Currrent - Issue
  HOLIDAY WIVES
Is there hope for the thousands of Punjabi girls married off to NRI grooms, who have virtually dumped the young wives only to return for an occasional holiday?
                                                                                           By Pramod Pushkarna in Chandigarh
SAFETY CHECK: Activist Ramoowalia wants the state to crack down on the racke 		  IF an American brings a donkey to Punjab, people will run after it to fix a match for their daughters. That’s how desperate they are to get their daughters married to NRIs," says Amarjeet Kaur, the anger and bitterness in her words matching her expression.

Amarjeet lives in a village off Phillaur town in the border state of Punjab in India. She is surrounded by thousands of families that have married off their daughters to NRI grooms, who have virtually dumped the young girls only to return for an occasional holiday

The holiday  over,  they  go  back,  leaving
 the weeping women with a child in the womb and promises of sending for them soon. Most of the women clutch the piece of paper with their NRI husbands’ phone number and address, as if it were a precious document.

The addresses generally turned out to be false,and the phone number a set of meaningless figures. Amarjeet’s beautiful and bright young daughter Baljinder was married to one such man, called parvasi panchi (migratory bird) in Punjab.

There are around 15,000 holiday wives in the Doaba region, lying between the Sutlej and Beas rivers, alone. The people of the Doaba were historically the first to cross the seas and make their home in Canada many decades ago. With every passing generation and the worsening agricultural scenario in the state, the desire to go abroad by hook or by crook has grown stronger.

An estimated 10 million people from Punjab have realized their dream of settling abroad. Over 80 per cent of  them  belong  to  Punjab’s  NRI  belt,  comprising  the  districts  of  Kapurthala,  Nawanshahar,
Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar.

But in the past five years, young women too have tried to take a dangerous route to the land of their dreams.

Amarjeet’s daughter Baljinder married Narinder Singh Thandi, a bus driver with a firm in Sacramento, California. When he left after two months, it was with a promise to send for her at the earliest. When she told him on the phone that she was pregnant, he told her to go in for an abortion, as it made more sense to have a baby in the US. He returned six months later and stayed for three months.

A second pregnancy and yet another abortion later,Baljinder stood at the airport, seeing him off.		  
STRANDED: Ravinder Kaur;

That was the last she saw or heard from him. Her phone calls went unanswered or were blocked by an answering machine. When she eventually managed to hear him, it was only to be told that he did not want her, and would have nothing to do with her

It was not as if Baljinder did not know she was taking a risk. The smart schoolteacher had heard of women who had been dumped by NRI husbands. But when she calculated the pros and cons of marrying an unknown NRI, she thought the advantage — of being able to sponsor her brothers, and thus lift her whole family from the poverty trap — was worth the risk.

Most young girls who have been educated in the countryside, but lack exposure, think along similar lines. Like Baljinder, most of them were only holiday wives, used by their NRI husbands when, and if, they came to India. As they waited for their husbands to send for them, their youth got wasted. Some raised children who had not seen their father, many did not even know the address and telephone number of their men. Simply put, they had been deceived and dumped.

Over the years, the craze to marry and go abroad spread to the rest of Punjab, and took unimaginable twists and turns. Weddings took an incestuous turn with sisters marrying their own NRI brothers to get that elusive visa.

 
As they waited for their husbands to send for them, their youth got wasted. Some raised children who had not seen their father, many did not even know the address and telephone number of their men. Simply put, they had been deceived and dumped.
 

Some desperate parents even arranged a "photo marriage" for their daughters. The "baraat"— the horse-riding groom brought in a procession by his family members, dancing all the way to the marriage venue — does not bring the groom to the bride’s doorstep. What arrives with pomp and fanfare is a huge portrait of the NRI groom, in formal wedding clothes. The bride goes through the ceremonies and rituals with the photograph, and waits for the man in the picture to send for her.

Harmesh and her son
  Often that’s the closest the wife will ever get near her 'husband'. He generally does not want to have anything to do with her, though his relatives are happy to pocket the dowry.

The dowry may include a return ticket for the groom, white goods like fridge, washing machine, microwave, household furniture, a car, and nowadays part financing of the Tata Sumos and Qualises which are parked as taxis along the highways passing through Doaba towns.

Plus, the groom’s family is more than happy with the unpaid household service they get from a young, healthy and uncomplaining girl.

If  families  of  the  dumped  women  are  to  be believed,  most  of  the  NRI  men  are  already  married
abroad, those weddings having got them the prized green card or citizenship they were looking for. The parents and relatives of the NRI men nevertheless go ahead with the wedding in India so they have someone to look after them in their old age. And the men have a woman-in -waiting when they come home to Punjab, sometimes for a six-month spell, to attend to their land or a real estate deal.

But while the parents of men living abroad flaunt their prosperity, the abandoned women’s poverty is heart rending.

Ravinder Kaur of Hathur village in Jagraon tehsil of Ludhiana, for instance, lives in a makeshift roomwhere her in-laws’ cattle were kept till she cleared the place for herself. Worse, she lost her two young sons to her husband, Kulwant Singh Chehal of Pone Di Kothe in Ludhiana district.

He would come to India once in a while, promise to take her back, but never did. In 1995 he told Ravinder to pack up for Canada. The long-neglected wife thought her misery was finally over, and got ready to make the journey.

At New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, Chehal said he was showing the children around. But when her children and husband did not turn up for over three hours, she inquired about the flight. The airport people told her that it had taken off. She had been dumped in the worst circumstances possible — alone and adrift in a strange metropolis.

A few years ago, when Punjab’s best known NRI Ujjal Singh Dosanjh was the premier of British Columbia, a few abandoned women appealed to him for help.
Dosanjh told them a story of a woman who came to see him to present her case against a Canadian citizen she had married many years earlier. "I asked her whether he had written to her, whether he sent her money. She said no. Then I asked her why she was fooling herself into believing that she was his wife, that he would send for her."

He believes that even if the law can force them to take these women to Canada, they cannot ensure a happy married life for them.

Of late, these holiday wives were being divorced ex parte in foreign courts. And in turn, they were coming "out" with their story. Many have  picked

 up the courage to demand a  solution,  knocking  at  the		  
Rajwant with son Diljot
courts for a bit of justice if possible.

Most of the abandoned women are neither employed nor educated to stand on their own feet. Rajwant Kaur, is a college drop out whose husband Kulwinder Bisla left her pregnant when he flew off to Germany. When her son Diljot was a few days old, she received a divorce notice.

"Often they send these notices to vague addresses. If we don’t respond in time, these girls are sure to receive an ex parte divorce decree," says lawyer Daljit Kaur, who represents Rajwant.

 
Ramoowalia’s POA

Lok Bhala Party president B.S. Ramoowalia has a plan of action to protect women from the predatory migratory birds.
Property switch: Property in India should automatically go to the wife immediately after an NRI marries an Indian girl.
No stonewalling: There should be no delay in filing a police case, which may give the husband time to fly out.
Verify before knot: Procedure for verifying NRI’s antecedents should be there through Indian missions, on a payment if need be.
No split on sly: Ex-parte decrees of divorce should be treated as a violation of law and contempt of Indian courts.
Involve relatives: NRI groom and some of his immediate relatives should be made to sign affidavits on groom’s status.
Red alert: Police should flash details about such grooms to airports/stations etc immediately after FIR is lodged.
 

Daljit ensured that the German court received her response. Now through a court intervention, Rajwant has managed to get the assurance that a little bit of her husband’s land and some money will betransferred in Diljot’s name and she as his guardian will get some money.
SISTERS UNDER THE SKIN: Abandoned women gather in court in Punjab
  Kulvinder’s parents have also begun exerting pressure on their son to send for Rajwant. She’s ready to fly to Germany and live in a loveless marriage because in Punjab her future and that of Diljot’s is bleak. Moreover, she does not want to live in India with the stigma and the pitying looks.

There is nothing to prove that only illiterate women become victims. Harmesh Kaur, who holds an M.Phil degree, was a lecturer at the Guru Nanak College in Gaddhiwala in Hoshiarpur district, when her husband , Kamal Pradeep Singh, also a lecturer, decided to take the illegal route to North America. She did not see or hear of him for three years. When she tracked him down, he said he would have to marry a Canadian and divorce her, in order to get permanent residence and be able to send for her.But Harmesh would first have to set him free
She did, and he simply shut her out of his life. A principal in a government school now, she has decided to put the nightmare behind her in order to let her son lead a normal life.

Society in Punjab is finally trying to solve this problem that is ruining their daughters. One way

is having a double wedding, wherein a brother and sister are married to a sister and brother. The rationale — I will do to your daughter what you do to mine. Crude, but it may work.

The Lok Bhalai Party — and its president Balwant Singh Ramoowalia — have made the cause of these abandoned wives its agenda because, in their estimate, every every third village in the rest of Punjab has one such case.

Most of the women know they will be too old to remarry by the time the case is settled. Yet, the LBP has moved court in about 1,100 cases so far, and have managed to get compensation for some.

At the political level , Ramoowalia’s party is pressing for solutions. They are also trying to sensitize Indian society abroad.

One woman appealed over the radio in London, on a Friday evening. "I will do all the work, I will be your slave, only don’t abandon me... don’t beat me," she asked of her husband and his parents. On Saturday, that appeal was the talk of the Sikh community, and on Sunday at the gurdwara, the family could see they were virtually excommunicated. It was not long before her father-in-law came and took her back to London.

"Their relatives know whether the NRI has been married before, where he is after dumping a wife here. If the law provides for the immediate arrest of these relatives who attend the wedding, many such deceptions will stop," believes Ramoowalia.

Ramoowalia is afraid the children of abandoned women may become maladjusted citizens or go astray in the absence of a regular family atmosphere. Equally, he is saddened by the fact that some of these women have even taken to prostitution to support themselves and their children.

Activists like Ramoowalia want the state to implement safety checks that will ensure that the daughters of Punjab will not become easy feed for the predators from abroad.