They say there is nothing new under the sun. Whatever you think seems impossible and abnormal, seems totally normal in some parts of the world. In Nepal and some other countries, women are allowed to marry more than one husband.
It might sound strange to “macho” societies that there are cultures where the families are of a “matriarchal” character, that is, where the women are the bosses, and that they are even polyandry, women with several men as husbands.
Did you know there’s a country where you can marry more than one man? Believe it or not, there is a country where you can legally live with more than two husbands.
When we talk about polygamy we think that men are the only ones with the right to marry several women in the many African or Asian countr
ies where this tradition is still practiced.
However, surely many had not yet heard the term “polyandry”, yes, that which allows a woman to marry more than one husband. A term hardly known until a few years ago and whose practice is carried out in Nepal.
However, northern India, the Himalayas and especially Nepal are some of the few countries where a woman can marry several men, in this case brothers from the same family.
The feminist factor is the first thing that comes to mind. However
, the reason for these unions corresponds to other, more economic interests. In Nepal, the division of land after the death of the patriarch reports very few hectares to the different children and their families.
Generally, the family chooses the woman who will marry their children. After the ceremony, the different children who come from these unions, while recognizing their father, will generally call the older brother father, while the younger one
s will be called “uncles.
All of them live in the same house while the men alternate the treatment of crops with domestic work, so that the woman is never alone.
Polyandry has been increasingly reduced in the countries where it is practiced, although many patriarchs still see in this custom the best safeguard to unify the properties of their descendants.
Nepal is one of the few countries where polyandry is practiced, a tradition that alludes to economic rather than moral issues but which, in one way or another, benefits to a greater extent a woman whose matrix function for an entire family not only leads her to exercise a more privileged position, but the topic of
polygamy is shaken by a world in which we should never take anything for granted.
