Society: Matrimony; The Nowhere Brides

India Today
October 12,1998

MATRIMONY
The Nowhere Brides

Sarabjit Kaur Lured by foreign dreams families in rural Punjab are beginning to pay a terrible price as hundreds of women are deserted by their NRI husbands.

By Ramesh Vinayak

Shame sits across her like a shroud. So suffocating that she is reluctant to venture out, even to the gurdwara, in case they recognise her. That's the girl, they'd titter, whose husband ran away. As it is, she heard her father Pritam say, "What will I do with her, she's neither married nor divorced?" Young brides aren't supposed to spend their days dampening dupattas with tears.

It was not supposed to be like this. All Pritam, a small farmer from Kapurthala, wanted was to send his daughter Baljit to a phoren-land; he didn't know Toronto from Montreal, but he'd heard things were better there than here in Kapurthala. So when Manjinder, 32, settled in Canada, agreed to marry the 16-year-old Baljit in 1996, he danced. He sold some land, spent more money on the marriage than he could afford, and days later Manjinder touched his feet and flew back to Canada, promising to arrange for Baljit's immigration as soon as possible.

Baljit Kaur How could the schoolgirl have known, how could the farmer have seen, that this was but an act of betrayal?

The mehndi hadn't dried on Baljit's pretty hands when she found out. Manjinder wasn't coming back. He'd made, says the police, the same promises to three other girls, married them, taking their dowry and hearts and run. Baljit, depressed and withdrawn, called him in Canada but the phones just kept ringing. Now 18, she is a nowhere bride.

Across the Punjab, in small villages and towns, knock on the door and you will find them, families with grisly tales. Desertion here is like a modern epidemic come visiting. In rural Punjab, any man with an English citizenship or the initials NRI is viewed as providence come calling. As landholdings shrink, as life becomes harder, marrying off daughters to grooms abroad is increasingly seen as a passport to prosperity. Once the daughters go, the families know it will be easier for them to follow. It is a desperation that has a price.

Manjit Kaur with her lawyer Sarabjit Kaur, 26, a postgraduate, was certain she'd found her white knight in Rajbir Singh, a US green card-holder. It was an illusion swiftly mangled. Three weeks after their marriage in 1995 he left for America, while she was harassed by her in-laws for dowry. Last month, as she still waited for her immigration papers, a first letter arrived from him. It was a divorce decree. She shudders, "It's worse than being widowed."

Quick-fix marriages are on the increase and as the affluence of the NRI continues to seduce rural families, the problem has assumed acute dimensions. Specially in the dollar-rich Doaba belt -- comprising Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Nawanshahar districts -- which has nearly 15 per cent of its population settled abroad. The state Social and Women's Welfare Minister Jagir Kaur says she gets more than 400 such cases every year. In Kapurthala, of the 190 complaints received by a voluntary family court, 10 per cent related to NRI desertions. And Surinder Kaur Grewal, chairperson of the Punjab State Women's Commission, says, "The NRI matrimonial frauds now account for at least one fifth of women-related complaints."

Astonishingly, like some river impossible to dam, such marriages continue unabated, the deceit still flourishes. Young women constantly arrive at the door of Dr Rajiv Gupta, a Ludhiana-based psychiatrist, swinging, he says, "between hope and despair". Yet for every village that has a traumatised bride, there is a family nearby that is being lured by an expatriate groom.

Winter, when NRIs arrive by the planeload, is the season reserved for madness. Some parents are tempted by dowry-free marriages that most NRI grooms promise; others display their desperation by mortgaging land to organise absurdly ostentatious weddings. It is an obsession so skewed that NRI grooms are even booked in advance. In such an environment the NRI -- ranked next only to God -- is almost being extended an invitation to deceive. "Some NRIs marry the local girls only for fun during their stay here," says R.P.S. Bajwa, a lawyer-social activist in Kapurthala. There are instances of NRIs getting married as many as five times in the Doaba belt.

In India, the foreign-returned man has always had a certain allure, as if he were more polished, more worldly. He also promises in dollars not in rupees. Such a groom can be forgiven anything, a physical infirmity, mental incompatability. "The green card makes even the grey-haired man eligible," says Jagir Kaur.

Parents who spend their lives teaching their daughters about caution suddenly forget the word exists. Marriages are hastily arranged, the antecedents of the groom often irrelevant. Eligible bachelors these men often are not; instead they are deportees who misrepresent their status to get married and then ask for cash dowry to finance their illegal immigration. Still permission to wed is given. "In many cases, it's almost akin to sacrificing the daughter for the sake of family's immigration by hook or crook," says Grewal.

The result, as Preeti, a 22-year-old postgraduate might elaborate from experience, is ugly. Her parents were sure Ranjit was the right choice. Yes, he'd been married and divorced abroad, but chalega, his passport said Canadian citizen, didn't it? Yet when Preeti went to get their marriage registered -- mandatory for immigration -- she was stunned to discover Ranjit had been married in India too. And wasn't divorced. Her in-laws couldn't give a damn; the courts couldn't do a damn, for, her marriage being void, her claim to alimony was empty. "Even the law has ditched me," she says ruefully.

There is no finish line to deceit. And so it is not just new brides who are deceived but old wives too who are dumped. Young men who sneaked their way abroad as illegal immigrants during the exodus of the '90s now return home with hefty bank balances, legal status and a disdain for the women they left behind. "Exposure to foreign culture and new-found affluence make them look down upon and shun their wives back home," says Vimla Dang, general secretary of the Punjab Istri Sabha. Desertion is not cruel enough; those abandoned are branded as loose women.

Divorce is easy, for these are not sophisticated city women with suited lawyers but often untutored girls who can barely spell the word "decree". In a crushing irony, the foreign returnees secure mutual divorce by telling their gullible wives that it's a prerequisite for their immigration status abroad. Like when Manjit Kaur's husband returned from the Philippines this August. The Ludhiana housewife, mother of two daughters, was told by her husband to sign certain documents related to their daughters' immigration; when her husband left India, she trembled as she realised she had signed her own divorce papers.

Some men do not even bother with deception; they merely ignore the law and their first wives and get married again. Three years after their marriage, Gurmeet Kaur, a 32-year-old resident of Rajpur village, pawned her jewellery to pay for her husband's illegal entry into the US in 1991. Last year he repaid her sacrifice: he returned home and married a 22-year-old girl of a neighbouring village. The police cold-shouldered Gurmeet's complaint, and her in-laws are unwilling to give her any share in the family propert, so what if she has a child. "My husband's foreign status has made me twice unlucky," she says.

Gurmeet, who pleaded in vain with the police to cancel her husband's passport, is wary of initiating a protracted legal tussle. She knows that in the absence of a special law to deal with matrimonial disputes of women married to NRIs, she will be fighting a losing battle. It is a tedious process, often obstructed by the victim's in-laws, who quickly disown their sons and, as if suffering from short-term amnesia, forget where they live abroad. At most, says Jagir Kaur, "in NRI desertion cases, the in-laws are forced to part with what is called mercy alimony or 'izzat da mul' ( price of girl's honour)".

The police throw up their hands in helplessness. "In cases of NRI matrimonial frauds, the law is as helpless as the victimised woman," says Kapurthala police chief Iqbal Singh. In an inadequate and odd consolation, husbands and in-laws are charged under the Anti-dowry Act; it prods them at least towards an out-of-court settlement. Yet, the ugly dilemma persists. An impotent law is just perpetuating deceit; at the same time deserted women are told to avoid seeking justice. Explains social activist Parminder Berry: "If the deserted girl fights the case, she runs the risk of becoming unmarriageable."

The Supreme Court, eager to protect the rights of women married to foreigners, including NRIs, tried to play a hand but failed. In October 1995, it asked the Centre to enact a law barring courts abroad from annulling any marriage of native bride and NRI groom solemnised on Indian soil. The suggestions remain consigned to a file.

Voices, irate and concerned, are now being raised in the Punjab. The flood of desertions has awakened women's organisations; they know this is not a case of a few unlucky brides but a social menace in the making. The state Government is being assailed with suggestions, the latest being a cancellation of the passport of guilty NRIs. Yet the helping hand of the law can stretch only so far. Society has to heal itself. As long as the lure of foreign lands turn sane men irrational, as long as grooms with dollar accounts are treated like the chosen ones, deception will never die. And 18-year-olds will forever be weeping into their dupattas.

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