In Gujarat’s Bhavnagar, 552 couples tie the knot, with PM as guest

For Mackwan’s family of two — she and her mother — it was difficult to sustain after she lost her father Rajubhai in 2010 to cancer.

“Our marriage was getting delayed due to our financial condition,” says Mackwan, whose mother does domestic work.

Little did they know that when they get married it would not only be in the middle of a major election and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be a guest at the wedding.

They were among the 552 couples who got married at the Papa-ni-Pari all-religion mass wedding held in Bhavnagar on November 6, the day when Modi also kicked off the BJP’s election campaign in Gujarat.

A wedding planner from Mumbai was called, and almost four lakh guests dined, the organisers said.

Organised by Bhavnagar-based Maruti Impex Foundation, the CSR arm of the diamond cutting and polishing company, for women who had lost their fathers.

“All these 552 girls have lost their fathers and are from poor financial background who cannot afford a marriage function. We received more than 1,050 applications which were scrutinised on these two criteria followed by a physical verification process by our observer team who visited their houses. A few, around 30 per cent have lost both the parents,” Suresh Lakhani of  Maruti Impex told The Indian Express.

Among those who tied knots at the functions are Hastika Dhandhukiya, 20, and Jeyu Gohil (23). Three years ago they fell in a relationship began and within three months the two decided to get married.

Hastika’s family, of her mother, a 21-year-old brother and 17-year-old sister, did not approve of their relationship because he was from a different caste.

The couple went ahead and married in a court on June 8, 2021. Hastika who dropped out in Class 9 has lost her father in a road accident when she was nine years old.

Hastika who works at Maruti Impex as diamond cutter for last five years learnt about the mass marriage ceremony and says she registered immediately.

“I knew the scale and thought behind this as my cousin also got married in the mass marriage in 2018,” says Jeyu, a Class 7 drop out,  a diamond cutter in the same firm for the past one year.

“Not only did we record the highest number of couples this time but also the number of castes. There were 52 different castes including 27 Muslim and one Christian girl. Last time these were around 36 castes,” says Dinesh Lakhani, the elder Lakhani based in Mumbai.

Education Minister Jitu Vaghani, the Bhavnagar West MLA who was also guest at the wedding, says, “It was an event entirely for a social cause to which PM Modi agreed to grace his presence with. The foundation has been doing such social events for a long time now.”

The foundation started this mass marriage event in 2001 with 15 couples. The last such event organised in 2018 which was attended by the then Chief Minister Vijay Rupani saw 281 couples getting married. So far, Lakhani says the foundation has got 2010 needy girls married in these mass marriage events.

For Rita Dodiya, 21, it was her dream to get married in a mass marriage at this scale.

“I have seen videos of the 2018 mass marriage and since then I wanted to have such a wedding and waited for two years after our engagement,” Dodiya says sitting on the double bed at her husband, Sachin Mehra’s house. The bed is part of the trousseau of 102 items given away to all the brides.

Exhilarated that the PM came to their wedding, Dodiya says, “People did not believe when we told them Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the marriage. I told them to come to my wedding and see for themselves.”

“Though the event management team from Mumbai handled the cultural events on the stage, getting 552 couples married at one place was a challenge. Our records show over 3.78 lakh persons dined at the wedding as there was no restriction to guests invited,” says Bharat Kakadiya, one of the organisers.

Nasreen Yamani (21) and Arab Sohail (23)- waited for two years for the mass marriage.

Both Class 9 drop outs, got engaged two years back but could not do a nikaah because of financial constraints.

“Due to Nasreen’s family condition we decided to wait for a mass marriage,” says Sohail, who works at a photocopy shop in Bhavnagar city.

The 27 Muslim couples married as per their custom and got their own kazi, at their own expense. The only expense all couples had to bear was of their own priests, as per their community.

While every bride was given a copy of the Bhagvad Gita, the couples were  also made to take vows to contribute to nation building like swachhata abhiyan, environment protection, to use swadeshi items, encourage gau seva and not to promote superstitions.