ABSTRACT
In Dharmnagri and Jhakri, people talked about “taking a bride for a price” [bahū mol lenā] when a man paid—anywhere between several hundred and four or five thousand rupees—for a wife. Most villages in Bijnor had a handful of bought brides, some of them relatively local, some from the foothills of the Himalayas or from further east in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (all areas of greater poverty than the relatively wealthy part of the Gangetic plain in which Bijnor is situated). It was certainly not an approved method of marrying. There were, indeed, only about a half-dozen bought brides in Dharmnagri and Jhakri. Yet their experiences highlighted important issues for married women in rural Bijnor.
