Women after Divorce - Tribes in India

There are no hard and fast rules in regard to the divorce among few India tribes. Marriages are merely social contract or you can say a social obligation to fulfill, and most of the males marry to fulfill the desire for children and the sexual satisfaction.

In Indian tribes, there are different set of rules for divorce. One among these tribes is Koraw tribe in the District of Mirzapur whose procedure of getting divorce is very much simpler compared to others. In this tribe when a dissatisfied husband asks his wife to leave him and denies maintaining her, she leaves him and goes to her parental home. Once left the home of husband she is now considered to be divorced and can marry again whomsoever she wants. One more amazing fact about this tribe is that divorce is not a taboo unlike the other tribes and religions in Indian culture. Rather, the divorced women are very much respected in this tribe. However, the woman divorced seven times in the Koraw tribe of Mirzapur, is the taken as the leader in religious and social functions.

In the tribes of Bhils, according to the custom of this tribe, if a man wants to divorce his wife, he calls the village Panchayat and publicly gives her a piece of cloth from his turban declaring that he is deserting her and shall hence forward treat her as his sister. The divorced woman hangs this cloth from the roof of her parental house for one month as a sign of divorce. It signifies that now she is divorced and her husband has no more rights over her and she can now marry again.

Among the Gonds tribe, if a woman divorces her husband without his consent or remarries to another man without having divorce from the first husband then her second husband has to pay compensation to the former husband.

Similarly, among the Muria tribe the divorce is not considered to be valid unless the amount of compensation is paid to the former husband by the second husband whom the woman marries. And, this amount is decided by the tribal panchayat.

In the Lucia tribe of Assam when the husband divorces his wife, he has to pay off the remaining bride price to the bride's party. But if the woman is guilty of adultery or she herself deserts her husband, she has to return bride price paid to the husband.

The causes of divorce are not similar in different tribes. Among Gonds divorce can be secured in the circumstances of the indifference of wife towards household affairs, her barrenness, her quarrelsome nature, breaking of the marital bond, etc.

In the Kharia tribe a woman can be divorced on the grounds of barrenness, adultery, refusal to live with the husband and even laziness. Among tribals both male and female have a right to divorce. The customs concerning divorce, however, are changing because of the influence of Hindu and Christian cultures on tribal people these days in India.