Mambo ya mila: Kaka wawili wanachangia mke...!

[Ab-Titchaz]

Brothers share wife to secure family land​

Kundar Singh Pundir, left, and his brother Amar, right, share Indira Devi, centre, as their wife.​

HIMACHAL PRADESH, India (CNN) -- Amar and Kundan Singh Pundir are brothers. Younger brother Amar breaks rocks in a mine for a living. Kundan farms their small piece of inherited land. They live in a beautiful but remote hillside village in the clouds of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Both aged in their forties, the two brothers have lived together nearly their whole lives. They are poor and share just about everything: Their home, their work and a wife.

"See we have a tradition from the beginning to have a family of five to 10 people. Two brothers and one wife." Kundan says.

They practice what is known as fraternal polyandry -- where the brothers of one family marry the same woman. Why? Tradition and economics.

Life is hard here. The village is precariously perched on the side of a very steep hill about 6,000ft up. Most of the villagers survive off tiny plots of cropland.

In this difficult terrain there isn't enough land to go around. So, instead of finding separate wives and splitting up their inherited property, the brothers marry the same woman and keep their land together.

Wife Indira Devi says life with two husbands isn't easy.

"We fight a lot."

But like any married couple they fight mostly over mundane stuff, except there are three spouses instead of two.

"Usually it's about chores, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?" she says.

One thing they agreed on was the need to have children; They have three. So how does a married trio deal with sex?


"We make shifts, change shifts and sleep on alternate days. We have to make shifts otherwise it won't work," Kundan says.

"To run our families we have to do this, overcome the hurdles as well and then we have to control our hearts from feeling too much," Amar adds.

To outsiders their arrangement may seem odd, but in the village of about 200 it is the norm.

Typically the marriages are arranged and women have two husbands. But some wives have three or four depending on how many brothers there are in a family.

Polyandry is illegal in India but socially acceptable here. No one from the government seems to bother the villagers about the law.

"It's been going on for ages. My sister in law has two husbands, my mother in law also has two husbands," Indira says.

And as to the question of which husband is the biological father of the children -- the Pundir's don't know and don't care.

"For me everyone is the same, my mother and my fathers are the same. My mother and my fathers are like God to me," 17-year old daughter Sunita Singh Pundir says.

Even as modern society arrives in this ancient village through satellite dishes and mobile phones, the Pundirs say they want their age-old tradition to continue with their children.

"Absolutely," eldest son Sohna says.

He and his younger brother have already discussed it and will marry the same woman.

Daughter Sunita isn't so sure.

"I would like one husband," she says.

But when asked if she will marry for love or tradition, Sunita's answer makes it clear the tradition of marrying more than one man will continue with the next generation.

"I will never leave our tradition even if I have to forgo love. I will never spoil my parents' reputation and my brothers.

Brothers share wife to secure family land - CNN.com

 

[MyTanzania]

Hiyo ni noma mzee,mambo ya umasaini hayo kumbe hata India yapo?

 

[Steve Dii]

Ab-Titchaz, nafikiri hiyo ipo hata kwa baadhi ya kabila fulani hivi hapa Afrika. Kama sivyo, basi inayofanana sana na hiyo desturi.

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Ab-Titchaz, nafikiri hiyo ipo hata kwa baadhi ya kabila fulani hivi hapa Afrika. Kama sivyo, basi inayofanana sana na hiyo desturi.

mmmmh!???...hebu zitaje hizo kabila maana that will be news
for me.

Nilijua wahindi ni mchezo wao maana tulipokua shule kuna
mwalimu alitupa hio nyeti in our ethics class.

 

[Steve Dii]

mmmmh!???...hebu zitaje hizo kabila maana that will be news
for me.

Nilijua wahindi ni mchezo wao maana tulipokua shule kuna
mwalimu alitupa hio nyeti in our ethics class.

Ya kushare simultaneously, nitajitahidi kupata reference kamili nilete hapa. Nadhani ni mojawapo ya makabila kule west afrika.

Ile inayofanana: naamini kuna wakati fulani hivi mkoani Kagera, kabla ya mambo ya ukimwi na jinsi ya kujikinga nao hayajashamiri na kuenea, baadhi ya tabaka/koo za kule zilikuwa na mila ya kurithishana mke. Yakwamba, baina ya kaka, mmojawao akiaga dunia basi mmojawao aliyebaki anakuwa na jukumu la kurithi mke aliyeachwa. It could be a dying custom, but I'm led to believe this is prevalent or still practiced in some other African tribes.

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Ya kushare simultaneously, nitajitahidi kupata reference kamili nilete hapa. Nadhani ni mojawapo ya makabila kule west afrika.

Ile inayofanana: naamini kuna wakati fulani hivi mkoani Kagera, kabla ya mambo ya ukimwi na jinsi ya kujikinga nao hayajashamiri na kuenea, baadhi ya tabaka/koo za kule zilikuwa na mila ya kurithishana mke. Yakwamba, baina ya kaka, mmojawao akiaga dunia basi mmojawao aliyebaki anakuwa na jukumu la kurithi mke aliyeachwa. It could be a dying custom, but I'm led to believe this is prevalent or still practiced in some other African tribes.

Huo mchezo wa kurithishana wake upo sana Kenya katika kabila la wajaluo
na waluhya.Lakini kama usemavyo, ukimwi ulipotia timu basi kitumbua kikawa
kishaingia mchanga.

Wamasai nao sijui kama bado wana ule mcheo wa kutia mkuki nje ya
nyumba?

P.S. Yuko wapi Truth aje kuwatetea jamaa za kwao?Juzi wamerusha rocket ikawa fujo kweli.

 

[Dark City]

Ya kushare simultaneously, nitajitahidi kupata reference kamili nilete hapa. Nadhani ni mojawapo ya makabila kule west afrika.

Ile inayofanana: naamini kuna wakati fulani hivi mkoani Kagera, kabla ya mambo ya ukimwi na jinsi ya kujikinga nao hayajashamiri na kuenea, baadhi ya tabaka/koo za kule zilikuwa na mila ya kurithishana mke. Yakwamba, baina ya kaka, mmojawao akiaga dunia basi mmojawao aliyebaki anakuwa na jukumu la kurithi mke aliyeachwa. It could be a dying custom, but I'm led to believe this is prevalent or still practiced in some other African tribes.

Hapo ndugu yangu umechanganya mambo!!

Kilichotakiwa ni ushahidi wa kabila ambalo ndugu 2, 3 au zaidi wanaoa mke mmoja. Mambo ya kurithi wake yalikuwepo na bado yapo kwenye makabila mengi Tanzania na nchi nyingine za Africa. Pia yapo mambo mengi tu kama vile nyumba ntobo kure ukuryani. Lakini ni tofauti na hili la India. Tafuta undani wa hili katika Africa au mtu mwingine mwenye kujua hilo atuwekee hapa. Kama ni hoja za kurithi wajane, kuchangia wake (opportunistically) na mengineyo iletwe kama hoja inayojitegemea!

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Uroda kwa zamu...kwi kwi kwi!

 

[Kevo]

Let me take this opportunity to take you back to some history.According to Freidrich Engles there are mainly 4 types of families.Now its upto to you to read these and try to categorize where those Indians fall!

The Consanguine Family
This is the first stage of the family and as such a primary indicator of our superior nature in comparison with animals. In this state marriage groups are separated according to generations. The husband and wife relationship is immediately and communally assumed between the male and female members of one generation. The only taboo is a sexual relationship between two generations (ie father and daughter, grandmother and father)..


The Punaluan Family
The second stage extends the incest taboo to include sexual intercourse between siblings, including all cousins of the same generation. This prevents most incestuous relationships. The separation of the patriarchal and matriarchal lines divided a family into gentes. Interbreeding was forbidden within gens, although first cousins from separate gentes could still breed.


The Pairing Family
The first indications of pairing are found in families where the husband has one primary wife. Inbreeding is practically eradicated by the prevention of a marriage between two family members who were even just remotely related, while relationships also start to approach monogamy. Property and economics begin to play a larger part in the family, as a pairing family had responsibility for the ownership of specific goods and property. Polygamy is still common amongst men, but no longer amongst women since their fidelity would ensure the child's legitimacy. Women have a superior role in the family as keepers of the household and guardians of legitimacy. The pairing family is the form characteristic of barbarism, as group marriage is characteristic of savagery and monogamy of civilization. However, at this point, when the man died his inheritance was still given to his gens, rather than to his offspring. Engels refers to this economic advantage for men coupled with the woman's lack of rights to lay claim to possessions for herself or her children (who became hers after a separation) as the overthrow of mother-right which was "the world historical defeat of the female sex". For Engels, ownership of property created the first significant division between men and women in which the woman was inferior.


The Monogamous Family
This form evolved out of the pairing family in the transitional period between the middle and upper stages of barbarism at the dawn of civilization. It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity. Such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father's property as his natural heirs. The wife has become more subservient and the dissolution of the marriage is only possible by the will of the husband. While we cannot speak of monogamy yet in the modern sense of the word, since men were still free to have extramarital sex as much as they wished to, Xenophon in his Oeconomus pointed out that such behavior was seen as degrading for men, and that it could harm their public image as it was frowned upon. While the Monogamous Family is not yet based on "sex-love", and is better referred to as hetaeristic, its emphasis on legitimacy and inheritance did form the basis for the monogamous relationship.

 

[Kevo]

Just in addition to that I think in India two men sharing a wife is referred to a Polyandri!
Am not very much sure with the spellings of that word!

 

[Steve Dii]

Hapo ndugu yangu umechanganya mambo!!

Kilichotakiwa ni ushahidi wa kabila ambalo ndugu 2, 3 au zaidi wanaoa mke mmoja. Mambo ya kurithi wake yalikuwepo na bado yapo kwenye makabila mengi Tanzania na nchi nyingine za Africa. Pia yapo mambo mengi tu kama vile nyumba ntobo kure ukuryani. Lakini ni tofauti na hili la India. Tafuta undani wa hili katika Africa au mtu mwingine mwenye kujua hilo atuwekee hapa. Kama ni hoja za kurithi wajane, kuchangia wake (opportunistically) na mengineyo iletwe kama hoja inayojitegemea!

....hapana mkuu, naona hukunisoma sawasawa tu, naomba ujaribu kuyapitia tena maandishi utanielewa ndugu. thanx.

 

[WomanOfSubstance]

Just in addition to that I think in India two men sharing a wife is referred to a Polyandri![/B]
Am not very much sure with the spellings of that word!

Polyandry ( poly = many and andro= man) is a form of marriage in which a woman has more than one husband or mate at the same time. Polyandry has been practiced by many communities in all parts of the world since ancient times. At present, however, polyandry is prohibited by law in most countries.What the Indian brothers are practicing is fraternal polyandry, and many anthropologists believe that this is the most frequently encountered form.

 

[Nyaralego]

It is in Nepal...see link below

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Nepal's wife-sharing custom fades

while researching on the University of Google, I found more info on sharing a wife and also sharing a husband... Wamaasai, Wanyakole, WaYao all have elements of wife sharing...
see below
STI -- eLetters for Mullick et al., 81 (4) 294-302