Abhishek Kumar Singh/Patna/Varanasi

Many Muslim women in a small part of Bihar live miserable lives due to a strange tradition in their community. The Shershahabadi Muslims living largely in the Kochgama block of the Supaul district of Bihar are not supposed to seek a match for their daughter to wed; instead, they wait for Agua (professional messager or match-maker) to come with a proposal from the side of a prospective groom for the girl.

The tradition among the community is that parents are not supposed to ask for a match for their daughters for marriage, nor do they entertain any direct proposals for matrimony from the family of a prospective groom.

Looking for a match for their daughter or sister by anyone is socially looked down upon as a desperate act making people presume that the woman in question is unfit to get married.

Generally, girls from this community get married at the age of 15 to 20 years. For women above this age, the prospectus of getting a match are marriage decreases in case they cross the age of 25. At this stage, women are considered 'old' and unfit for marriage.

In such cases, parents can only wait to see a proposal for the marriage of their daughter.

As a result, two out of every ten girls in the community are unmarried. This strange custom still exists in Kochgama Panchayat, barely ten kilometers from the Nepal border.

Most of the Muslims in this Muslim-dominated area belong to the Shershahabadi community. Apart from this Panchayat, people of the Shershahabadi community also live in many other districts of Seemanchal and Nepal.

Local social worker Abu Hilal explains, "This problem of many unmarried women in the community been compounded by the growing greed of dowry. Only women who are either good-looking or can afford a hefty dowry get married."

Abu Hilal explains, “It becomes difficult for girls with short height, or not fair-skinned or unattractive facial features. Many times it also happens that out of two or three sisters, the boy's family picks the younger sister for their son. Such a wedding of a woman leads to diminished chances for the older sister.”

The condition of women who remain unmarried due to this custom is grim. They are not entitled to claim a share in the family property. They have to live as a burden on their brothers and their families; they also face ill-treatment and discrimination.

Most of these women suffer from malnutrition and anemia because they are often neglected by their families and not offered proper food. They live off the charity that Muslims do `during the month of Ramazan.

According to a report published in BBC Hindi, the Shershahabadi population living in Bihar comes under the extremely backward class.

Nurul Huda, head of the Shershahabadi Muslim-dominated Kochgama Panchayat, told BCC Hindi: "We had made a list of such unmarried women a few years ago. At that time their number was 250, now it must have increased further."

This number in a Panchayat is too big for its population and one can only imagine the count of such women in the entire community living in many districts of India-Nepal border.

A report in the Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar quoted Shah Jamal alias Lal Mukhiya, who has contested assembly elections and has been the Mukhiya of Kochgama Panchayat twice, as saying that a few years ago the entire community had called a meeting to solve this problem.

People of the Shershahabadi community living in different areas of India and Nepal decided that this must change. "The meeting decided that parents of a girl of marriageable are were free to look for a match or take the initiative for it for their daughter. Lal Mukhiya claims that the initiative had a lot of impact.

"Today, the number of girls left unmarried is less. These days girls choose their prospective husbands.”

However, other villagers disagree with him. Abu Hilal says, “Nothing has changed even after that meeting. Even today people do not go to get the girl married.”

Even today, girls in the community are kept under strict surveillance when they step out of their homes. They are not allowed to work or do labour work and can study only in madrasas. Shaheena Parveen, who works for The Hunger Project, has raised the voice of these women many times.

Shaheena Parveen believes that one of the important steps that should be taken to overcome this problem is to educate the girls and make them self-reliant. She says, 'If these girls go out, study well, and start working, they will overcome this problem.'

According to BBC Hindi, Shershahabadis who speak pure Bengali (a mixture of Urdu and Bengali) associate themselves with Emperor Sher Shah Suri. These people claim that they joined Sher Shah's army as soldiers.

Sher Shah was the founder of the Suri dynasty and he established his sultanate by defeating Mughal Emperor Humayun.

Syedurrahman Rahman, president of All Bihar Shershahabadi Association, says, "These people were settled by Sher Shah. These people, who are of strong build, hardworking and live on the banks of the river, live on the borders of Bengal, Jharkhand and Nepal apart from Bihar."

"Their population in Bihar is approximately 40 lakh and they are game changers in the 20 assembly seats of Seemanchal. These people are very backward educationally and economically in Bihar."

The Shershahabadi Muslims are an economically and educationally backward society, women are mostly educated only till the fifth grade. Women are not free to go out of the house and men also go to big cities like Surat, Jaipur, and Kolkata to work as labourers or tailors.

Common surnames of this community are Sheikh, Sekh, Haque, Islam, and Mondal.

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Most of them are Sunni Muslims affiliated with the Ahl-i Hadith movement. They live mainly in the Dubas (lowlands) around the Ganges river extending from Katihar district of Bihar on the northern bank to Sahibganj district of Jharkhand on the southern bank and Murshidabad district of West Bengal on the southern bank and on the northern Bank in the Malda district.