The first wife, 90 cents, the second, 45 dollars, and so on up to the 453 dollars that a man must pay in a
tax to marry
and live in polygamy in Dhaka.
This is a plan by the authorities in the capital of Bangladesh to discourage multiple couples, a legal practice in the country, but one that has revived debate on the street.
The Dhaka South Corporation last week issued an order creating a tax on marriages, which will grow exponentially as the number of female spouses for a man expands.
Love tax
Under this guideline, issued this month but which became effective last January, a man will pay 90 cents to marry his first wife or a new one in the case of divorce or widowhood, and that figure will rise to 45 dollars in the event that In the case of the second wife, 181 dollars for the third wife, and up to
453 dollars
if one wants to be married to four wives at the same time.
According to the municipal corporation, this measure is intended to discourage polygamy in the south of Dhaka, a city of 10 million inhabitants where this practice is legal among Muslims and Hindus, who represent 99% of the population of Bangladesh, 170 million people.
In Bangladesh, the rate for the first wife is 90 cents on the dollar (EFE).
"The tax difference between each marriage has been kept high because we do not want a family to break up. We kept the tax rate high to discourage this practice," said corporation spokesperson Abu Naser.
Up to four wives...or more
Bangladeshi law does not set a maximum number of wives although, based on the Quran, Islamic scholars in the country said that a man can have
a maximum of four wives at a time
.
"The Quran allowed a man to have four wives at a time. But if someone cannot treat all wives equally, he is asked to live with only one," said Islamic Foundation of Bangladesh deputy director Waliur Rahman.
The consent of the other wives is not required in Islam, but is mandatory under Bangladeshi law, Rahman said.
Having three marriages in Bangladesh is a normal thing (Facebook).
This disparity between laws gives rise to cases such as that of Robijul Islam, who runs a driving school in Dhaka, and who went viral on social networks last December after contracting his
seventh marriage
.
"I know I'm only allowed to have four wives at a time. But I couldn't rule out two because the women I married are
all from poor families
," Islam said, specifying that his first wife was divorced and now lives with six. women.
"None of my wives have complaints about the others, I treat them all equally. They are like sisters to each other," he added, and assured that he had never had legal problems for exceeding the limit of four women.
A fee for polygamy
The rise in cost of this practice has reopened the debate on polygamy in Bangladesh, while women's rights activists question the effectiveness of the new tax.
"Most marriages in our country are not legally registered," said the president of the Bangladesh Women's Council, Fauzia Moslem, indicating that the measure in Dhaka will not serve to change the situation in the rest of the country.
"As long as we do not reform our personal laws, this practice will continue," he said.
Lawyer Ishrat Hasan also expressed himself along these lines, who questioned the provision of polygamy in the country in 2001 before the courts, considering it a discriminatory practice.
Women's rights activists question the effectiveness of the new tax (Reuters).
"In Sharia law, men were required to treat their four wives equally. But it did not describe how this could be guaranteed. That is why we said that this law should disappear," the lawyer said.
But its position contrasts with that of other cities in the Asian country, which are considering similar measures to discourage polygamy without declaring it illegal.
This is the case of the town of Rajshahi, in the west of the country and with half a million inhabitants, although from there they assure that they already tried something similar in the early 2000s, without achieving results.
EFE Agency
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