Prison of Silence for Kashmir’s Unmarried Women in 2025
R.S. Bali:
In the sweltering courts of 1887 Bombay, Rukhmabai—a child bride thrust into an unwanted union—faced a stark ultimatum: submit to her husband or languish in prison. She chose the latter, and her defiance rippled through colonial India and Britain, igniting reforms that spared generations of girls from similar fates. Her story was never just personal rebellion; it was a seismic challenge to patriarchal norms, child marriage, and the commodification of women. Fast-forward to December 2025, in the snow-draped valleys of Muslim-majority Kashmir, and one cannot help but imagine: if Rukhmabai were alive today, her pen and voice would turn to the paradoxes that now plague marriages here. No longer child brides alone, but late brides crushed by exorbitant rituals, endless court battles over trivial matrimonial disputes, mental trauma from delayed unions, and the quiet injustice meted out to the unmarried. The data from Jammu and Kashmir, especially the Valley, would fuel her fire.
Kashmir’s marriage landscape has changed dramatically, yet it still suffocates women’s agency in new ways. Once notorious for early unions, the Valley now wrestles with delayed marriages—driven by education, unemployment, and the lingering effects of decades of conflict. The mean age at first marriage for women in Jammu and Kashmir is 23.6 years, the highest in India, with urban Kashmiri women averaging 25.8 years. In the Muslim-majority Valley, boys now marry between 28 and 32, girls between 25 and 28—up from 21 and 24 two decades ago. Rukhmabai, who called marriage a “theft of childhood,” would celebrate girls pursuing medicine and civil services instead of early motherhood. Yet she would rage at the price they pay: in a conservative society, women past 25 who remain unmarried are labelled defective or cursed, triggering profound psychological distress.
The mental trauma of delayed marriage has become Kashmir’s silent epidemic. In a culture where marriage equals social worth, unmarried women endure whispers, isolation, and depression. Clinical psychologists in Srinagar report that these women suffer chronic stress, emotional voids, and, in extreme cases, suicidal ideation. The Tele-MANAS mental health helpline has received over 90,000 calls from Jammu and Kashmir since its launch, many linked to loneliness and marital pressure. Infertility rates have spiked 30% since 2015, partly because of late childbearing; the region’s total fertility rate is now a mere 1.4—the lowest in the country. For Muslim families where children are a cultural cornerstone, blame falls disproportionately on women. Rukhmabai would recognise this as modern imprisonment of the mind and fight for widespread counselling and reproductive-health awareness.
If delay is the seed of trauma, the astronomical cost of marriage arrangements is its fertiliser. A modest Valley wedding easily crosses ₹10-20 lakh for a middle-class family; lavish ones in Srinagar touch ₹50 lakh. The legendary wazwan feast alone costs ₹5-7 lakh for 500 guests. Dowry, though illegal, remains rampant—cars, cash, gold—pushing thousands of poor girls into indefinite limbo. Charitable trusts organise mass weddings for the destitute, yet surveys reveal that over 50,000 women in south Kashmir alone remain unmarried past “marriageable age” simply because their families cannot afford the spectacle society demands. Rukhmabai, raised by a reformer who prized education over extravagance, would denounce these customs as the new “wicked practice” that destroys lives just as child marriage once did.
Then come the “nonsense matrimonial issues” clogging the courts. Srinagar and Anantnag courts now see three to five fresh divorce petitions every single day—a 30% surge since 2012. Domestic violence, extramarital affairs fuelled by social media, dowry harassment, and blame over infertility top the list. Special Lok Adalats and family-court drives settle hundreds of cases at a time, yet thousands more languish. Mohalla committees, almost always male-dominated, pressure women to reconcile rather than grant justice. Women who summon the courage to file cases often face years of litigation and social ostracism. Rukhmabai, who argued in court that a child cannot consent to marriage, would today demand faster family courts, stricter enforcement of anti-dowry laws, and legal literacy campaigns so that no woman is coerced into staying in a violent or loveless union.
The cruellest injustice of all is the treatment of those who never marry. Over 27% of Kashmiri women aged 20-49 remain single—many of them “half-widows” whose husbands disappeared during the conflict, leaving them in legal and social purgatory. Unmarried women face harassment, economic exclusion, and mental-health collapse with almost no state support. In a region where female literacy still lags far behind male literacy, remaining single often means lifelong dependency and stigma. Rukhmabai spent her life ensuring girls could choose study over marriage; she would insist that choosing to stay unmarried must be equally respected and protected.
If Rukhmabai walked the streets of Srinagar today, she would write blistering op-eds under a pseudonym, petition authorities for simplified nikahs, campaign for mental-health parity, and shame clerics and families into abandoning ostentatious weddings. She would push the government to expand mass-wedding schemes, remove absurd eligibility barriers, and create real safety nets for single women. Her 1888 victory forced the empire to raise the age of consent; in 2025 Kashmir she would force society to lower the price of dignity.
Rukhmabai outlived the husband who tried to claim her, the empire that ruled her, and the customs that tried to silence her. Every Kashmiri girl who goes to university instead of a wedding mandap, every woman battling a courtroom for her freedom, every unmarried daughter holding her head high—they are all her heirs. It is time we listened again to the woman who, at twenty-two, told a colonial judge she would rather go to prison than surrender her future. The chains have changed shape, but the fight remains the same.
