INDIA LETTER/Rahul Bedi: Kanamma's electrician husband in India's southern Tamil Nadu state divides his time between her and his second wife in the capital port city of Madras. He gives her little money and Kanamma has to augment her frugal income by working as a domestic help to help sustain herself and her two daughters.
Furious with her husband for taking a second wife, she consulted a lawyer who advised her that other than filing for divorce, which would ultimately prove futile and expensive, there was little she could do.
"I have given up fighting," Kanamma says. There is no point in fighting something when nothing will ever be achieved, she resignedly says. Ms V. Geetha of Snehdi, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for women's rights in Tamil Nadu says bigamy has become a serious issue as social sanction has been accorded to it. "We never offer advice, only suggestions " she said. We let them [bigamy victims] choose the course of action they think right.
Last year, S. Annadurai of Vellayathevanvidhuti, a small village 250 km south of Madras, was mercilessly hounded by the media for marrying sisters Kalaselvi and Muthulakshmi simultaneously.
"Why is everyone bothering us," Annadurai's mother agitatedly asked, when reporters descended on this sleepy, remote village to report the marriage and the demonstrations outside his house by left-wing women organisations. "We are not the only family where such marriages take place and why do these women who have no respect for men come here and protest," she asked querulously. Social activists campaigning for women's rights in Tamil Nadu blame local films and politicians for eulogising and popularising Chinnaveedu, a Tamil word meaning the "smaller home" or the "second wife".
Hundreds of Tamil films are centered around the hero, trapped between two wives - madly in love with both - but never ever portrayed as being in the wrong.
According to a social activist these films merely reinforce Tamilian folklore that bigamy is synonymous with male virility. The influence of films in Tamil Nadu is best illustrated by the cult of M. G. Ramachandran, better known as MGR, who became state chief minister on the strength of his acting career in the 1970s.
So intense was MGR's fan following, that scores of Tamilians committed suicide by setting themselves on fire or jumping out of trains after he died in the late 80s. Although married, MGR openly consorted with other women, a dalliance that in no way affected his political career but, instead drove tens of thousands of Tamilians to emulate him.
Tamilian males today extol the virtues of having more than one wife and dismiss monogamy as a "modern day" phenomenon.
Consequently, bigamy has become widespread, acquiring a grudging a social acceptance in this otherwise conservative, male-dominated region. And though it is not the norm across Tamil Nadu, there is little social or familial pressure that prevents a man determined to "marry" for the second time. "Few in Tamil Nadu look askance at bigamy," said a social activist working to educate women on their rights in Madras. And though illegal and punishable with imprisonment, prosecutions for bigamy are rare as social activists said it is impossible to prove the second wedding ever took place. Social groups said bigamy was also "justified" on the grounds of being a hoary Tamil tradition, practiced for centuries by the feudal classes.
"Many Tamilian women, economically dependent on their spouses, resign themselves to accepting the other woman in their husband's life," said a social worker.
The second wife, however, has no rights over her "husband's" estate. But her children are eligible for a share in their father's property which in scores of cases leads to bitter squabbles and prolonged court battles, often lasting decades in India's notoriously inefficient legal system.
Social activists said women wed married men either because they were divorced or were getting old and feared they would be unable to find a suitable match. Others did it merely to elevate their status from mistresses to wife. But few such alliances are known to have worked as glowingly portrayed in Tamil literature and cinema.
Invariably, the "other woman" spelt trouble at home with men of limited means falling between two homes, unable to adequately sustain either one properly.
There have been instances in which the second wife was simply not told about the first marriage, finding out about it once it was too late. Social workers said children from such a union suffered the most. They lived without the father and the brief periods when their parents were together spent their time quarrelling, mostly over money.
It is also not uncommon for the two wives to fight over the husband's salary on payday outside his workplace. But there have been instances of the two wives, maltreated by their husband, successfully combining to make his life miserable.