Knotty Affair

A growing number of young couples in Bihar are eloping. It’s a sign that inter-caste marriage is on the rise—and still shrouded by prejudice and the threat of violence

- Amitabh Srivastava

PAPA, DEKHIYE HUM SHAADI kar liye hain. Yeh sab dikhawati nahin hai (Papa, I got married. This is for real),” says Kirti in a video shot at an undisclosed location and posted on YouTube. A streak of vermilion in the parting of her hair, the woman from Bihar’s West Champaran district urges her parents to let her and husband Nitesh Yadav, with whom she eloped, live peacefully. She even warns them against harassing her in-laws. “You will be held responsible if anything untoward happens. You have already threatened my husband’s family. We will not tolerate this anymore,” she declares. Nitesh, too, makes an appeal to his father-in-law: “Please stop harassing us, or we’ll have to approach the police.”

Kirti’s father, from the Barhai (carpenter) caste, had filed a case of kidnapping on July 23, saying her daughter is a minor, but in the video Kirti flashes her ‘Aadhaar card’ to claim otherwise.

While inter-caste marriages are not so common in Bihar, rising instances of elopement for marriage signal that the tide may be turning. Elopements are usually reported to the police as cases of abduction, the claim by the girl’s family being that she is a minor. According to the Bihar police, such cases accounted for 30 per cent (3,017) of the total 10,271 cases of abduction registered in 2018. This year, the figure is 1,626 out of the 4,576 abduction cases registered till May.

Across Bihar, while a majority of marriages are still arranged by families, education and exposure are helping blur caste and religious lines among the youth. The growing employment opportunities for women are also driving a silent evolution of traditional mindsets. But with caste and religious divides still deeply entrenched in the older generations, several couples are choosing to elope than confront parental sanctions and the attendant risks.