In the Story, the marriage that happened between Ratna and Ranga was by an arranged setup and Shayam, acted as a cupid. The story is traced back long when the prevalence of child marriage was very much there and there weren’t many legalities that prevented it. In the story we see an eleven-year-old girl being married off to an adult.
With a steady change in initially legalising the marital age for a girl to 18, many girls were protected from teenage pregnancies. The immature children who are newly married are often pushed into a family system. There is an increase in the rate of abortions, premature births which may result in infant mortality and the death of mothers. Mental as well as physical health torments. The percentage of pregnant teenage women declined from 7.2% in 2017 to 4.1 % today.
Though in the present scenario in India, the legal age of marriage of girls has been raised to 21 recently, also at that time most rather the marriages are arranged and also child marriage is still performed in India.
Furthermore, child marriage also results in a high prevalence of domestic abuse among women. When women are married off at an early age i.e when they are deprived of their schooling they happen to be less educated about their bodies and their rights. Their lack of literacy and dependency towards their husbands is the main reason often given by husbands for inflicting domestic violence.
A dedicated unit dealing with forced marriages said that it recorded less number of cases related to India in 2019 – 65 – compared to those in 2018 (85), but India remains among the UK’s top ‘focus’ countries on this issue. These rates are the reported cases, and many cases go unreported in India. These rates are soaring high in the outskirts of the country. Rather with growing rates of more successful and independent women, we see a slight decrease in rates of forced marriages.
Moving on to the rates of honour killings of girls on inter-caste The National Crimes Record Bureau’s report for 2020 revealed that 25 cases of “honour killing” were reported in the preceding year. In the previous years, the reports stated that only one incident each took place in 2018 and 2017. But Evidence, an NGO, revealed in November 2019 that as many as 195 known cases of honour killings were reported from Tamil Nadu alone in the past five years. Clearly, several cases go unreported. “These episodes of caste-motivated violence demonstrate that casteism has not been annihilated even after 75 years of Independence,” observed a bench of Supreme Court justices in November 2021 as it upheld the conviction of 23 persons more than 30 years after three persons, including a young woman, were killed for violating caste-ridden societal norms in Uttar Pradesh’s Barsana.
Presently if we see then the present-day marriages aren't just supported by the bride price of a girl. People use a range of euphemisms like " The jewellery that she will get is a blessing from her family. In today's time, the groom's side can be seen asking for ostentatious cash gifts or luxury gifts, to a demand for a compulsory economic transfer of a bride into a groom's house. We see nowadays that on one side people go for a simple wedding but on the other most marriage proposals are rejected because of brideprice.
The difference that is observed here is that it is not the past times when a woman's sole purpose to be brought home was to serve her in-laws and be obedient towards her husband and in-laws or just be domestically bound for all the homely chores. In Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish we see Shashi Godbole, or Sri Devi enduring a very literal and figurative odyssey. Her odyssey put us in the realm of question that how we Indians often perceive a traditional Indian homemaker.
Often portrayed in the Hindi cinema as the main protagonist or supporting character or our own homes, women often play the role of a homemaker. She acts as a binding glue for her own family and stokes the energy into her children to go to school and acts as an executive to send her husband to work. She is shown as a sanskari woman who is always appropriately dressed and follows the binary of the good Indian woman. Often portrayed a homemaker sacrifices her own needs to provide for her family. A fact that comes here is that the biggest reason for a homemakers unhappiness is the homely conflicts. It was initially believed that her discomfort is mostly because of her, but later on, it is because of her family disrespecting her and her work not being appreciated.
Taking a glimpse of the present scenario, we see a high number of educated, financially independent and empowered women. Though we still can't say that such barbarous and patriarchic practices have left us, yes one thing that can be said for sure is that it is still the shadow of Indians that is gradually fading as the sun of the refreshed and early morning is rising.