A woman from India who was unable to attend today\u2019s meeting and wishes to remain anonymous asked someone to read her thoughts aloud. Betsy Wiggins did so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arranged marriages have\nlong been part of the Indian culture. An arranged marriage is one that is fixed by the parents and family members, with or\nwithout the consent of the boy or girl. A \u201clove marriage,\u201d on other hand, is\none in which the boy and the girl select their own life partners and marry with\nor without the family\u2019s consent; this kind of marriage is not easily accepted\nby the family or society. <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The practice of arranged\nmarriages began as a way of uniting and maintaining upper-caste families.\nEventually, the system spread to the lower caste, where it was used for the\nsame purpose. Marriage is treated as an alliance between two families rather\nthan a union between two individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The majority of current\nIndian marriages are arranged. The legal age for marriage is 18 years for\nfemales and 21 years for males, with most females being married by 24 and most\nmales being married by their late twenties. However, by the age of 15 or 16,\nmany children are married within a cultural context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the many reasons for\narranged marriages in Indian culture are: (a)\n<\/em>Marriage is an important decision, and divorce is generally not accepted. (b) <\/em>The marriage choice must be\ncarefully thought out and planned and may be beyond the capabilities of a young\nperson acting on his or her own. (c) <\/em>Pressure\nis exerted by the extended family and the community to get the child married by\na certain age. (d) <\/em>Following one\u2019s\nhead is often wiser than following one\u2019s heart, since \u201clove\u201d is often a\nmomentary infatuation. (e) <\/em>Arranged\nmarriages are more successful because they match persons of the same religion, caste,\ndietary preference, linguistic group, age group, socioeconomic background,\neducation, professional status, physical stature, etc. (f) <\/em>Each family has the chance to do \u201cdue diligence,\u201d closely\nscrutinizing the other in terms of reputation, economic means, and personal\nqualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trend is changing\nsomewhat in India and among expatriate Indians. However, many Indians who move\nto other countries still cling to their roots, religion, and culture and\ncontinue the tradition of arranging their children\u2019s marriages, generally to\nothers from India\u2014and from the same caste or at least the same religion\u2014so as\nto pass on their culture and values to the next generation. Searches are begun\nthrough relatives, friends, and matrimonial agencies, and if their profiles\nmatch, the prospective mates are given an opportunity to meet face to face or\nonline. Some parents in India consider marriage a good opportunity to send\ntheir child abroad, believing that everything will be fine once the boy and\ngirl get married and start living together. Most marriages work, but a few\nfail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because U.S. work visas are\nbecoming difficult to obtain, marriageable Indian girls and boys living in the\nU.S. are new targets for easy entry into the country. Getting an education loan\nto study abroad has become relatively easy, and most youngsters who come to the\nU.S. to study do not want to return to India; one way for them to stay here is\nto marry someone who is a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marrying a person who is\nwidowed or divorced is not accepted. Doing so implies that there is something\nwrong with the girl or boy who is marrying the widowed or divorced person or\nthat the girl cannot find a decent match or the boy is marrying for the girl\u2019s\ndowry. But if one of the spouses is settled in the U.S., the interpretation\nchanges: people think that this marriage is taking place to get easy entry into\nthe U.S., which in some cases is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current generation of\nexpatriate Indians living in the U.S. and other countries has fewer\nopportunities to meet other Indians, especially in smaller towns. Marrying\nsomeone of Indian origin is less important to these people, and many of them\nare in inter-caste, interreligious, and intercultural marriages. Many families have accepted this trend. In\nany type of marriage, it is important to know the family\u2019s background as well\nas details about the would-be bride or groom. \nIt is said that marriage is a gamble so it is important to play the game\nsafely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no hard-and-fast rule that arranged marriages survive and \u201clove marriages\u201d fail. Marriages are made in heaven, and keeping them intact is in our hands through understanding, respecting, and trusting each other. We all should remember that the couple needs the family\u2019s support, cooperation, and blessings to make their marriage strong<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alam\nMacut<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alam is 35 years old, was born and raised in Sudan, and\nhas lived in Syracuse for 10 years. She speaks Arabic, Dinka, and English and works in the hospital system as a\ntranslator. She is the single mother of 7 children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When people get married in her culture, their families\ntrade cows, goats, and monkeys. None of this occurred in Alam\u2019s case; his\nfamily already had many cows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alam\u2019s future husband came to her house when she was 13.\nThen she visited his house when she was 17. During that visit he forced himself\non her, and she became pregnant with her eldest daughter, now 17. This was\nshameful, and her family said that because she was pregnant, she must marry him\nor someone else who had cows to pay for a marriage. Her mother made her return\nto him, but after 40 days he sent her back to her family because, according to\ntradition, he had to marry the wife of his brother who died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alam met another man from another tribe. He seemed nice,\nand her mother made her go to him. With him she had her second child, now 13.\nShe continued her education, finishing 11th<\/sup> grade, despite her\nhusband not wanting her to attend school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was in her village during the wars. Her house was\nburned down, and she expected to have to live in the jungle. She still has\nnightmares when she hears fireworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She, her husband, and the two children went to Cairo. From\nthere she wanted to go to Canada, to which they were supposed to travel on July\n10, but she had her third baby on July 6. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When they finally immigrated to the U.S., she and her\nhusband were very depressed. They needed food and other help, and she didn\u2019t\nknow much English. She started work as a seamstress; he had no job, took all\nher money, and went out with other women. He was unhappy with her but\nfinancially dependent on her. She left the house, then returned; he threatened\nto leave and subjected her to ongoing verbal abuse. During this time, she had\nher fourth child, a daughter now 8 years old. In 2005, he beat her, but she did\nnot call the police because that would have made matters worse. She tried to\nkill herself. Still he didn\u2019t leave\u2013and he continued the verbal and physical\nabuse. All this time, her mother thought she was in a safe, good family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She finally left him and moved in with a boyfriend, with\nwhom she had the rest of her children. Her husband continued harassing her,\nnever paying child support, lying to the legal guardians and calling her an\nunfit mother, and taking her older children and her passport from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has just returned from a trip to Africa to be with her\nmother. In addition to working as a translator, she has started her own\nbusiness. She wants to study business, have her children attend college, and\nbuy a house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mam-Yassin\nSarr<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin is a native of the Gambia. She was raised Muslim and converted to Bah\u00e1’\u00ed. She is married, has a young child, is a Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University, and is founder of Starfish International, a girls\u2019 school in the Gambia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arranged marriages and forced marriages occur in communities\nacross Africa. Yassin said that her life\u2019s work is dedicated to averting these\nproblems from the source. She has just returned from a 3-month trip to the\nGambia, putting about a hundred girls at the Starfish school through a rigorous\ntraining program about maternal health, martial arts and safety, and economic\nempowerment (i.e., the running of small businesses). Some of the girls attended\na photography class, and now 15 of them have small photography businesses and\nare giving money to their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue of arranged marriage and forced marriage boils\ndown to economics. If you\u2019re in a family of 14, for example, how do you take\ncare of everyone? You marry the girls to men or boys whose families are better\noff, and then your family is better off. The best way for girls to interrupt\nthis process and advocate for themselves is to talk to their parents. But at 14\nor 15, what do they have to bargain with? Yassin wants them to be able to say:\nI\u2019ve started my own business, and I\u2019m contributing to the family, and I\u2019ll\ncontinue to contribute, so let me stay in school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin\u2019s school teaches martial arts so that if the girl\nis slapped or otherwise attacked by a man, she can defend herself and send a\nclear message to not try this again. Assuring the girls\u2019 safety is important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some parents may not listen to their daughter\u2019s request to\nstay in school, so Yassin prepares the girls to marry at a young age. The girls\nare taught about maternal health and nutrition, how to pick the right health\nclinic, what kinds of foods to eat, how to care for their body. In the average\nAfrican family, most nutritional chores (i.e., farming and cooking) are done by\nthe girls and can be a basis for economic development. Yassin found an\norganization that teaches the girls how to design bee hives so the bees don\u2019t\nhave to be smoked (as is traditionally done in Africa). Her school also teaches\nthe girls to use the honeycomb (which is traditionally thrown away) to make\nwax, soap, lotions, and candles that they sell to bring money into their\nfamilies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin trains girls to advocate for themselves, speak up,\nbe leaders, have a voice in the community. She seeks to change families by\nconvincing them that education helps them more than does marrying off the girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin is raising her daughter between two cultures:\nYassin is from the Gambia, David is American. One day her daughter asked, If\nthere is one God, and there are so many people on the planet, how can he see\nall of us at one time? Yassin put some salt in her hand and asked, Can you see\nall the grains of salt? That\u2019s how God can see all the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another time her daughter asked, What is culture? Yassin\nresponded: When it\u2019s done right, it\u2019s picking the best ideas from all cultures,\nand putting them together, and living our lives that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin said she benefited from the best of arranged\nmarriages. She met a young couple at the same conference that she met her\nhusband. She and the couple exchanged phone numbers. When she called the\nnumber, she found that the man, Jeff, had given her the phone number of his\nbest friend, David, having told David, I think I\u2019ve found your wife. She and\nDavid lived in different states, so they talked on the phone for the next 2\nweeks, at which point David proposed. Yassin told him she couldn\u2019t even remember\nwhat he looked like! She also told him she\u2019s going back to Africa because\nthat\u2019s where her work is, and he would have travel to the Gambia (without her)\nto meet her family. A month later, he bought a plane ticket. Yassin wrote to\nher family, describing David\u2019s qualities and asking them to observe him and let\nher know. The family approved of David, although it took her father three years\nto approve the marriage because David is not a Muslim. Yassin did not break\nwith her family or marry David during that period because it would have gone\nagainst her goal of bringing people together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin observed that her story and Alam\u2019s story have many\nof the same components, in that people who love them set them up with\nprospective mates whom they hoped would be a good fit. What made the difference\nis where each of them was in her life at the time and at what stage\/age each of\nthem got her education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yassin\u2019s definition of marriage does not preclude arranged\nmarriages if they are done right. The solution to arranged marriages is the\nempowerment of girls themselves as they build new families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Yassin, the purpose of marriage is to move love and\ncommitment from a conceptual level to reality. The person choosing to marry me\ndoesn\u2019t have<\/em> to be with me, she said.\nMy parents, my siblings, are with me; but this other person has chosen<\/em> to be with me. Each of us\ndeserves to have someone who chooses us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Question-and-Answer\nSession<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sabra\nReichardt<\/strong> observed that what Yassin is teaching in Gambia is\n\u201cstealth feminism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saro\nKumar<\/strong> said that when she went to India from Malaysia, she was\nshocked to see how conservative the people were. There was very little\nsocialization between boys and girls. Most marriages were arranged, and girls\nknew they could stay on in their parents\u2019 home only until they moved in with\ntheir in-law\u2019s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dowry is a big thing in India. A girl\u2019s family is\nsupposed to give a dowry to the boy\u2019s family. Saro\u2019s father had 5 girls; if he\nhad been uneducated, paying dowries would have made him a pauper! Her father\nalways said he would give his girls an education, not a dowry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In India, girls may be forced into marriages with older\nmen. Arranged marriages are still the norm except in families where both\nparents are educated. Sometimes parents can\u2019t make good on their dowry\npromises; every day you see stories of girls being dowsed with kerosene and\nburned because the in-laws were not satisfied with dowries and want their sons\nto be free to marry again..<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked how her husband courted her, Saro said that\naccording to Hinduism, Saro was considered an outcast; that in India, they\nlabeled her as being from an agricultural group. Her husband, by contrast, is\nBrahmin. His uncle was Saro\u2019s guardian while she was attending school, and the\nfamily was very good to her until her future husband took an interest in her,\nand then the family turned on her. Both she and her husband finished their\neducations and said they would wait a year before marrying. His parents tried\nto get their son fired from his job so that he would be dependent on them\nand follow their wishes. They also tried to get Saro\u2019s teacher to turn on\nher. And this is an educated family!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saro mentioned a Bhutanese man in our community who was\ncomplaining to her that his three children were disrespectful and refused to\nlisten to him. Within a few months, he told her that one of the boys was now\nmarried. Yesterday she got the sense that the wife is Burmese. She wonders how\nthe couple communicates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Helen Malina<\/strong>, of the\nCenter for New Americans, observed that not all immigrant parents are feeling\nalienated. She is more hopeful: she finds that as their kids are picking up\nAmerican values, some of the parents are learning to adapt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joan\nBurstyn<\/strong> said that first-generation immigrants have always had to\ncope with new customs. What makes it so difficult now is the changed concept of\nsexuality. Women from other countries look at marriage as being for life. Here,\nwe recognize that marriage could well end in divorce. In Mexico, people can\neven have a two-year trial marriage. Joan also posed a question: Is it that we\ndeplore exploitation through arranged marriages, or do we just deplore\nexploitation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Betty\nLamb<\/strong> said that Vera House offers help for women or men\nsuffering from spousal abuse and rape and has counselors that work only with\nimmigrant women. Betty also said she has tried? several religions and\nbelieves in arranged marriages if they are divinely inspired and done in a\nprayerful way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marriages traditionally served as a union of families, the intention being to preserve the caste system, increase the family\u2019s financial wealth, procure a woman to help care for her husband\u2019s family, and the like. One woman described her experience of arranged marriage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22,19],"class_list":["post-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-programs","tag-hinduism","tag-lifecycle",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8605,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions\/8605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wtb.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/Alam_Macut.jpg\")
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