90-year-old grandmother, female executive, schoolgirls challenge virginity test

Janabai Indrekar 90 is opposed to the practice of testing a brides virginity To her left is daughter Leelabai Indrekar 54 and to her right is granddaughter Suman Machale 35 All three have undergone the ritual Janabai hopes that her greatgranddaughter Sonam 19 extreme right will be spared this ritual PicMandaracircAcircAcircu00c2u0080AcircAcircu00c2u0088TaanuAt 90 Janabai Indrekar has seen it all The resident of Yerawada Pune has given birth to 12 children and raised two stepchildren alongside her own Yet her memories of her wedding day are sharp as ever We were poor and my mother wanted me to marry a 32yearold I became his third wife mdash the first two wives had died during childbirth I did not want to marry him but I was told that the community would disown me if I didnt she saysJanabai was 14 and newly acquainted with her menstruation that marked her initiation into womanhood But this didnt mean that she was ready for what was to come her way I saw bloodstains on the bed sheet and began weeping I assumed that my husband had bitten me Seeing me bawl my husband had to leave the bedroom An older lady entered inspected the sheet and announced to my relatives standing outside maal khara hai she recallsPriyanka Bhat 26 is a recovery executive with a private firm in Pune Shes a steady voice against the virginity test despite pressure from her community to back downJanabai belongs to the Kanjarbhat community which has drawn public attention recently for its practice of a VTest V stands for virginity here and the test is hardly a scientific one If a woman bleeds after penetrative sex on the wedding night she passes the test if she doesnt its interpreted as her having indulged in sexual activity prior which calls for suitable punishment This includes the following physical torture slapping and kicking shaming and a monetary penalty which can range anywhere between R50000 to R1 lakh to be paid by the brides family to the caste panchayat For many women of the Kanjarbhat community the wedding night is a stressful affair where the privacy of their bodily functions is made public to family and communityThe concept of virginity is one that the Kanjarbhat have known for long but the word entered their lingo only recently New brides are assessed as shuddh or ashuddh khara pure or khot impure The English word virginity has become part of daily parlance ironically only after a protest against the generationsold practiceLate last October Kanjarbhat youths mdash men and women mdash formed a WhatsApp group named Stop the VRitual The groups motivations gained strength after Vivek Tamaichekar a 28yearold student at Mumbais Tata Institute of Social Sciences who belongs to the same community realised that his fianceacutee would be subjected to the same practice The group is now some 60 members strong On January 21 three members in their late teens and midtwenties were allegedly beaten up by 40 people at Bhat Nagar Pimpri The three were filming community elders receiving money at a wedding another customary practice when the mob assaulted themMembers of the Kanjarbhat community argue that this is an ageold tradition and carried out in private PicsSameer MarkandeFollowing this incident the panchayat has decided to hold an urgent meeting to discuss the issue with members of the community in Kolhapur Over 25000 members are expected to attend the eventA new generationBhat Nagar is in Pimpri a town with its own municipal corporation on the outskirts of Pune For Mumbaikars PimpriChinchwad is best known as the bus stop and urban centre that heralds Pune on the highway Here Bhat Nagar is a colony of buildings most of which are occupied by members of the Kanjarbhat community but not entirely The caste panchayat is a selfappointed body with much sway over the community right from its property dealings to sex This is where the mob that attacked the protesting youth hails from This is also where Priyanka Bhat livesMembers of the Kanjarbhat community at Bhat Nagar a colony in PimpriBhat is a 26yearold recovery executive with a firm in Pune and has invited the wrath of many elders including the panchayat members We meet her in the morning hours and she is smartly dressed in a pair of black jeans with a black shirt rides a scooter and moves with great poise I first heard about the practice when I was in Std VII I only knew that if it was good news they served biryani in the morning On the other hand if the woman was kharab we got dal chawal she tells usI didnt know what virginity was then I only knew that we were expected to be shuddh and that there should be a lal rang on the suhaag raat sheet she continues It was not until some years had passed that Bhat understood the physiological processes behind the sacrosanct evidence of virginity I started attending educational camps organised by a nonprofit in Hadapsar and Pune where I would go to teach street children Here I learned more about the bodily functions of women she saysMeenabai Gulabsingh Bhat 70 a member of the Kanjarbhat caste panchayat who believes the VTest is an acceptable ritual but only to be discussed privately She is surrounded by women some married and others unmarried who dismiss allegations that their community carries out this ritualPriyankas confusion is something that several other women endure she says There are those who do not bleed the night the marriage is consummated and are allegedly harassed by the panch and relatives Forced to provide a rational explanation the easiest and the most treacherous one that these young brides resort to is to lie that they have had previous sexual relations with another man mostly a nonKanjarbhat man These women dont know what virginity means or that a hymen can break even without sex she explains The punitive monetary compensation that the brides family gives is also seen as a way of making money by the panchayatBhat says she is no longer plagued by anxiety Even when the community compels her family to keep her in check even when her brother is boycotted in the colonys cricket matches even when her name appears in the news mdash she is at ease because she knows what is whatDignity of the bodyThe Kanjarbhat community is a denotified tribe that has been known for its nomadic status and originally hails from Rajasthan After Independence they were offered settlement camps in Solapur and today they have moved to Pune Pimpri and Ambarnath in Mumbai They are fluent in both Marathi and Mewari and switch with ease between the languages in their homes and the localityBhat Nagar in PimpriThe obsession with virginity and consummation says Vivek Tamaichekar may have something to do with the fact that the community used to be migratory and would have had to face a number of invasions and enemies It would have meant that protecting women and the purity of the caste from outsiders was necessary While times have changed the tradition seems to have been carried on he saysThis extreme voyeuristic interest in virginity and the fetishisation of the wedding night is not just the Kanjarbhats alone Much of mainstream cinema whether Bollywood or regional has devoted endless number of scenes dialogue and song picturisations to the suhaag raat Take the song Rukmini Rukmini from Mani Ratnams Roja The villagers want to know what happened after the shaadi Its meant to revel in the naughtiness that the couple might have engaged in but the truth for many a Kanjarbhat bride is far from pleasure and merrimentBecause the need to bleed on the wedding night is so grave the community wants to make sure that what they are seeing is the real deal We heard accounts from women all under the condition of anonymity that young girls are asked not to play aggressively lest their hymen should tear Brides are stripped of metallic objects including jewellery and the room is checked to make sure that there are no sharp objects lying around They want to make sure that the blood on the sheet is from sex What if a woman cuts her finger and smears the blood there says a young girl in her 20s There has been a case unknown to the community elders where a bride did not bleed after sex and was allegedly helped later by her elder sister The sister cut her finger and bloodied the sheet to save the young bride from further harmDr Shashikala Gurpur former member of the National Law Commission and presently Director of Symbiosis Law School Pune recalls Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex and says that the French feminist has accounted for similar practices that have been conducted in communities across the world To think of a womans loss of virginity actual or supposed as a wound on the community is to reduce a woman to just tissue and body instead of a thinking being The guesswork of orthodoxy is that if a girl is not bleeding then she is not a virgin But a hymen may not have grown at all Or sometimes it may have been ruptured during illness surgery an accident or during sports But imposing this as the image of the girl making her identity depend upon this and shaming her if she isnt a virgin is a violation of human rights of the highest kind It leads to the social physical and mental consequences for the girl she saysGurpur and Priyanka state that there is anecdotal evidence of tobe brides approaching doctors for a hymenoplasty or for a pouch with blood to be inserted in them Dr Ramesh Bhosle head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Punes Sassoon General Hospital states that while women do come to them with such requests it is hard to say how many of them are from the Kanjarbhat community In any case when women ask for such measures to be implemented doctors would be wise to counsel them and turn them away without allowing them to succumb to the pressure of these practices he saysAll for oneBefore the days of Stop the VRitual Bhat says that she thought she was all alone in her belief Now she has found likeminded youngsters in the communityThe situation of the wedding night say some in the community has gone out of hand And the pressure is not the womans alone For the grooms a demand is made of them to consummate the union The ritual is a test of their virility if not their virginity A member of the community recounts the time when a couple both from the same community had engaged in premarital sex As it turned out the bride failed the test on the wedding night and was questioned severely by the elders The groom under pressure to conform to the communitys standards turned against the girl and said that she may have engaged in sexual liaisons with another man prior to their wedding It was only after his wife persuaded him to come out with the truth that he did soAt Bhat Nagar the atmosphere is tense post the altercation When Manoj Machale president of the Maharashtra Kanjarbhat Sangh enters this locality where he resides he is protectively greeted by several neighbours many of whom are concerned about this interview We are seated in a canopied part of a street surrounded by some 50odd members of the community mdash men women and children mdash who dismiss the allegations made by the protesting youthAs recently the apex court gave a verdict that the customs and religious practices of communities must not be defamed These youth are trying to create a mountain out of a molehill If this was such a brutal practice and panch members are torturing women then why havent there been cases registered against us till date The question about a womans virginity exists but doesnt it also when we talk about honeymoons and first nights We dont discuss a womans virginity in public like these young people make it out to be he saysThe surrounding men young and old nod in agreement So do the women Never before has the word virgin been uttered so often in a conversation in public you would thinkWe speak to the bride at whose wedding the protesting youth had been mobbed She now lives with her husband in Ambarnath She condemns the protest and says that she is bound to follow the practice as a virginity test is important It is one of the most prestigious moments for our parents I will adopt the practice for my children too she says A 32yearold woman a resident of Bhat Nagar agrees Right from her birth till the night of the wedding its a parents duty and the communitys to safeguard the girls virginity So from a young age we do not let girls cycle or stretch lest her hymen should tear For us her virginity is like an uncut diamond and needs to be safeguarded like a treasureOne of the panch members is Meenabai Gulabsingh Bhat 70 We speak with her inside her house where we are surrounded by a number of women Behind her a wall is covered from floor to ceiling with images of divinities prominently among them the goddess Durga Meenabai says that the ritual surrounding a womans virginity is a private affair The panch members exist as mediators who try to mutually settle the issue without knocking on the door of the court she says An impure bride is punished but at least she is not deserted after marriage mdash a silver lining out here We then ask the women what about a mans virginity Why is that never checked A quiet murmur a hushed approval of our question passes across the women in the room But Meenabai remains resolutely quietTimes upAt a girls school in Pimpri where a majority of the students from the Kanjarbhat community study there is a possibility for change to occur Young girls are skipping playing catch and running recklessly up and down the stairs during lunch hour and among them are Kanjarbhat girls too We meet six of them in a computer lab and they are seated next to a pristine idol of the goddess Saraswati The young girls tell us that while they do not face any restriction from their families about playing or cycling they do think that their education could come to a halt should their parents feel so We ask them if they have heard of the idea of shuddhta and the purity of a bride One of them slowly says Yes we have We dont know what it means or how it is checked But we have all heard that something happens on the wedding night Her friend adds We all think this should stopStop the VRitual has now been backed by the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti to put an end to these regressive practices And whether it is 90yearold Janabai 26yearold Priyanka or these young schoolgirls the sentiment is the same Janabai passed the VTest back then but is done with the ritual She says Being bound to custom I made the same mistake with my daughters and they too underwent this ritual of virginity as did my granddaughters I will not be able to bear that such customs should be followed for my greatgranddaughters I want the girls in my family to carry the torch of progressive thought and marry men who respect them and their privacyCatch up on all the latest Mumbai National and International news hereDownload the new midday Android and iOS apps to get updates on all the latest and trending stories on the go