Ratnashri Pandey is from Madhya Pradesh. Her family pressured her to
marry soon after she passed her class nine examinations. Pandey told
Human Rights Watch, “I didn’t want to be married, but a girl’s wishes
are not respected. Everyone said I should get married…I got married.”
Pandey never set eyes on the groom; not even his photograph. “I told my
nana (mother’s father) I wanted to study after marriage.”
She described her struggle to continue her education — juggling
household work, fighting with her husband and in-laws to delay
pregnancy, and enduring insults and beatings because of her decisions.
She separated from her husband because he started beating their young
daughter, and eventually divorced him.
She completed her master’s degree and worked as a teacher. But
because the income was not enough to support both her and her children,
Pandey dreamed of becoming a civil servant. Leaving her children in her
parents’ care, she went to another city, moved into a women’s hostel,
and started preparing for the State civil services examinations. Her
parents spent nearly Rs.300,000 to help. She passed the preliminary
examination in 2006. But State policy stopped her in her tracks a month
before she was to sit the main examination.
The Madhya Pradesh authorities informed Pandey that she was
ineligible to take the exam because she was married as a child, she
said. She filed a case in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which granted
her permission to write the examination pending a decision on the merits
of the case. She did not pass the first time. After another round of
litigation, she sat the exam again in 2009. “I spent more time in courts
than with my books,” she said. The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld the
government rule disqualifying applicants who had married as children.
She appealed to the Supreme Court, and awaits the verdict.
Source: http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/girls-voices/trapped-after-being-forced-to-say-i-do-ratnashris-story-india/
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