I didnt have a choice: Kashmirs Bengali child brides trapped in matrimony
Asma arrived in Kashmir 15 years ago on what she thought would be the holiday of her lifetime. Instead she was married off to a man living in Srinagar who was at least thrice her age. She was just shy of 15 years. She has lived all her life in Krishnaganj, a village in West Bengal’s Nadia district. She didn’t know a single word of Kashmiri or even Hindi.
“I don’t know my husband’s age, but he looks old enough to be my grandfather now,” says Asma.
She isn’t the only Bengali bride in Boatman colony, a poor neighbourhood in the heart of Srinagar. There are close to 200 such “non-Kashmiri’’ women in this colony of a few thousand households, according to some estimates. For years now, child brides from rural Bengal have been married off to Kashmiri men – typically widowed men who are old, poor and, in some cases, physically challenged.
These girls, often from impoverished Muslim families, are sold for anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000. They leave their homes as teenagers, or are tricked into doing so, and end up in the valley married to men who are unlikely to find a local bride. With no money and so far from home, they are stuck in a strange land that they grudgingly learn to accept.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/weekend/outsider-brides-in-the-valley-story-of-an-unholy-union/story-fOquuoQJoZROFPSgFtJ2TJ.html
