Brides For Sale In Pakistan

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31448, 15 August 1967, Page 2

Brides For Sale In Pakistan

(By

RALPH JONES)

In the rugged hills of the North-west Frontier a rich landlord sold his daughter for 50,000 rupees (about $5000) not long ago. When the news got around nobody thought ill of him. If anything, his prestige was somewhat enhanced, because usually brides do not fetch as high a price.

There is nothing on record to say how the girl felt about it, but in all likelihood she was proud and happy —because she would really have something to boast about for the rest of her life.

A bride-price that fat could only confirm what she had long suspected: that her beauty and charms were without parallel, in her own district at least, and that her father’s social standing was high.

Bride selling in the frontier area is a custom almost as old as the hills themselves and the people are proud of it, not least the girls. This, at any rate, is what recent evidence indicates.

Mr Khalid Ashraf, of the Peshawar University, who was in the hills doing social research, reports customs which appear to have arisen In the dim mist of pre-history and are still flourishing. As soon as a girl reaches 15 she is ripe for the very literal “marriage market,” the report says. How much she will fetch depends on a number of factors. Of no small importance are her beauty and charm, but she also has to be energetic and hard working. She will be required to help her husband out in the fields and few, if any, can afford to have a delicate piece of china adorning the hut Another factor determining the price is the law of supply and demand. If the girls are in short supply—that is, if the proportion of women to men in a particular valley is low—the girl will fetch as much as 600 rupees (about $5O). This is for ordinary girls. A chiefs daughter, or somebody of high social standing, would fetch much more: the price goes up in direct proportion to how much people around think of her father. In some regions the sex ratio is not favourable. In other words there are just too many pretty girls around and too few boys to marry them. In that case girls are sold for less than 200 rupees (about $2O).

As often as not cattle are used as an exchange com-

modify. The girls are by no means ashamed to be exchanged for cows and buffaloes, because money is scarce in many of these areas. Men are known to have come out of their valleys without knowing what a rupee looks like. When times are bad, a girl will fetch two buffaloes or three cows, but in some areas a damsel is worth as much as a dozen cows.

On occasions tribesmen will strike another sort of bargain: “Your daughter for my son, and my daughter for your son.” Generally, a man would consider himself lucky if he is able to get away with a bride-for-bride exchange of this sort Usually he has to work like the devil to scrape together the price of a bride. This may be one reason why the men are so hard working. It cannot be just the bracing climate and pure food. Because of the scarcity of cash, young men of average standing seldom marry before

they are about 28. A man on a higher social rung would naturally want a wife of equal level, but he finds the going much tougher. As often as not he will be well on to 38 before he can settle down. When the man does get a bride, she is nearly half his age, if not less. None of this is true, of course, in the better administered areas of the frontier and the Punjab—where it is even degrading for a bride to be sold. She would probably not live it down for the rest of her life. At least, her inlaws would never let her. But in the remote valleys, ancient customs have survived because the men are of a fiercely independent spirit They make it difficult for strangers to enter their valleys, and the control which officials have over them is at best tenuous. Interference with their local affairs is not considered wise —least of all In matters concerning their women.