GUWAHATI, ASSAM, INDIA ? Pratima Kharsa, a young girl from the Dimasa tribe, became pregnant after falling in love with a local boy. But when the news spread throughout her village in Assam, a state in India?s Northeast region, he publicly rejected her and the child.
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Per the local customary law ? law based on custom instead of legislation ? the village head called a meeting and forced Kharsa to publicly declare the name of the father of her baby in front of a priest and village elders.
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"There are no rights for women in customary laws."
Parvati Thaosen, president of Shakti Mahila Mandal, a local women?s rights organization that works with tribes in the area, says custom dictated that Kharsa go into a nearby water body to declare the name.
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After being named, the young man refused to accept her as his wife. Instead, he chose to pay a fine of 10,000 rupees ($200) to Kharsa for the child and married another girl.
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?In majority of cases, men deny it and women have to face innumerable problems,? Thaosen says.
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Months later, Kharsa gave birth to a daughter. She eventually married another young man in her tribe. But Thaosen says Kharsa was tortured in her new relationship, which came to a tragic end.
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?Often, the couple used to have verbal brawl,? she says. ?To get rid of this, Kharsa one day sprinkled kerosene oil over her[self] and committed suicide.?
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She says there are many other women like Kharsa in tribes across the region who suffer unfavorable living conditions because they have little say to change them under customary laws.
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Many tribal communities in the ethnically distinct states of India?s Northeastern region ? Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim and Assam ? continue to regulate themselves according to their customary laws rather than India?s more modern federal constitution. Women?s rights activists say that many of these laws are gender-biased in composition and orientation. In many areas, they are constituted and interpreted by male elders alone, leaving little say or consideration for women. Activists are working to help them change the laws.
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Customary laws are a set of rules that attain the force of law in a society because they are observed continuously and uniformly over a long period, says Mary Beth Sanate, a social activist and member of the Assam chapter of Women in Governance, a network of women?s organizations, human rights defenders, activists and journalists across the Northeast region that work for human and gender rights. They are the totality of customs of a tribe, which hands them down from one generation to the next.
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Sanate says customary laws have endured many generations, despite varied opinions on them.?
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?Some people are of the opinion that customary laws are primitive, archaic and mixed with superstitions,? she says. ?But it is a fact that customary laws have survived and continue to play dynamic roles in tribal communities.?
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Customary law differs from statutory law, which is enacted by the government. But Sanate says that the government enables customary law to continue.
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?[The] Government of India recognize[s] and allow[s] its existence, so many tribes in India continue with their own customary laws,? she says.
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She says that tribes are proud of their laws that represent their distinct cultures and traditions, but that many of these laws discriminate against women.
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?Amidst their diversity, [the customary laws] have some commonalities ? the most important being patriarchal, where women?s rights are denied,? she says.
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K. Shangnaidar Tontang, chief functionary of the Weaker Sections? Development Council, an organization that works for development among tribal groups, agrees.
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