Brothers who share everything-including a wife

Polyandry has long been part of the Himalayan villages culture.
In the Himalayan villages one woman can have up to seven husbands. Usually, some of the men are brothers. This practice keeps the family lands from being divided and limits population growth in a country where resources are scarce


Amar and Kundan Singh Pundir are brothers who share everything – including a wife.



Polyandry is illegal in India but socially acceptable here. No one from the government seems to bother the villagers about the law.

CNN reports on how the two brothers inherited land in Himachal Pradesh, India – a beautiful remote hillside village – and, now in their 40s, have lived together nearly their whole lives. They are both poor, so sharing a home and wife eases the wallet, but what about the marital relations of 25 years?
They practice what is known as fraternal polyandry -- where the brothers of one family marry the same woman. Why? Tradition and economics.



Life is hard here. The village is precariously perched on the side of a very steep hill about 6,000ft up. Most of the villagers survive off tiny plots of cropland.
In this difficult terrain there isn't enough land to go around. So, instead of finding separate wives and splitting up their inherited property, the brothers marry the same woman and keep their land together.



Wife Indira Devi says life with two husbands isn't easy.

"We fight a lot."But like any married couple they fight mostly over mundane stuff, except there are three spouses instead of two.
"Usually it's about chores, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?" she says.

One thing they agreed on was the need to have children; They have three. So how does a married trio deal with sex?
"We make shifts, change shifts and sleep on alternate days. We have to make shifts otherwise it won't work," Kundan says.
"To run our families we have to do this, overcome the hurdles as well and then we have to control our hearts from feeling too much," Amar adds.
To outsiders their arrangement may seem odd, but in the village of about 200 it is the norm.

Typically the marriages are arranged and women have two husbands. But some wives have three or four depending on how many brothers there are in a family.
Polyandry is illegal in India but socially acceptable here. No one from the government seems to bother the villagers about the law.