What is the Dhadicha Pratha?
Dhadicha Pratha is a traditional practice in any parts of Madhya Pradesh where women are rented out to men by their families for financial earn. This practice severely undermines the human dignity and rights of women, leading to exploitation and abuse.
The custom of wife rental has persisted for decades in the Shivpuri village of Madhya Pradesh, known as the Dadhicha custom. Every year, a market is established where families traditionally offer their daughters or wife for rent. Men participate in this market and selecting the women to be their party.
It is surprising to know that parents/guardians willingly rent their girls to men. It is also the case where married husband rent their wife to other men. The wife of the husbands are given on lease to wealthy businessmen who do not have a wife or a partner. The deal is signed on a stamp paper of an amount as meagre as Rupees ten, fifty or hundred. Every year thousands of deals are finalized.
Dhadicha Pratha, or the black deal of hiring spouses, is a detestable cultural practice taking place in a small village in the center of Maharashtra, India. It is an abusive and distressing practice that has prevailed in some portions of India.
This practice has been continued in secret. Women who rent under this tradition—sometimes called “Paro” or “Molik”—face severe mistreatment, including sexual exploitation by their husbands and other male family members. Girls as young as eight are frequently the subject of this activity, when they are rented out for amounts ranging from fifteen to twenty-five thousand rupees. The girls experience psychological and physical abuse in addition to being frequently exposed to serious health hazards, including HIV/AIDS infections.
Because most of them are poor and destitute, these women will then easily become the prey for those who would want to take advantage of their weakness. Often harried, even coerced, into these arrangements by family members or middlemen, they stand to profit from these transactions. The women are often left to endure the emotional and physical abuse at the hands of their interim husbands after the transaction is made. There is a tradition, such as Dhadicha Pratha or the dark trade of renting wives, rife in some small village nestling in the heart of Maharashtra, India. This is some sort of reprehensible and exploitative behavior that has been rife in certain parts of India. This behavior has continued unabated in secrecy.
These women are easy prey for those who would like to make use of the ladies in this trade because they are usually very poor and financially constrained. They are usually coerced or even compelled into these marriages by relatives or brokers who will gain from these transactions. The ladies are generally mistreated physically and otherwise by their temporary husbands after the sale, who view them as nothing other than
Even after all the detrimental effects, Dhadicha Pratha is still practiced with great vigor in parts of rural India. To an extent, this can be attributed to the powerful cocktail of poverty, gender inequality, and lack of laws protecting women in this country. Though there have been some efforts made to spread awareness and bring stricter laws against the system, progress has been painfully slow and incremental.
A multi-dimensional strategy has to be evolved to effectively wipe out the Dhadicha Pratha, spanning economic injustice and poverty to empowering women both at the levels of economy and education, and laws that take care of their rights and their exploiters.
Unless the society acts as one, and the vital force gets infused in the war against Dhadicha Pratha, the world shall never turn out to be a place of fun, equity, and justice for one and all. Only then will we be able to put a full stop to the never-ending cycle of exploitation and ensure respect and dignity for womanhood.
The Indian constitution prohibits all track of trafficking like begging, forced prostitution, organ trade, bonded labour etc. However, Dhadicha Pratha is worse than everything. Bride trafficking is openly happening in the country under the guise of mindless customs and rituals.
It is outrageous that parents themselves have no sense of sympathy or Humanity towards their daughters.
This practice is not limited to India but has been followed in other countries like Africa as well. In several parts of African countries.
By Jyoti Bhandari
