By IANS,
Kolkata : Overcoming family and social pressures, a teenaged daughter got her widowed mother, in her mid-30s, married to a close relative, winning accolades from social activists in West Bengal.
Deepa Varma, the widow, married her brother-in-law Shambhunath at the Kalighat temple here Sunday.
Deepa’s daughter Shilpa, 17, took the initiative and arranged her mother’s marriage with Shambhu. She triumphed over the social and family pressures, by speaking to her family and making them accept the otherwise unconventional match.
Deepa’s husband and Shambhu’s elder brother, Pradip, died three years ago.
Social activists in West Bengal are seeing in the marriage a new trend of permissiveness.
“It’s an exceptional case when a daughter has understood the psyche of her widowed mother and allowed her a second marriage with her own uncle… The girl has shown her big-heartedness and it is just an effect of her liberal thinking,” writer and socio-cultural activist Miratun Nahar told IANS.
Former state Women’s Commission member Nahar said: “It shows that the girl respects her mother’s freedom as an individual and she has given some importance to her (mother’s) feelings.”