“A Father Vows To Save His Daughter From A Marriage He Forced Her Into”
“Durga wasn’t the only one to pay a heavy price. Once Lumbaram agreed to the match for Durga, he felt compelled to marry off his two younger daughters the same night: Wedding celebrations are so expensive that in the village when you marry one daughter, you generally marry the rest in the same go.
Lumbaram’s middle daughter, Nimmu — whom NPR profiled in a story last fall — was only 10 at the time. His youngest daughter was 6. But Lumbaram consoled himself that he was at least able to match the two of them to husbands close to their own age — boys with educational prospects. In short, boys who were nothing like Durga’s husband…
Now that he had pushed Durga into the marriage, the school gave Lumbaram a temporary way to save her from her husband. Lumbaram has told the groom, “As long as she’s getting a free education I’m not sending her to live with you yet.” And now Durga is enrolled in a college that the charity has also paid for.
Lumbaram is using the same approach to keep his younger daughters from starting married life with their husbands until they’re at least 18…
he has already accomplished something remarkable for rural India. The proof is evident in a procession of singing women who are now making their way past the panches. They’re headed to a wedding in a house next door. And the bride is not a child. They don’t do that in this village anymore. All this time Lumbaram has been holding off his daughter’s husband, he has also been making the rounds of other fathers, persuading them to send their girls to the boarding school too — essentially getting them to rethink their attitude about girls.”
Related: “My Mother Was a Child Bride”; “Syrian mother’s agony: why I made my teenage daughter become a child bride”
