The Union cabinet recently gave approval to provide Scheduled Tribe status to Himachal Pradesh's Hatti community, with the current population of approximately 3 lakh.

The Hattis are a close-knit community, straddling the Himachal-Uttarakhand border scaling the Kinnaur and sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, and Jaunsar Bawar in Uttarakhand.

But the lesser known fact about the community is its time immemorial practice of polyandry. In one hand where the country's hindu population abides by the laws prescribed under section 5 of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, which prohibits polyandry, the Hatti community on the other hand still follows polyandry under the name of "Jodidari pratha", "Draupadi vivah" or "Ghotlu pratha".

According to the local stories, the practice traces its history back to the time when the Pandavas being banished from their kingdom for thirteen years, spent the last year hiding in this hilly terrain of Kinnaur. Where locals claim that this practice has been inherited from the Pandavas, who they identify as their ancestors.

The practice accounts all the brothers of the same family having a common wife with the sole reason to control family planning as most families in the community are poverty stricken, dependent on agricultural land and livestock for their income.

And since the size of the land holdings and the income has shrunk over the years, each brother marrying separately would invariably put too much pressure on the family's meagre resources.

And to avoid making the practice an illegal course the woman is always registered to be the legal wife of the eldest brother.

Apart from this the head of the family is always the women, which makes the practice a blend of of both Polyandry and matriarchy.

Where the practice of polyandry is socially sanctioned and not immoral according to some, the young generation on the other hand is now casting aside the practice by breaking the joint families and fragmenting it into nuclear families.