After living with her partner with more than 11 years and having three sons, 31-year-old Seema Khariain will finally get the status of a legally wedded wife on January 14.
Like Seema, 131 other women of the State who have been staying in a live-in relationship with their partners for many years would finally get married in a mass marriage ceremony being organised by social organisation NIMITTA on January 14, at Ranchi.
Nikita Sinha, founding member of NIMITTA said, “This is our third year organising mass marriage for tribal couples in live-in. In 2017, we got 21 couples married which increased to 43 in 2018. This year we are getting 132 couples married.”
Of the 132 couples, 76 are Sarna (worshippers of nature), 36 Hindus and 20 Christians. The age of these couples ranges from 24 to 40 years. These couples are from Khunti and Torpa block of Khunti district and Basia, Ghaghra, Sisai and Palkot block of Gumla.
Live in relationships or Dhukni/Dhukua is a common aspect of the tribal society of Jharkhand. Those extremely poor people, who are unable to finance their wedding and organize a fest for the village to mark the wedding start living together without marriage.
“They live together for years just like a regular couple without getting legal recognition. Poverty is the biggest reason behind this because most work as a daily wage earners and get around Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 a day and not on a regular basis. As a result they cannot afford spending on anything else other than basic necessities,” Sinha said.
In local language, Dhukna, translates to get in or push in. Derived from the term, the women who stay in a live-in relationship are called Dhukni or Dhukua, thus implying that they have entered the house of the man.
Sinha said, “The term itself is derogatory. Also, the women or the children born out of this relationship are not given legal rights to the property. We try to identify such couples and get them wedded, thus registering their marriage and giving it a legal status. This helps toward getting these women empowered and get respect in the society.”
Sharing the reason behind the organization taking up the work of getting live-in couples married, Sinha reflected back to the time when she was in a village in Khunti a couple of years ago regarding a project, a drunk man approached her, requesting her to get him married.
“He asked me to visit his home nearby. On going there I saw that he was living with a woman and had a daughter too. He informed that he could not get married to her due to financial crisis. This is when we decided to approach these couples and get them married in a mass wedding,” she said.