[For many years, Leelabai hid her anger over the test, and even allowed it to be performed on her daughter. Now, she and a group of widows and divorcées in the Kanjarbhat community are denouncing the ritual, triggering a violent backlash from those who want to preserve the practice.]
By Vidhi Doshi
 |
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Kanjarbhat community
members hold a protest in support of the virginity ritual on
March 26 in Pune,
India. The group demanded police action and a public
apology from a group of
youth who have spoken out against the
tradition.(Hindustan Times/Getty
Images)
|
PUNE,
India — In the run-down
neighborhood of Bhatnagar in this sleepy Indian city, a small rebellion is
underway. The new generation of the close-knit Kanjarbhat community is staging
protests at weddings to end the centuries-old practice of virginity tests.
The tests typically happen like this: The
bride and groom consummate their marriage on a white cloth. The virgin bride
proves her “purity” by staining the cloth with blood from her broken hymen. The
following day, a council of community elders publicly asks the groom, “Were the
goods pure?” The goods refer to the bride.
Virginity tests are rare in modern India and
happen only in small pockets, such as among the Kanjarbhat, a once-ostracized
gypsy tribe. But the predominantly Hindu country is seeing waves of change
brought about by a new generation that has benefited from policies ensuring
that members of India’s lower castes, long disadvantaged in the hierarchical
social system, receive an education and employment opportunities. And the youth
have focused much of their attention on women’s rights, pitting them against
community elders who want to uphold ancestral traditions and value systems.
Leelabai, a 55-year-old divorcée who goes by
only one name, recalls how she was put through the test four decades ago, when
she was 12. “At the time, I was young,” she said. “I didn’t know what was
happening.”
For many years, Leelabai hid her anger over
the test, and even allowed it to be performed on her daughter. Now, she and a
group of widows and divorcées in the Kanjarbhat community are denouncing the
ritual, triggering a violent backlash from those who want to preserve the
practice.
A rift in the community began after Vivek
Tamaichikar started a WhatsApp group of Kanjarbhat youth who want to end
virginity tests. Tamaichikar, who hopes to marry his fiancee later this year,
said he won’t allow his family to put her through the test, which he thinks is
misogynistic and cruel. Members of the community have threatened to alienate
the couple if he doesn’t follow tradition, he said.
A number of Kanjarbhat — both men and women —
said that Tamaichikar’s campaign has put an unwanted spotlight on the
community’s rituals. Some described how Kanjarbhat girls at colleges were
taunted by their peers who waved white handkerchiefs with red ink stains as
they walked past. Others said marriage offers from other Kanjarbhat communities
who live outside the state had diminished.
Women who spoke about going through virginity
tests said members of the community lied to outsiders about the existence of
the ritual.
“They’re all liars,” said Leelabai, the
divorcée who has been through the test.
Community members are afraid to speak against
the village council of community elders, or panchayat, Tamichikar added. Those
who do face boycotts and intimidation.
Stigmatized for decades by police and
government after being classified as a “criminal tribe” under India’s colonial
rule in 1871, the Kanjarbhats prefer to keep the authorities out of their
affairs. Legal disputes within the community, from marriages to murders, are
presided over by the panchayat.
Despite having access to benefits through
India’s affirmative action policies from the 1960s onward, poverty remains
rampant in Bhatnagar. Kanjarbhat millennials are the first generation to have
widespread access to higher education and Western media.
The resulting differences in education levels
have cleaved the community in two. Those against virginity tests are “defaming”
the Kanjarbhat people, community members said.
“Why are they doing all this in front of the
media?” said Jitendra Karalekar, a Kanjarbhat man who denied that virginity
tests happen. “If they want to do all this, they should do it behind a curtain.
We want people in Washington and everywhere to think of us highly.”
Tamaichikar is not the first in his community
to speak out; he is carrying on a battle that his uncle and aunt started in
1996. Krishna and Aruna Indrekar married after a 10-year romance and refused to
go through the virginity test, the pair recounted, which distanced them from
the community.
Krishna, who got a university education and
later a government job, was snubbed by members of his family and community who
thought his years at college made him believe that he was superior to them.
When he announced that he would marry Aruna in court rather than following the
panchayat’s orders, he faced threats. “You’ve read three or four books and now
you think you can overturn centuries of traditions?” he recalled community
members saying.
Krishna’s stepbrother, Irani, who sits on the
panchayat, said he thought his brother’s refusal to follow tradition was
arrogant. “He’s very self-righteous. He won’t listen to us. The test that
you’re talking about, it will never stop. It has been going on for years and it
will go on for years.”
Irani said that turning the community’s
virginity rituals into a cause was disingenuous. “If he really wants to help
our community, why not do something for the widows who have no one to turn to?
Why not help the unemployed youth?”
The women in the community are divided.
Young, married women were unwilling to speak on the record out of fear of
reprisals from the community.
Sapna Rawalkar, a community doctor, said that
there is a practice of elders asking about the woman’s purity, but the term
“virginity test” is a misinterpretation of their traditions, which she said
protect women. Asking the husband to testify to his wife’s virginity publicly,
for instance, is a practice that protects the bride from future allegations
against her character. “They’ve taken this and exaggerated it and colored it in
their own way,” she said.
But Priyanka Tamaichikar, Vivek’s cousin,
said she thinks the protests signal the beginning of change.
“I thought I was the only girl in my
community who thought the tests were wrong,” she said. “I’ve seen a bride being
beaten. I’ve seen women going into the room to look at the stained cloth. All
my life I’ve thought, one day, I’ll get up and show them they’re wrong. One
day, I’ll do something.”
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