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When Archana
Sharma got married in 1999, she saw it as a chance to keep her
family out of poverty after her father's untimely death. A strikingly
beautiful folk dancer from the north Indian state of Haryana,
the then 25-year-old had turned down several offers to act in
regional-language films because she came from a conservative
family, consenting instead to wed a Toronto-based astrologer
she knew through her maternal uncle. "I agreed to marry
a man I had never met, thinking he would take me to a better
life in Canada," she says. "Once settled there, I
would take my two younger sisters and our mother, too."
After a six-week visit for the wedding, her husband returned
to Toronto promising to complete the legal formalities for her
to join him. But her tickets never came. After six years of
waiting, Sharma received documents informing her that she had
been divorced.
Stories
like Sharma's are growing increasingly common across India,
as changing values remove some of the social stigma surrounding
failed marriages and concern from activists and officials
encourages more women to talk about it. As many as 30,000
women have been abandoned by their émigré husbands,
according to one Indian government estimate; activists say
the real figures are probably much higher as most cases still
go unreported. The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA),
established in 2004 to look after the welfare of an estimated
20 million Non-Resident Indians (NRIS), launched a scheme
earlier this year to provide counseling and legal and financial
aid for Indian wives abandoned abroad. Closer to home, it
has published a booklet for women planning to marry émigrés,
to help them verify the credentials of their prospective spouses
and their families, take proper legal precautions and seek
help if things go wrong. "More such cases are being reported
since we started disseminating information about the scheme,"
says Sandhya Shukla, director of social services at MOIA.
Despite
impressive economic growth over the past decade, some 450,000
Indians emigrate to other countries to find work every year,
while thousands more go illegally. "For some, going abroad
is about seeking better opportunities and social mobility,"
says Rainuka Dagar, senior research fellow at the Chandigarh-based
Institute for Development and Communication, "But for
many, it is about status. It is a symbol of pride to have
a member of the family living and earning abroad." In
many communities, "marriage to an NRI is considered a
status symbol as it gets the entire family a chance to go
abroad," says Santosh Singh, chairperson of the government-affiliated
Family Counseling Centre in Chandigarh.
Most of
these unions, without doubt, are successful ones. But some
overseas marriages can be problematic. At a MOIA conference
on the issue in February, Girija Vyas, chairperson of India's
National Commission for Women, noted that brides going abroad
can suffer from culture shock if they have had no prior exposure
to the West. Their overseas-raised spouses, meanwhile, can
find themselves pressured into a traditional marriage by émigré
parents. The combination can result in loveless, incompatible
relationships and eventually, divorce. The worst cases, however,
are those "where NRI men come to India seeking either
huge dowries or 'holiday wives,'" says Singh. "If
they abandon their brides and return to their adoptive countries,
the brides and their families, living in a culture of patriarchy
and keen to preserve their honor, often do not approach the
authorities. And even if they do, there are limited legal
options before them."
Government
agencies and NGOs are working to change that. The National
Commission for Women has demanded that the government make
it compulsory to register all marriages, which will provide
women a more solid legal standing. Meanwhile, activist groups
are lobbying for changes in the law to criminalize the suppression
of information about previous marriages, and urging the government
to sign agreements with other countries to make marital fraud
an extraditable offense. In Punjab, where many families have
at least one member working abroad, the left-leaning Lok Bhalai
Party has made the plight of abandoned spouses a campaign
issue.
But for
Sharma, these efforts are still too little, too late. "One
odd change of law will not make a difference," she says.
"Cases like mine will keep happening until women's status
in society improves. And that will be a slow and long process."
Published
in Time Magazine * Find
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