Image below: courtesy, John Birdsall
Current Events
Broken Bangles:
India's Abandoned Brides
by RAHUL BEDI
Jaswant Kaur is one of tens of thousands of 'holiday wives' spread across India who, after years of abandonment, still awaits her husband's return from Britain.
A fortnight after their lavish wedding in the border district of Gurdaspur, Karamjit Singh - considered a prize 'catch' for most Indian parents wanting their daughters married as he was an Indian settled abroad - left for London.
He promised his excited 21-year-old bride, who had never left her small town, that he would send her immigration papers within weeks to enable her to join him.
The groom and his family also carried away 700,000 rupees ($21,867.73) in dowry and gold ornaments which the bride's parents had raised by mortgaging their small plot of land and house.
Eleven years later, Jaswant Kaur still waits for news from her husband.
"We now learn that he already had a wife and two children in London when we were married" Jaswant said.
"For him I was nothing but a sexual dalliance and a source of gratification for his greed in the dowry. Along with my family, I stand disgraced socially as an abandoned bride. I have no recourse to any redress whatsoever."
Jaswant, however, is one of the luckier ones.
Karamjit Kaur from nearby Jalandar, 400 km north of New Delhi, was not as fortunate. Her husband Raghbir Singh left her with his parents and returned to his job in Dubai in December 2002 after carrying away the dowry he and his family had mandated on her as a prerequisite to the marriage.
Three months later, Karamjit's in-laws attempted to kill her by setting her alight when her parents were unable to pay an additional dowry, a mode of bride murder favoured by thousands of greedy Indian husbands and their families.
Her parents lodged a police case, but were harassed in turn.
"All the police were interested in was making money out of our misery. They are doing nothing to investigate Raghbir Singh and his parents," she said.
"Lust, dowry and the lure of settling abroad are responsible for the plight of thousands of these holiday wives across Punjab" said Daljit Kaur, a lawyer and activist.
There was no legislation to safeguard them from being duped and dumped by Indian grooms mostly from the West, particularly Britain and North America and the Gulf Sheikhdoms.
Some men even married three or four times, managing to flee safely each time because local police favoured the boys' families. In some instances, police took five to six years to even register a formal complaint.
Since 2002, only a small fraction of the ten of thousands of these female victims to be found across India, had managed to lodge cases. But police officials in Chandigarh privately conceded that such cases are difficult, if not impossible, to investigate because once the man has left the country, extradition was given little or no priority.
There have also been several cases of overseas Indian grooms taking their wives back, insuring them for large sums and then bringing them back home to have them murdered.
India's tortuously slow and corrupt legal and police investigation structure was insurance against them being caught, although since the mid 1990s a handful of convictions had occurred but under pressure from overseas authorities.
India's intensely patriarchal social structure has a distinct gender bias against women, widely considered an economic liability as they need to be married off after payment of substantial dowries.
Abandoned brides become even more of a drain on their families.
"A woman who has been abandoned by her non-resident husband and returns to her parents' home is not welcome," said Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, head of the People's Welfare Society.
The children from such unions face even greater prejudice.
"Though social awareness programmes have been launched to educate people against this evil and the government lobbied to adopt more stringent laws, progress has been incremental," lawyer/activist Daljit Kaur said.
　
August 7, 2009
Conversation about this article
1: Chintan Singh (San Jose, California, U.S.A.), August 07, 2009, 2:36 PM.
What a shame that this happens in the land of our Gurus, who gave the title of 'princess' to each and every girl and woman. How can we, ordinary citizens residing outside India, help those abandoned wives and their children? [Editor: One effective and efficient way is for our Sikh institutions here and the local Sikhs to lobby and put pressure on our local politicians and governments in the U.S., Canada, England, etc., to aggressively pursue the scoundrels, cancel their immigration status and ship them back to India!]
2: Gurpal Dosanjh (San Francisco, California, U.S.A.), August 07, 2009, 5:34 PM.
This type of abuse is simply unacceptable simply because it contravenes the very values of Sikhi. More so, it is a travesty given the abusers originate outside of India. How do we bring about change? It starts with each one of us. It starts with raising our children, specifically boys, to honor and respect women. It continues with parents who should not accept a dowry during marriage - a sad relic of Indian values, not Sikh values. And it concludes with our community ensuring that we hold such abusers accountable for their actions.
3: Jai Kumar Pressana (Paris, France), August 08, 2009, 6:04 PM.
I'm saddened by the story of what some unscrupulous and criminal Indians are doing to some women in India.
4: Harinder (Bangalore, India), August 09, 2009, 9:20 AM.
Don't feel sad. Do some thing about it. Fools are parted from their money ... and many other things in life!
5: Jagbeer Singh Khalsa (UK/ Germany), August 12, 2009, 3:44 AM.
I have just returned from Punjab where I witnessed two very different weddings (both Amritdharis): the wedding of a friend of mine, and a second one of his sister. The sister married a nice and soft-spoken guy from a country village and his 'shagun' was huge. I was shocked by the amount of things her family had to purchase. Okay, there was no money or gold involved, but the "dowry" stretched the finances of her family quite a bit. On the other hand, my friend's reaction to his 'shagun' was as I had imagined an Amritdhari's to be: The bride's family had piled up some house-hold electricals and stuff, but his simple and straight-forward response was: I respect and admire your efforts, but I don't want anything from you. I just want to marry your daughter. This is exactly how it should always be! Dowries are against Sikhi and they are against Gurmat. Guru Nanak had described a marriage as the joining of two souls. There should be no trading of material goods in this union. Cases involving dowry just prove to me that those who participate in such 'desi' activities are not into Sikhi!
6: San (London, Middlessex, U.K.), October 15, 2009, 8:16 AM.
People who do this and even think this should be shot! Being Sikh is something that I am proud of. People need to change the way they act and think. Also, this is a real good web site.
7: Sukh (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), December 14, 2009, 5:09 PM.
I disagree with Chintan. There is a lot of abuse of the anti-dowry law going on from the girls' side as well. It is no secret the Indian justice system is corrupt and is not interested in facts. I like the solution given here on this site by someone - Let the engagement of the couple be in India and the wedding to be performed at the 'destination' countries ie Canada, U.S., etc.
8: Rajwant Singh Kalsi (Florianopolis-SC, Brazil), March 11, 2011, 9:07 PM.
This is a very disgraceful act being committed by the Indians. If there is some such case committed by any one from Brazil, then please let me know. Here the government is very efficient. Here any 'misbehavior' by the husband is considered illegal and he is promptly punished.