KATHMANDU, NEPAL — The constitution here guarantees the right to marry anyone, but that didn’t matter when Manoj Kumar Ram, a 22-year-old Dalit man, married a woman from an upper caste. Instead, his wife’s family accused him of kidnapping her and Ram landed in jail.
Ram’s wife, Babita Isar, says her father wanted to marry her to a man in India, even though she was romantically involved with Ram. The couple therefore fled. In response, Isar’s father filed a complaint, claiming that Isar, who was 21 at the time, was 12 and had been kidnapped by Ram.
“She looks tall and older because of her diet,” says Rohit Isar, Babita Isar’s father. “She’s not old enough to distinguish between right and wrong.”
A court later confirmed that Babita Isar was 21 when she and Ram left.
This was the second time Babita Isar and Ram eloped. The first time, they were gone for a week before incessant phone calls from their families lured them back. Isar says her family locked her in the house when she returned.
“I didn’t see sunlight for a month,” she said.
Since then, Ram has been jailed twice for kidnapping, once for each escape with Babita Isar.
In Nepal, the caste hierarchy places Dalits at the lowest rung among Hindus – a social structure widely adopted throughout Nepal. Since Dalits have always been treated as impure and untouchable, intercaste marriage with them is considered a violation of caste purity. Marrying a Dalit lowers a person’s social status.
“A family’s honor is lost if a girl marries someone from a lower caste,” says Dipesh Ghimire, a sociologist at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.
Discrimination, including legal action against Dalit men who marry upper-caste women, is widespread, says Devraj Bishwokarma, chairman of the National Dalit Commission. At least 40 inter-caste couples seek protection from the commission every year from violence and backlash, particularly from upper-caste communities.
A third of 70 Dalit men surveyed in 2023, all married to women belonging to castes considered higher than theirs, were subject to legal action by their wives’ families, according to a study by Tilak Bishwokarma , Assistant Professor at Ratna Rajyalaxmi Campus, Tribhuvan University. in Kathmandu. There is no official data indicating how many people have been imprisoned.
Caste-based discrimination is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of 30,000 Nepalese rupees (approximately US$223), or both. At the same time, marriage to someone under 20 is technically not recognized, and consensual sex with someone under 18 is considered statutory rape. If a complaint is filed against minors who marry, both parties can be imprisoned and fined. Minor couples who run away may be sent to juvenile homes and their families may be imprisoned.
But in Nepal, about 40% of women are married before the age of 18, according to a Nepal Demographic and Health Survey cited in a 2019 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, known as UNICEF . Complaints related to underage marriage are rare. In 2020, 64 cases of child marriage were registered with the police and 443 cases were reported via a hotline, according to a joint study by the United Nations Population Fund and UNICEF. Underage marriages that go unreported generally go uncontested.
It is Dalit men who find themselves under the knife of the law, even when they marry women or adolescent girls of an acceptable age for marriage in Nepal. Men and teenagers who try to cross the Indian border with their upper-caste wives could face human trafficking charges if they are arrested, says assistant professor Tilak Bishwokarma.
Adolescent girls and women also suffer consequences. Like Babita Isar, they are often locked up by their families, explains Sailendra Ambedkar, a lawyer based in Kathmandu.
The prosecution and imprisonment of Dalit men who marry upper-caste women is a “parody of the law and the government,” according to Jeevan Pariyar, Dalit and member of the House of Representatives, in a statement released in July 2023 with 15 other Dalits. parliamentarians.
Despite this official statement, there is no indication that the practice of discrimination against Dalit men will end.
Kabita Kshetri says she grew up in a house where Dalits were only allowed in when manual labor was necessary. When a Dalit touched a utensil, Kshetri says her mother sprinkled it with holy water to make it pure again. So when Kshetri, then 17, fell in love with 19-year-old Bipin Sunar, a Dalit, she knew the road ahead would be difficult. When they eloped together, she says her aunt filed a complaint in court, claiming that Sunar had lured Kshetri with the promise of marriage and raped her. The Global Press Journal contacted Kshetri’s aunt, but the call was disconnected. Attempts to contact other members of Kshetri’s family were unsuccessful.
In November 2021, Sunar was sentenced to 12 years in prison for rape. He and Kshetri, then 19, had a 6-month-old daughter. Kshetri worked with lawyer Surendra Thapa Magar to appeal and the rape charge was dropped. Sunar was sentenced again, this time to one year and six months in prison. He was released in April 2023 for time served.
“She lived with him willingly,” says Magar. “When their daughter was born, she continued to live with Sunar, who actively helped care for their child. » It was “morally reprehensible” to accuse Sunar of a crime, he said.
In Ram’s case, his entire family was involved. When Ram and Isar fled, police tracked down Ram’s father and set bail at 75,000 rupees (about $565), which he managed to pay to avoid jail time.
Ram’s brothers – Rupesh, himself a police officer, and Ranjaye – were arrested in March and June 2023 respectively, and both were jailed.
Meanwhile, Isar and Ram, far away in Kapilvastu district of Lumbini province, decided to get married. They believed that legalizing their relationship would prevent the police from pursuing them. The newlyweds returned to their home district a few days later, but Ram was arrested upon their arrival.
“I started crying when the police took me away,” Ram said. “They said I’ve been going there for a long time. I was afraid of never seeing my family and my wife again.
A few weeks later, in June 2023, lawyer Ambedkar filed petitions which resulted in the release of the three brothers. The court noted that because Isar and Ram had registered their marriage in court, the allegation of kidnapping did not stand.
Isar says her father warned her that he would take legal action if she eloped with Ram. But the problem wasn’t running away for love, she said. If she had gone with a man from a higher caste, she said, her father would have forgiven her.