The proportions of never-married, ever-married and widowed persons in four different age groups in West Bengal and India are shown in Table D 7, based on the 1991 census. (According to census data, the divorced/separated form  a very small category, both among men and women.) According to the 1991 Census, very few persons were married in the age group of 0-14 years (only 0.3 per cent among males and 0.6 per cent among females )  ; but in the next age group of 15-19 years, over one-third of  women  were married in both West Bengal and India. In this group, marriage was rare among men in West Bengal but not so in India as a whole. In the age group 20-29 years, almost 90 per cent of all women had been married in the state as well as in India though more than half the men were still unmarried in West Bengal, a substantially higher figure as compared to the national average. As expected, a much higher proportion of urban women aged 20-24 remained unmarried in 1991 (37 per cent) as compared to rural women of the same age (about 12 per cent).

 Appendix Table AD 4 is  based on data from the 1991 census and shows the  percentages of married and widowed persons in West Bengal districts. These data show that in all districts there was a rising trend in the proportion of rural women remaining unmarried at least up to the age of 20 years during 1971-1991.There was also a declining trend across districts in the proportion of currently married  women who were married before the legal age of 18 years. In West Bengal as a whole this proportion declined to 48 per cent in 1991 ( from 56 in 1981); but there were still a number of districts where went up to more than 60 per cent. The following Early Marriage Map shows this varying pattern

As Table D 7 shows, women's marital status seems to change conspicuously when they enter the age group of 50-69 years : in 1991 over 40 per cent women belonging to this group were widowed. For India this particular proportion was lower, but in West Bengal as well as in India as a whole, the proportions of widowed men were much smaller. One and a half century ago Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar - Bengal's great social reformer - drew poignant attention to the situation of widows and pioneered the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 .Widowed  women have traditionally been one of the most  vulnerable groups in society, for economic as well as cultural reasons, though lately more enlightened social mores and attitudes can be observed in West Bengal, specially in urban areas, and perhaps better prospects of economic security." There are intimate links between the predicament of Indian widows and a wide range of patriarchal institutions such as patrilineal inheritance, patrilocal residence and the gender division of Labour. The cause of widows must be seen as an integral part of the broader battle against gender inequalities." [i]

Source : Census of India 1991, Social and Cultural Tables.

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