KATHMANDU, NEPAL – The constitution here guarantees the right to marry anyone, but that didn’t matter when Manoj Kumar Ram, a 22-year-old Dalit, married a woman from an upper caste. Instead, his wife’s family accused him of kidnapping her and Ram ended up in prison.
Ram’s wife, Babita Isar, says her father wanted to marry her off to a man in India even though she had a romantic relationship with Ram. So the couple ran away. In response, Isar’s father filed a complaint, claiming that Isar, who was 21 at the time, was 12 years old and had been kidnapped by Ram.
“She looks tall and older because of her diet,” says Rohit Isar, Babita Isar’s father. “She’s not old enough to differentiate between good and evil.”
A court later confirmed that Babita Isar was 21 when she and Ram left.
This was the second time Babita Isar and Ram ran away. The first time, they were gone for a week before being lured back by incessant calls from their families. Isar says her family locked her in the house after she returned.
“I didn’t see sunlight for a month,” she says.
Since then, Ram has been jailed twice on kidnapping charges, once for each time he and Babita Isar ran away.
In Nepal, the caste hierarchy places Dalits at the lowest rung of Hindus – a social structure that is widespread throughout Nepal. Since Dalits were considered unclean and untouchable in the past, intercaste marriage with them is seen as a violation of caste purity. Marrying a Dalit lowers a person’s social status.
“A family’s honor is lost when a daughter marries someone from the lower caste,” says Dipesh Ghimire, a sociologist at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.
Discrimination, particularly legal action against Dalit men who marry upper-caste women, is widespread, says Devraj Bishwokarma, chairman of the National Dalit Commission. At least 40 couples from different caste groups seek the commission’s protection from violence and backlash every year, especially from upper caste communities.
According to a study by Tilak Bishwokarma, an assistant professor at Tribhuvan University’s Ratna Rajyalaxmi Campus, a third of the 70 Dalit men surveyed in 2023, all of whom married women from castes considered higher than their own, faced legal action faced by their wives’ families in Kathmandu. There is no official data on how many people were detained.
Caste discrimination is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of 30,000 Nepalese rupees (approximately $223), or both. At the same time, marriage of anyone under 20 is not technically recognized and consensual sexual relations with anyone under 18 is considered statutory rape. If a complaint is made against minors who marry, both parties may be subject to a prison sentence and a fine. Underage couples who flee can be sent to juvenile halls and their families imprisoned.
However, about 40% of women in Nepal marry before the age of 18, according to a Nepal population and health survey cited in a 2019 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, known as UNICEF. There are few complaints related to underage marriage. According to a joint investigation by the UN Population Fund and UNICEF, 64 cases of child marriage were registered with police in 2020 and 443 cases were reported via a hotline. Marriages of minors that are not reported are usually uncontested.
It is Dalit men who face the knife edge of the law even when they marry women or teenage girls who are of an acceptable age for marriage in Nepal. Men and teenagers who try to cross the border into India with their upper-caste wives could face human trafficking charges if they are caught, says assistant professor Tilak Bishwokarma.
Teenage girls and women also have to face consequences. Like Babita Isar, they are often imprisoned by their families, says Sailendra Ambedkar, a Kathmandu-based lawyer.
The prosecution and imprisonment of Dalit men who marry upper-caste women is a “mockery of the law and the government,” said Jeevan Pariyar, a Dalit and member of the House of Representatives, in a July 2023 statement, along with 15 others Dalit became parliamentarians.
Despite this formal declaration, there is no sign that the practice of discrimination against Dalit men will end.
Kabita Kshetri says she grew up in a house where Dalits were only allowed in when physical labor was required. When a Dalit touched a utensil, Kshetri said, her mother sprinkled it with holy water to make it pure again. When Kshetri, then 17, fell in love with 19-year-old Bipin Sunar, a Dalit man, she knew the road ahead would be difficult. According to her, when they ran away together, her aunt filed a case in court alleging that Sunar lured Kshetri with the promise of marriage and raped her. Global Press Journal contacted Kshetri’s aunt but the call was disconnected. Attempts to contact other members of Kshetri’s family were unsuccessful.
In November 2021, Sunar was sentenced to twelve years in prison for rape. He and Kshetri, then 19, had a six-month-old baby girl. Kshetri worked with lawyer Surendra Thapa Magar to file an appeal and the rape charge was overturned. Sunar was sentenced again, this time to one year and six months in prison. He was released from time served in April 2023.
“She lived with him voluntarily,” says Magar. “When her daughter was born, she continued to live with Sunar, who was actively involved in caring for her child.” It was “morally wrong” to charge Sunar with a crime, he said.
In Ram’s case, his entire family was involved. When Ram and Isar ran away, police found Ram’s father and set bail at 75,000 rupees (about $565), which he could pay to avoid jail time.
Ram’s brothers – Rupesh, a police officer himself, and Ranjaye – were arrested in March and June 2023 respectively and both were imprisoned.
Meanwhile, far away in Kapilvastu district of Lumbini province, Isar and Ram decided to get married. They assumed that legalizing their relationship would prevent the police from taking action against them. A few days later, the newlyweds returned to their home district, but Ram was arrested on their arrival.
“I started crying as the police took me away,” says Ram. “They said I would be there for a long time. I was afraid that I wouldn’t see my family and my wife again.”
A few weeks later, in June 2023, lawyer Ambedkar filed petitions that led to the release of all three brothers from prison. The court observed that the kidnapping allegation was not valid as Isar and Ram had registered their marriage in court.
Isar says her father warned her that he would take legal action if she ran away with Ram. But the problem isn’t running away for love, she says. If she had gone with a man from a higher caste, she says, her father would have forgiven her.