NRI marriages: Dreams to nightmares
London, July 30, 2006
Indo-Asian News Service
By Kul Bhushan
Dreaming of a good life in Britain, Satwant Kaur
landed at Heathrow to start her new life with her
husband, far removed from her village in Punjab. She
found him waiting at the airport entrance. Visibly
happy, he took her suitcase and passport telling her
to wait while he fetched his car. He never returned
The distraught bride waited and waited.
In tears, she sought the help of some Sikh staff at
Heathrow. She had no idea of her husband's address.
Nowhere to go, the Sikhs took her to the nearest gurudwara
at Southhall. The community tried to locate her husband
without success. Then they re-applied for her passport,
raised money for her ticket and arranged for her to
return home. For no fault of hers, Satwant Kaur is
abandoned.
This is just one of the 15,000 marriages of NRI grooms
and Indian brides that turned dreams into nightmares.
The often repeated tragedy: an NRI boy lands in Punjab,
marries a local girl, pockets the cash dowry and leaves
for Britain - never doing anything to get his wife
over who waits in vain. Often, these new brides find
after their arrival in Britain, the US or Canada that
their husbands have already got a local 'live in'
or a wife and children too. When challenged, they
claim their parents forced them to marry an Indian
hoping he would give up his live-in partner or divorce
his wife.
The anguished NRI widows and their furious parents
suffer with NRI marriage frauds. To address these
problems, a workshop was held recently by the Ministry
of Overseas Indians, the National Commission for Women
(NCW) and NGOs in Chandigarh. Many horror stories
of NRI widows were related and a number of solutions
were discussed. Punjab has 15,000 such registered
cases and NRI husbands have abandoned an estimated
30,000 Indian women. The workshop was shocked to learn
that 1,200 women from Punjab are living in shelters
across Britain.
The NRI marriage racket also involves Indian grooms.
Many young men see their marriage with an NRI girl
a passport to the good life abroad. These growing
numbers of 'passport weddings' enjoin an Indian and
a NRI holding British, American and Canadian citizenships.
NCW chairperson Girija Vyas called for establishing
women's cells in Indian embassies abroad to tackle
the offences in NRI weddings. She pointed out the
need to enhance support systems for women trapped
in distress situations in alien lands. The State Department
had long ago issued an advisory on US citizens of
Indian origin who came to India to marry but were
charged with crimes related to dowry. The Canadian
embassy has also citied a growing number of Indo-Canadians
involved in martial frauds and dowry abuse. The British
high commission in India has been dealing with such
cases for a long time.
The Ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs fully recognises
the urgent need to safeguard unsuspecting brides and
their parents seeking marriage alliances with overseas
Indians.
The ministry is developing policies for gender and
marriage issues; setting up an advisory group and
overseas Indian centres in the US, the Gulf and Malaysia
to provide legal, medical and social counselling for
victims of failed marriages besides a helpline.
The ministry has published a booklet on 'Marriages
to Overseas Indians', offering guidelines to avoid
these matrimonial horrors. But the publication has
been roundly criticized in the NRI world, especially
the US. A spokesperson for the Save Indian Family
Movement in the US maintained that the booklet suggests
that NRIs are cruel, arrogant and frauds. Moreover,
it only mentions women's rights but not any rights
for men.
The NCW has committed itself to drafting comprehensive
legislation to tackle offences in NRI marriages by
November. This will be done after more regional workshops
to be organised in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and New
Delhi to cover the special circumstances in these
states. These laws will have teeth only if they can
be enforced in foreign countries of the spouses of
NRI marriages - mainly Britain, Canada and the US.
So bilateral treaties need to be signed with these
countries.
In the meantime the marriages go on. A practical
solution is for the prospective Indian brides or grooms
to make inquiries about the martial status and bona
fides of the spouses with overseas Indian associations,
cultural bodies, sports and women's clubs -- if their
database is publicized in India. This way NRI leaders
can turn the tide for brides like Satwant Kaur.
