Seek­ing jus­tice can be hard espe­cially for women in poverty. A great story from IPS today shows how dif­fi­cult it can be liv­ing in the class sys­tem in India. Not only do you expe­ri­ence threats and intim­i­da­tion from those you accuse, but your entire vil­lage can shun you as well.

From IPS writer Nitin Jugran Bahuguna gives a cou­ple of exam­ples of women who per­sisted to gain jus­tice. Our snip­pet focuses on the story of Maya Yadav, who fought the cus­tom of forced marriage.

Maya Yadav, 50, of Teent vil­lage, incurred the extreme dis­plea­sure of her com­mu­nity when she pur­sued the per­pe­tra­tors of a child mar­riage, which cul­mi­nated in the police descend­ing on the vil­lage for a show­down with the accused.

“Peo­ple at one point refused to talk to me, say­ing I had brought shame on the vil­lage by call­ing in the police, but I refused to relent,” she says grimly.

It started when 15-year-old Bunty was promised in mar­riage by her par­ents to a man in his 40s for 50,000 rupees (around 1,000 U.S. dol­lars). “Her uncle told me of the out­ra­geous propo­si­tion and I imme­di­ately con­tacted the par­ents and threat­ened to call the police. Scared, they assured me the mar­riage would not take place. But after a few days, they left the vil­lage and returned two weeks later – with­out their daugh­ter,” recalls Yadav.

To queries from Yadav and oth­ers, the par­ents were defi­ant, say­ing the where­abouts of their daugh­ter was no one else’s busi­ness. Again, with the help of the girl’s uncle, Yadav dis­cov­ered that Bunty had been forcibly mar­ried off.

“We found where she was liv­ing and per­suaded the groom and his par­ents to return the girl to her mater­nal home and wait until she turned 18, the legal age for mar­riage. The alter­na­tive, we said, was to inform against them to police,” she says.

Though coerced into agree­ing to Yadav’s demands, the groom’s fam­ily had no inten­tion of leav­ing Bunty behind. Finally, Yadav called the police who ascer­tained from the fright­ened girl that the mar­riage was not of her choos­ing. Steps were then taken to annul the marriage.

Today, Yadav has strength­ened her posi­tion in the vil­lage by becom­ing the sarpanch. Under her guid­ance, gen­der aware­ness pro­grammes have been ini­ti­ated at reg­u­lar inter­vals in the vil­lage so that every sin­gle girl in her com­mu­nity now attends school.

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