Dead Bride, Halted Funeral, And A Replacement: Shocking Case Of Depriving Women Of Agency

I remember when my mother was fighting death after giving birth to my younger sister, the family members had almost decided to marry my father to my mother’s younger sister. They might be worried about my mother but it was more important for them to replace her to take care of us. I shudder to imagine if that really happened.

But thanks to the Universe that the unfair practice of replacing women, undermining their life and agency, didn’t happen in my family. But we cannot ignore the possibility just because fate saved my mother.

The idea of replacing women after their death is very common in our society. If a particular woman cannot give birth to a child, especially a boy, she is replaced by another woman who becomes the second wife. If a woman is not liked by the groom’s family, she is replaced by her sister whom the family adores. If a woman elopes on her wedding day, the groom is married to her sister.

Dead Bride Replaced With Sister Before Funeral

Similarly, a case was reported from Gujarat in which a bride suffered a heart attack while performing wedding rituals and died. But what did her family do? They did not stop the wedding and replaced the bride with her sister. Even more disgusting was the fact that the former bride’s body was kept in cold storage until the wedding rituals ended.

In another case in 2021, a bride who died during wedding ritual rituals was replaced by her sister while the dead bride's body was lying in another room.

The family couldn’t wait until the funeral of the former bride. For them, it was more important to not send the groom and his family empty-handed. For them, conforming to social pressure was the priority over grieving for their daughter’s untimely death.

Doesn’t it make you sick and at the same time empathetic towards the deceased woman? Doesn’t it make you wonder about the unkind behaviour of the family? Doesn’t it pain to see how the deceased woman was reduced from a bride to a dead body in cold storage? Doesn’t it make you angry seeing that the deceased woman was so easily replaced by her sister?

For this family, it was important to preserve the family's reputation over the death of the woman in their house. They ignored the right and agency of the deceased woman who deserved to be lamented for and leave behind an emptiness. But no. The empty space she left was quickly filled in by her sister.

Here we also need to understand whether the sister was willing to marry or not. She was forced by family and social pressure to sit in the deceased bride's place, no matter whether she wanted or not. Would that marriage ever be happy? Would the sister ever get out of the guilt she carried of replacing her sister?

Will the family ever get rid of the guilt of replacing their dead daughter and postponing her funeral? And how did the family have the courage to forget their daughter and indulge in the happiness of the wedding? Yes, one has to move on after a loved one’s death. But not as quickly as the family did.

All this shows that women’s existence in society is only to marry. If one doesn’t agree the other one will be roped in. Marriage among women is like a competition. If one loses, the other immediately replace her. There is no space for women’s agency that entails her right to be unique. Every woman is homogenised as a bride- if one is selected, well and good otherwise she has to live like a useless piece of furniture.

But dear society! No women are not replaceable. They have the right to have a unique space in society. They have unique knowledge, unique purpose and unique life. Stop homogenising women and snatching their rights to be an individual with rights.

Views expressed are the author's own.

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