For three days in July, folk songs and drumbeats echoed around a quiet village perched high in the Indian Himalayas as hundreds of people gathered to celebrate a wedding. What drew the large crowd – and soon national attention – to the hamlet of Shillai in Himachal Pradesh state was that Sunita Chauhan was marrying not one man but two: brothers Pradeep and Kapil Negi.
The wedding ceremony on 12 July was solemnised in accordance with Jodidara, a polyandrous tradition unique to the local Hatti tribe wherein a woman marries multiple brothers to keep the household united and family land from splitting.
