While polygamy has been on the decline across India and even in Assam, where the BJP-led government on Thursday passed a Bill in the Assembly, banning polygamy in the state in what Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said was the “first step” towards a Uniform Civil Code.
In Assam, and at the national level, polygamy has consistently declined since 2005-06, as per a 2022 research brief published by Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) that used data collected by the three most recent National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) to examine the prevalence of polygyny – the most common form of polygamy in India that refers to the marriage of a man to multiple women – among married women aged 15 to 49 years.
In 2005-06, when the third NFHS was conducted, the rate of polygyny was 1.9% among all married women aged 15 to 49 in India. By the fourth NFHS in 2015-16, this figure had dropped to 1.6%, and then further to 1.4% in the fifth NFHS from 2019-21.
However, while Assam saw the prevalence of polygyny drop from 3.3% in 2005-06 to 2.4% in 2015-16, it then remained unchanged in 2019-21, as per NFHS figures. In 2005-06, Assam had the sixth highest polygyny rate, falling to eighth highest in 2015-16 before climbing back to sixth in 2019-21.
The Assam districts with the highest polygyny rate are Biswanath and Karimganj at 4.2% each, as of 2019-21. While Biswanath has a considerable Scheduled Tribe (ST) population at 15.21%, more than half the population in Karimganj is Muslim, as per the 2011 Census.
In Assam, though, polygyny among Muslims fell from 6.9% in 2005-06 to 3.6% in 2019-21, while for Hindus it fell from 2.1% to 1.8% in the same period.
While the new Assam law exempts the tribal communities, it prescribes stringent punishments for polygamy. However, polygamy has been banned in India since 1955 under the Hindu Marriage Act, but the practice is permitted among some Hindu communities and under the Muslim personal laws.
Across the states
Polygyny has not only remained prevalent in several states, particularly in the tribal-dominated Northeast, but its prevalence has also increased in some states over the past two decades, as per NFHS data.
In 2019-21, 18 states and Union Territories had a higher rate of polygyny than the national average. At 6.1%, Meghalaya recorded the highest prevalence of polygyny, followed by Mizoram at 4.1%, Sikkim at 3.9%, Arunachal Pradesh at 3.7%, and Telangana at 2.9%. At 2.4%, Assam, Karnataka and Puducherry are tied at sixth highest.
State-wise prevalence of polygyny
From 2005-06 to 2015-16, just six states saw polygyny become more prevalent, led by Mizoram that saw the rate of such marriages rise by 5.9 percentage points from 2.4% to 8.3%.
Five other states – Manipur, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh – also saw rises in the rate of polygyny, but each by less than 1 percentage point. But some of the biggest declines in polygyny were also recorded in the Northeast – Arunachal Pradesh led the way by recording a 2.2 percentage point decline from 6.9% in 2005-06 to 4.7% in 2015-16. Nagaland saw a 2.1 percentage point decline from 4% to 1.9%. The only other states to see declines greater than 1 percentage point were Tamil Nadu and Sikkim.
Between 2015-16 and 2019-21, Meghalaya saw the biggest increase in polygyny, by 2.3 percentage points from 3.8% to 6.1%. Seven other states also saw polygyny rise, though each by less than 1 percentage point, while two others saw no change in its prevalence.
The biggest decline was recorded by Mizoram at 4.2 percentage points, dropping from 8.3% to 4.1%, which was still higher than the rate recorded in 2005-06. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Arunachal Pradesh were the only other regions to see polygyny drop by at least 1 percentage point.
But over a span of about 15 years, from 2005-06 to 2019-21, just three states saw an increase in polygyny – Mizoram by 1.7 percentage points, Meghalaya by 1.5 percentage points, and Haryana by 0.1 percentage points. In two states – Bihar and Punjab – the prevalence of polygyny has remained unchanged. In the same period, seven states recorded at least 1-percentage-point declines in polygyny led by Arunachal Pradesh at a drop of 3.2 percentage points, followed by Nagaland at 2.5 percentage points and Sikkim at 1.7 percentage points.
At the district level in 2019-21 across India, just 20 districts had a polygyny rate above 5%, with 14 of them concentrated in the Northeast. Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district, which has a 96% Scheduled Tribe (ST) population as per the 2011 Census, saw the highest prevalence of polygyny at 20%, followed by Arunachal Pradesh’s Kra Daadi at 16.4%, and Meghalaya’s West Jaintia Hills at 14.5%.
Prevalence of polygyny by background characteristics
Across India, broken down by religion, the minority Christian community has the highest prevalence of polygyny at 2.1% in 2019-21, followed by Muslims at 1.9%, and Hindus and Buddhists at 1.3% each. In 2005-06, Buddhists led at 3.8%, followed by Muslims at 2.6%, Christians at 2.4%, and Hindus at 1.8%.
While the STs saw the highest rate of polygyny, at 2.4% in 2019-21 compared to 3.1% in 2005-06 at the national level, the Scheduled Castes (SCs) saw polygyny drop to 1.5% in 2019-21 from 2.2% in 2005-06. For Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the prevalence of polygyny was lowest, at 1.3% in 2019-21 and 1.7% in 2005-06.
A breakdown of polygyny by education and wealth shows that its prevalence declines with higher levels of educational attainment and increased wealth. Women with no education, for example, saw a 2.4% prevalence of polygyny in 2019-21, compared to 0.3% for those who have completed their higher education. Similarly, the poorest women surveyed by the NFHS reported a 2.4% prevalence of polygyny, compared to 0.5% for the richest group.