How football is helping girls fight against forced marriage

One hot summer evening when Nisha Vaishnav was 14, she and her 18-year-old sister Munna were at football practice when they noticed five adult strangers taking photos of them.

Nisha soon found out why they were there - the group were from the same family and included a couple looking for a wife for their son.

Nisha's mother, who was also present, was keen to encourage the possibility of marriage.

They all went back to the Vaishnavs' home in the village of Padampura, in the state of Rajasthan, north-western India.

"My mother asked me to touch their feet as a mark of respect," says Nisha.

'Village women would point at us'

While it is illegal for a girl under 18 or a boy under 21 to be married in India, in practice child marriage is still common.

Around 25% of women living in India were married before they were of legal age, according to the children's charity Unicef.

In Rajasthan, the rates of child marriage are higher than the national average and girls rarely feel able to refuse proposals or defy the wishes of their parents.

Nisha was introduced in 2022 to football by Munna, who discovered the sport a year earlier through Football for Freedom - part of a state-wide non-profit organisation aimed at helping girls better their lives through sport.

Munna had championed the project in her village, leading the battles for permission to travel to tournaments and wear shorts on the pitch rather than long tunics and loose trousers – a huge step in a village where married women cover their faces in the presence of men in public.

"For the first two to three days, village women would point to us and say, 'Look at those girls exposing their legs'," says Munna.

"We ignored them, decided we didn't care, and continued wearing shorts."

Nisha quickly excelled at the game, rising to play for the Rajasthan state football team at the National Football Championship in 2024.

She also cut her hair short - an act of defiance in a village where girls are expected to grow it long.

When the marriage proposal from the family watching her at football practice came, Nisha pushed back.

She made it clear she was too young to get married and wanted to continue to pursue her dreams in football.

After about a month, the other family retracted their offer.

Nisha and Munna also resisted a joint marriage proposal from another family in 2025, involving both of them and their younger brother.

When their father asked Nisha if she had a lover waiting for her at football practice, she says she replied: "There is no lover. I am going to play football - that is my love."

Finding employment through football

Girls who marry as children are at increased risk of sexual coercion, early pregnancy, malnutrition and poorer health, according to many studies.

They are also more likely to leave education early, reducing their chances to improve their life circumstances.

Padma Joshi, from Football for Freedom, which is part of the Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti women's rights non-profit organisation, wants to educate families about these risks.

She says Football for Freedom has trained about 800 girls across 13 villages in Rajasthan since it was formed in 2016.

"When we started talking to parents we never said that we were introducing football to stop child marriage," says Joshi.

Joshi explains to parents that excelling at football could ultimately help their girls get jobs, as Indian states set aside some public sector roles for sportsmen and women.

Poverty, as well as tradition, is among the reasons families in India continue to marry off their girls, who are often regarded as financial burdens.

Nisha and Munna have an older sister who was married in 2020 at the age of 16, and their mother, Laali, was a child bride herself.

Defending her decisions, Laali says villagers fear that unless their children are married young they'll be "exposed to bad influences and run away with boys".

Asked if she knew that marrying her eldest daughter at 16 was illegal, she nods, explaining that no-one gets caught: "We do it quietly, we don't print a wedding invitation or decorate the house or put up a tent."

But the law is clear - facilitating child marriage is a crime.

Adults who carry out ceremonies, along with parents or guardians who permit child marriage or negligently fail to stop it, can be imprisoned for up to two years and fined 100,000 rupees ($1,100; £950).

If a child marriage isn't reported, it can later be registered when the man and woman are of legal age and no-one will be prosecuted.

The number of cases of child marriage being reported across India has gradually been rising as awareness and enforcement have improved.

There were 1,050 cases reported in 2021 compared to 395 in 2017, according to the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

However, this is a tiny proportion of the estimated 1.5 million girls under the age of 18 who are married each year in India, according to Unicef.

Nisha, who is now 15 and still at school, hopes to one day play football for India's national team.

If she doesn't make it, securing a government job would allow her to become financially independent and have freedom.

To qualify for one of the jobs set aside for sportsmen and women, she needs to keep playing at state level or better until after she finishes university.

While Munna, who is now 19, managed to escape child marriage, the possibility of an arranged marriage being pushed for by her older sister's in-laws remains.

She is resisting the proposal.

Munna has not reached the same heights in football as Nisha, but helps train girls at the Football for Freedom Project and is studying for a degree at university.

She hopes to become a sports teacher at a school.

In the meantime, she counsels the girls she trains against child marriage.

"Whether I am able to stop their marriage or not, I want to help them become something in life, realise their dreams."