NEW DELHI: When Kshama Bindu tied the knot with herself last month, in what was India’s first known sologamy wedding, she made international headlines and attracted ridicule at home, but it has also inspired other women to stand up for themselves.
A 24-year-old blogger from Vadodara in the western state of Gujarat, Bindu married herself in a traditional Hindu ceremony attended by her friends on June 9.
The wedding took place two days ahead of the original date, after the plan made the rounds on social media, raising concerns that it could be disturbed.
“My decision to marry myself drew lots of attention and I feared some kind of backlash, so I decided to prepone the wedding and marry earlier,” she told Arab News after the ceremony.
“Some eight people close to me attended the wedding.”
None of them were her immediate family members. Bindu’s mother, who lives in another city, and father who is in South Africa, were initially shocked, but accepted her choice, if it made her happy.
“I always wanted to be a bride but not a wife. Life changes when you become a wife,” she said. “You don’t need to be with a partner in order to be happy.”
But that was not how critics saw it.
Bindu’s social media accounts were flooded with comments calling her an “attention seeker,” advising that she sought psychological care, warning against “mental health issues such as dementia, anxiety, depression,” accusing her of making a “joke of other rituals,” or saying her decision was “plain idiotism done for social media fame.”
For Bindu, sologamy is an act of love — love of the self.
“No one is carrying my baggage, I won’t have expectations from anyone else now,” she said. “Sologamy is self-love, and it is my gesture of showing self-love to myself.”
And self-love is what few women in India’s patriarchal society are rarely able to afford.
For Vasudha Kaukuntla, a 25-year-old journalist from Hyderabad in the southern state of Telangana, Bindu has stood up for herself in a society that looks down on women “as a weaker gender, which cannot make decisions.”
“She’s going against patriarchy and she’s challenging the system, so definitely she’s an inspiration,” Kaukuntla told Arab News.
“I really respect that sort of an ideology that she has been going for, just because she stood by it, she has taken not just a brave step but also she stood by it, she has called the media and let everyone know that she is doing it because she wants to normalize it.”
Sologamy, which cannot be legally registered as marriage in India, is unlikely to become a norm anytime soon.
Dr. Neelam Mishra, a Delhi-based psychologist, sees the concept as “still very new and not very easily acceptable” and it did not seem a “feasible option in the long run in India, since there is a lot of cultural norms.”
“But talking about emotional and psychological freedom is liberating in terms of self-love,” she said.
The liberating effect is what women like Sneha Rao, a 27-year-old living in Gujarat, have found in Bindu’s case, through which she has become familiar with the idea of sologamy as such.
“I believe this is an inspiration for the woman in the society,” she told Arab News. “We too exist! We too have a voice, we too have choice to make.”
Like Bindu, Rao is also an independent working woman.
“An independent woman doesn't need a man to satisfy all her needs, expectations. We are capable of giving birth to a human, suffer all the pain, bear all the expenses,” she said.
“Why we females are the ones who need to adjust always? It’s better to get married to the self. But only those who can understand this can take this courage.”
