High in the misty hills of Himachal Pradesh this summer, a wedding drew hundreds of villagers – not for its pomp, but for its rarity. Sunita Chauhan stood at the altar flanked by two grooms, brothers Pradeep and Kapil Negi, as she entered into a kind of a union that held families together in this Himalayan region for centuries.
In this part of northern India, polyandry – the practice of a woman marrying multiple men – is known variously as Jodidara or Pandav Pratha, invoking the legend from the Hindu epic Mahabharata of Draupadi, the daughter of the king of Panchala, marrying the five Pandava brothers.
