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In a country where marital rape is legal, an 18-year old teen was recently forced to wed an abandoned, stray dog in order to keep her village free of menacing spirits.
According to Mirror.co.uk, Mangli Munda, who is from a far-flung village in eastern India, was informed by the local elders that she had to marry the dog because she “possessed” bad luck.
The Mirror goes on to add that the villagers informed her parents that a ceremony needed to be planned as soon as possible after the local guru told them about their daughter’s misfortune.
While Mangli was certainly unhappy about having to wed Sheru (the name was hand-picked by the father of the bride), she went through with the ceremony anyway because she believes her luck will change.
She will be allowed to marry a man afterwards.
While I certainly can respect that this was in many ways a religious ceremony, I think the fact that she is and was considered to be bad luck, says a lot about a culture that at its core, is still deeply patriarchal.
There are also enough superstitions about women that already paint them in a negative light.
For example, widows are seen as bad omens and according to this list of common Indian superstitions, are not even allowed to remarry. In many cases, menstruating women are not even allowed in the kitchen when they’re menstruating because they’re thought of as being unclean)
While arranged marriages in India are certainly common, this case only emphasis the fact that India still has a long way to go when it comes to women being able to make their own choices and gaining control over their own lives.
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