Thankfully, new laws to protect women from being forced into arranged marriages should be introduced by the end of the year. Victims could even sue for damages. I only hope all the legal technicalities have been considered, like if the marriage takes place in another country, will it still be bound by British law if the couple return here to live?
I guess that’s one of the questions I could ask when the Conservative Women’s Muslim Group hold a panel discussion called “Marriage – A Woman’s Choice?” with Sayeeda Warsi, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, who has a happy arranged marriage, and Jasvinder Sanghera, whose compelling book Shame is a true story describing the mistreatment of British Asian women by their own community and parents.
She can speak from personal experience because when Jasvinder was 15 and in her final year of school, her parents showed her a photo of man, saying that was the man she would marry within two weeks.Jasvinder refused, but her parents continued to plan the wedding. Her family kept Jasvinder locked in the bedroom, until one day, she ran away.
Following her escape, Jasvinder spent her teens sleeping rough on the streets. She pleaded with her parents to let her return home, but they said that in their eyes “she was dead”. Her seven sisters all went through with their arranged marriages, three of them travelled to India at the age of 16 and 17.
Tragically, one of her sisters who was trapped in an abusive and an unhappy marriage, and unable to get any support from their mother, killed herself by setting fire to herself.
Jasvinder turned her painful experience into something positive by helping other Asian women in the same helpless and tormented situation. She is the co-founder of Karma Nirvana, a community based project that supports South Asian women whose lives are affected by domestic violence and honour based crimes.
Sadly, Surjit Athwal didn’t make that contact, the group was most likely not not set up by then. She is suspected of being murdered by her husband and mother-in-law as a result of having a love affair following her failed arranged marriage. I found the newspaper article very unfair: “Mother-in-law ‘lured a cheating wife to her death’. It must have been written by a man.
This panel discussion sounds like really powerful stuff, and I don’t see how I can miss this. It is being held on Tuesday, 22nd May from 6-8pm in the House of Commons, anyone else interested in attending should contact Elaine.Hall@conservatives.com
Arranged marriages should be illegal as they are against human rights. Political parties aren’t keen to go too near in case it provokes cries of racism.
Whilst I’m sure the majority of victims are women, I would like to say a word for men in this situation. I know of one man who fell in love with a colleague of mine but sadly they were from the wrong caste and the affair was frowned upon. Both were born in this country. He was lied to and taken on ‘holiday’ by his family, back to India, where he was locked up and starved by his father until he agreed to an arranged marriage a fortnight later. He was married and allowed to come home with his new Indian wife. The couple did not give up and my amazing colleague rescued her love and they both went to the authorities and had his marriage annulled. They are now married and have children. I don’t think the Indian wife was sent back, I think she was allowed to stay.
The women I have known in this situation are in danger of their lives if they leave, subject to ‘honour’ killings by their own families. And anyone who despises the barbaric practices of this culture is called racist!
Pilipa, That’s a tragic story all round, though with a happy ending for the man you know. What about the poor Indian woman who was forced into this too?
This is something that my Western educated, Christian, mind finds almost impossible to fathom. My rational self says that arranged marriages are of course wrong but I have not the cultural context to understand this properly or well enough to stand in judgement.
A couple of hundred years ago Christians (and many Africans as well as Muslims) thought slavery was acceptable. They were of course wrong, but against the agreed standards of the day, at least for the majority, it was thought to be perfectly reasonable.
It wasn’t that many years ago that Alf Garnett talked openly on TV about wogs. Homosexuality was a crime and now some clergy are in openly gay relationships. Robertson’s made jam and gave away Gollywogs. While in the First World War hundreds of thousands of men’s lives were sacrificed in what, to the Generals in charge, seemed like perfectly rational fighting methods.
History has changed many perceptions, some have been culturally motivated, some with a religious impetus and some with the insistence of the legal profession. In a hundred years time people will look at some things that we do today with incredulity. Maybe there will still be arranged marriages, maybe not.
That is an event I would definitely want to attend if I were over there for I taught many young women who were affected by this. One even attempted suicide to try to avoid the marriage her parents were planning for her. [And that’s only one that I KNOW about.] I do think that we need to distinguish between “arranged” marriages [which can turn out well ] and “forced” marriages.
The Indian woman? Indeed, I think she came out of it alright as she was allowed to stay, with no stain on her character yet in effect able to escape the whole thing. But my point there is that Britain is a small island. We think of this great nation but we are just a small island and cannot, with the best will in the world, adopt all the people who have problems on the planet. Whatever troubles happened in the past we just haven’t the room or the infrastructure to accomodate everyone. So I think our immigration policies are wrong. We seek to preserve everyone’s culture but our own, and our own says that practices like forced marriages (good distinction welshcakes) are abhorent to us and should not be allowed. The trouble with the law proposed is the compensation element, in my opinion.
Richard Havers rightly identifies changes in attitudes with a number of things. Womens rights, especially with regard to marriage, has been a long fight for generations. In the Book of Common prayer, the foundation of the Anglican Church, it asks a woman during the marriage ceremony ‘wilt thou obey him?’, a clear statement of subordination. Modern woman has rightly fought against these words but the Christian religion, introduced to these shores by the Roman Catholic Church, quite clearly echoes Roman society from which it was borne. Roman society in which women were regarded as property and passed in marriage from one man to another – a rite that is still practiced today; ‘who giveth this woman to this man?’.
All over the blogosphere men (and some women) but mostly very angry men, are complaining that the emancipation of women is contributing to the downfall of society. Upon finding themselves in, perhaps, an impossible situation, like many of the women I have known flee from marriages, women are blamed for seeking respite from this misery, especially if they have children (which they may be protecting by leaving). The ‘feminisation’ of society is being blamed for all sorts of things and I see what I’m guessing would appear quite reasonable, intelligent men blame female teachers for the unruly behaviour of children (not diet or the withdrawal of the cane), and if some are diagnosed by doctors (no gender mentioned) as having a behavioural disorder, then some men are laying the blame on divorce and female teachers, in effect laying the blame at the feet of women. Women who have fought long and hard for the human rights we are all applauding here. This wave of blame flies in the face of people who actually have these children writing and saying that in fact they are happily married!
The foundation of the culture we are fighting against here is religion. We see many instances of religious practice that is in direct conflict with our own culture. But before you assume I am proposing outlawing that religion (which would achieve nothing) I ask you to consider our own Christian religion, the foundation of our own culture. In attitude there are similarities, especially towards women. Many people think that the erosion of these attitudes and practices in effect corrupts society, making it a less moral, civilised place all round (like women know their place or are guilty of trashing it for everyone?) Given this, perhaps we should be asking ourselves whether we would be better off without religion?
All I’m trying to say is that you can rarely do anything without consequences. As ellee quite rightly points out, those consequences touch everyone involved.
“All over the blogosphere men (and some women) but mostly very angry men, are complaining that the emancipation of women is contributing to the downfall of society. Upon finding themselves in, perhaps, an impossible situation, like many of the women I have known flee from marriages, women are blamed for seeking respite from this misery, especially if they have children (which they may be protecting by leaving). The ‘feminisation’ of society is being blamed for all sorts of things and I see what I’m guessing would appear quite reasonable, intelligent men blame female teachers for the unruly behaviour of children (not diet or the withdrawal of the cane), and if some are diagnosed by doctors (no gender mentioned) as having a behavioural disorder, then some men are laying the blame on divorce and female teachers, in effect laying the blame at the feet of women. Women who have fought long and hard for the human rights we are all applauding here. This wave of blame flies in the face of people who actually have these children writing and saying that in fact they are happily married!”
This quote deserves to be a post on its own. It’s men who want it all too, why should women be blamed? Yes, our society and culture is evolving, but at the end of the day it comes down to individuals and personal choices and the kind of character they have. The word selfish springs to mind.
Can someone explain how a woman being abused is abused by her ‘community’? It’s important to know this, because I fear a lapse into chauvinism here. If individuals commit a crime, it is they who are responsible, and nobody else. Imputing that they are abused by their ‘community’ is nothing less than an assertion of collective responsibility. Let me put it this way — every time a white woman is raped, abused, murdered (and it does happen, you know), are all white people culpable? This is the egregiousness of your logic. I hope you can see the point I am making.
Jay, I think you would enjoy this event and find some answers by meeting Sayeeda and Jasvinder, all these questions can be explored there, and this is such an emotive topic. Perhaps you should read Jasvinder’s book, Shame, which is described as a social commentary and a true story on a sad state of affairs about the mistreatment of British Asian women by their own community and parents.
As others have said before me, there is a difference between having an arranged marriage and a forced one, one that can end in tragedy.
Ellee, my wife works in this field, so I know all about it.
I don’t think you understand the point I was making. At what point can you assert that an individual crime of abuse arises through the collective guilt of ‘the community’? This is such a nebulous phrase to begin with, so reductive and crude, that it does mean, as the logic of its employment is followed, that we assert group and collective responsibility. In another context you could say that all Muslims are collectively responsible for the actions of terrorists, or all Jews are culpable for the excesses of an Israeli battalion, or all Blacks are collectively responsible for the shooting of a 15 year old boy.
When do non white ‘communities’ become an undifferentiated mass susceptible to accusations of collective culpability for the crimes of individuals? As a white person, is your ‘white community’ culpable for a rape, wife beating, racist attack commited in the home of a socially dysfunctional family or individual? More importantly, are you?
Are you following these reductive parallels? And do you understand why in the context of this debate, this is a dangerous mode of thinking?
Jay, If an individual is aware of a problem involving the safety and well being of a person in their community, regardless of the race, then they should do what they can to help that person and prevent a tragedy rather than turn a blind eye, like the sad example highlighted in this newspaper story. I am not making sweeping statements about any community group, merely outlining different experiences of arranged and forced marriages which these two excellent women with different experiences will discuss at this event, I’m sure and your wife would find it very interesting.
Thank you so much for bringing the discussion on forced marriages to people’s attention. I read your blog and the comments have been most interesting. It is an issue that merits attention and although it affects a small proportion of people in this country directly, it is an absolutely awful situation to be faced with and I just feel so strongly that one needs to do all one can to help. I am so glad that the CWO is taking this forward. I do hope that all those who feel passionately about this will try amd come to our session on the 22nd.
Shazia is chairman of the Conservative Women’s Muslim Group, this is a very difficult subject and should be a very interesting eveing.
http://www.conservativewomen.org.uk/muslimwomengroup.asp
See you there Ellee!
Sunny, I may have work commitments that day which will make it difficult for me to get there in time, but I’ll look out for you if I do make it.
Just a quick point, there is a difference between arranged marriage and forced marriage. The difference is that “arranged” is almost like a dating agency (parents, friends etc) introduce people to together and if they like each other they often date for year or so before marriage. While “forced” marriage clearly offers no choice to the bride and/or groom. People from various asian communities may try and hide there actions by stating that arranged marriages are in their culture; that as may be the case but force marriage is not. Hope the evening goes well; it would be good to hear what actions arise from it.
By the way- I don’t know why your picture attached to my comment!
Neet, Yes, thank you for your comment, and it is most strange about the pic. I don’t know the reason why.
[…] Tories planning announcement on forced marriages by Sunny on 23rd May, 2007 at 9:49 am Yesterday evening I attended a talk at the House of Commons organised by the Conservatives Women’s Muslim Group with vice-president Sayeeda Warsi and Jasvinder Sanghera (of women’s group Karma Nirvana) speaking. It was a good event, primarily focused on forced marriages and what to do about them. [thanks to Ellee Seymour for the tip]. […]
[…] 3/5/2007: Conservative Women and Arranged Marriages […]