 2007. Niruta began living with her future husband's family and became pregnant when they were just engaged. In some circles, this is acceptable.

Two young mothers ride in the back seat of a car owned by the Samburu Girls Foundation. After negotiations, community leaders allowed representatives of the organization to take the girls to a safe place. Young women ran away from home because their children were in danger of death. It is a custom among the Samburu people not to allow young warriors to marry. For such warriors, there are girls who are allowed to be used solely to satisfy sexual needs. These girls cannot get pregnant or become mothers. If pregnancy does occur, the woman will have a forced abortion or childbirth, after which the child is killed.

A woman winnows grains during the rainy season near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. In this country one of highest performance early marriages in the world. Every second girl marries before the age of 18, and every fifth - before the age of 15. However, thanks to the work of various organizations, the situation is gradually improving.

Nujood Ali, two years after her divorce from her husband, who was 20 years her senior. She was married off at the age of 8. Nujood's story shocked the public, causing Parliament to draft a law on the minimum age for marriage.