Daughters of Shame; By Jasvinder Sanghera.

I have only just begun after finishing the first one - Shame - in two days, and this one naturally takes off with a flying start. Every one goes to heart. One wishes one could do something, even if it is only to hold the hurt little ones and reassure them.
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It took a couple of days longer to finish this one, since it gets rather oppressing to realise it is all quite so ubiquitous - a systematic physical and emotional and in fact every other form of abuse of daughters geared towards using them as currency to keeping up one's own social prestige. Young girls somewhere around their teens, from as early as preteen to as late as early twenties, are held hostage to the concepts of honour that involve a slavery or worse for the women concerned, with no concern for their mental or emotional or often even physical well being and the only concern being to hand them over and to make them docile and servile to the men who own them in a farce of a marriage.

These forced relationships are really not marriages, they are a male bound (in his ownership of her) to a woman, often as young as fourteen and expected to be a robot in her compliance with the expectations of her from everyone including in offering no resistance to rape by the husband (he has often no concept of any other form of a relationship with a wife), with both cheated of any possible joy or love in the relationship and in fact in life. There are frequent enough instances of the young wife's father offering to murder her if she is unwilling to allow a consummation of a forced marriage. And all this in a community that claims to give rights to women what with a formality of a consent asked in public at the wedding, which often is given on threat of murder ensuing non compliance from her of course.

These girls, even when they grow up in UK going to schools there with the local population, are not really familiar with any other world than the one the community forces on them what with rules of behaviour pertaining to all spheres of life, and they have a window in the schooling years to a better world with more freedom - albeit with dangers too, but then freedom with dangers is better than dangers guaranteed at home! But even when they have a courage and spirit to try to take a flight to a better life, often what cripples them is this very inability to connect to any other life when the old life steeped in the community is cut off from them.

And why should the community be cut off if they do attempt a better life? It is because in the communities - not all Asians, but those from a particular region in Asia, and of some but not all religions in those parts - the possibility of a daughter or a woman with any choice, any possible better life is simply unthinkable. Not that men of the community benefit in this, and one has to question who does. After all a family with a mother and wife unhappy and daughters disallowed to blossom cannot possibly be happy, they just don't know any different. And people who are not happy at home are easier to control.

So the mores imposed like a poisonous weed flourish to the extent that when a girl, a young woman leaves a home in fear for her life and in protest against a forced marriage, often with as honourable a wish as an aspiration to education, she is hunted out again and again until she gives in - and the whole community is a part of it until she is unable to find any solace in familiarity of the world she has known by meeting any people of her own community even when they are strangers. Even a person working for governmental institutions in UK who are supposed to help her and protect her might find his (or her) loyalty to the community override the work ethic, and inform on her, resulting in her being hunted out by those intent on kidnapping and - or - murdering her. Emotional blackmail is used successfully too, and some women do cave in after a while.

All this if the young one escapes in the first place. Until Jasvinder Sanghera started educating the police and schools and other institutions of UK that could and should help and protect the young in the immigrant communities of the nation about the issues involved, and pointed out that being sensitive to culture difference was resulting in murder and kidnapping and rapes and general abuse of the young British Asian girls, there was really no way for them to escape, no route as such. Often they did go to teachers and police, but with no help forthcoming.

Now, there is a growing lot of institutional help what with a growing awareness about the issues, and hopefully there will be a growth in the enlightenment of the general community too, resulting in more education and benefit for everyone, with a better quality of life.

Marriages can be arranged without being forced, Queen Victoria was key in arranging her children's and grandchildren's marriages with holidays arranged so the young could meet and be familiar - just an example.

In the world wide expatriate community rooted in India the "arranging" merely amounts to the young ones being free of concern for hunting out and wooing their partners until their education and career concerns are at a stage satisfactory enough to find a partner, and the family along with the various other routes used by dating agencies in the world - advertisements, marriage agencies, websites now - help to locate possible choices.

Often a young person looks at the data selected for him or her with a few candidates shortlisted from the few hundred or so responses, there are meetings arranged where the young have a conversation with some privacy and might judge how they feel, and each has a possibility of saying if they wish to proceed to be engaged (which is when they get to meet more, but still on relative privacy, chaperoned by a member or few of either family or both).

In effect, this amounts to either person being as well educated and able to pursue his or her career as the family and the circumstances afford, all things considered. Hence the wide spread progress in the majority of people with roots in India, with excellence in education and career being a foundation considered important.

And it does help when one is not supposed to deviate from those aims while still young, not worry about being popular or learning to use cosmetics or being with fashion. One might do it a bit but it is far from a stigma to be plain, simple and good at academic and other achievements - on the contrary. In addition, often someone who finds love is able to deal with it, since such a concept is not considered evil but merely something the family has to deal with on par with any other way of finding a partner.

The key difference of the two pictures, of course, is - education, career, choices, and a help with finding a partner rather than the family forcing one at a young age out of a good life into a bed with an unwanted stranger against one's protests and in fear for life.

And the most major key difference is the concept of family and woman, with a forced marriage being based on no recognition of individual, considering everyone as a property of the family, and any individual choices being threatening to the honour of the family. This idea of the honour being so fragile as to be threatened by a blossoming of the family is the root of all the evil described here.

In the wider Asian community rooted in India, honour is neither so fragile nor dependent on the living death of the family and women - on the contrary. It is the growth and blossoming of the family - including the women - with education and achievements and careers and progress that is key in the wider community, these essentials replacing the killingly misplaced concept of honour that are used in forced marriages.

There can be no honour in forcing a woman to marry, (or even a man unless he has played with a woman or raped her - and even then it is no good for her - ) - much less in abusing and kidnapping and having her raped by the officially designated person in the name of one's own prestige in the community. Such a concept makes one a slave owner and one's family robots, no more.
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At one point there is a further analysis of the situation of immigrants, with some commonalities to the general migrants around the world (including the various colonial rulers through the ages in lands far away from their roots) but with some frightening consequences in this case.

The immigrants in UK, even those of Asian origin and even those that speak a particular language or two that are related to one another really, are further divided by one important difference - that of religion. And while two out of the various different religions in this context have a concept of "honour" about ownership of daughters to such an extent they would rather hunt out a woman and murder her, there is one that allows, indeed takes pride in its tradition of, easy divorces. This usually does not in practice result in a freedom for a woman although in theory that is the idea - in practice it results in the woman being cast aside as soon as her forced husband has achieved his aim of getting a legal status his own to settle in UK. Then he is free to bring another bride from back home, one unable to speak English, with no ties and no support for her in UK. And thus the community grows - grows as immigrants growing further apart from the ambient society even as they grow in number. And in this lie the roots of much of the disturbance plaguing the world today.

These immigrants have no ties to the land they live in, have little or no intention of being connected much less absorbed or even a part of a salad bowl. All the pain and travails of being far away from one's emotional roots are translated thus into a hatred of the very society they clamour so much to be legally a part of, with marriages paving a way as a ladder to climb from being an Asian to a UK citizen.
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Other parts of the community, those without easy divorces, have had ties to other just as horrible ways to take their pain and hatred out on another part of the world - back home, in fact, with much pain inflicted in attempt to carve out pieces of a land they left behind; they do not and never did intend to return, of course, merely to attempt a show of what they could do. The talk of a separate homeland goes on still amongst these migrants to faraway lands while back home it has gone away, it never was a real possibility there with the community so very widespread as to make it another farce.

Those immigrants, with no easy divorces allowed in their faith, instead resort to killing the daughters that do not comply with being objects traded for prestige.
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Again, majority of the world wide population with roots in India have not so much fear or aversion to being integrated into the ambient society where they live, however gently - most migrants do not easily give way to losing their own culture, and indeed flourishing of such cultural gardens is a key to growth of nations that are not xenophobic. But they do accept the children growing up abroad with them as part of the nations they have migrated to and while they might impart their cultural values and attempt to keep in touch with relatives back home or fellow immigrants around, marriages are not forced and education a matter of pride as is any other achievement, and of course careers.

Marriages of children with local population or other immigrants (not of one's own culture but those of roots far away) do happen and are accepted, and attempts are made sincerely to make things work. In fact often enough a first generation immigrant ends up marrying a person from the place he or she has been living in, and such marriages are accepted too, and often work quite well.

Which is not to say things are all perfect in one community or another - only, that the practices of one or two of the communities of the general "Asian" immigrants in UK are far from ubiquitous of the region of their origin as a whole.
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In fact, the people mentioned in this book, with forced marriages and abuse and rapes and killings and kidnappings in name of prestige (I don't, really don't think it is honour in any way for anyone, it is only prestige and status!) - they remind me of another set of migrants, those of Asians in US (which there means orientals, that is, mostly with roots in China and related lands).

Chinatowns in US have long had the notoriety of being difficult for the local or state or any other agencies in the country to deal with, and there is generally little protection for the people being smuggled in and trafficked as labour or white slaves.

The difference is, in UK they do it to their own daughters and wives and family members. Not just fellow community members, as in Chinatowns of US, but actually their own blood - daughters and sisters and nieces - and life partners.

And often sons too.
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Shame; by Jasvinder Sangheera.

I am not sure if this was the book published under the name Bezti, meaning dishonour, with death threats for the writer subsequently from males of various Asian communities in UK including - especially - the one she belonged to.

There have been various books and films about the travails of the children growing up in Asian immigrant communities, with a mixed heritage including a contrast of home and surroundings - East Is East being a very popular and famous one amongst them. That one has a mixed ancestry at home to begin with, and the travails of a brood mostly male, while this one gives the real dire version of immigrants (sans mixed race) living in localities where the populations are mostly people like themselves, so the version here is the starker one.

Both are about the insularity of the first generation immigrant parents to the ambient society and its values and opportunities, which often has children caught between the world of parents that they are trying to recreate half a world away, and the ambient society the children live in and also belong to, far more than the parents do. The recent very well received Bend It Like Beckham is another milder version of the reality, where the edges have been trimmed to show a community mostly doing well. This one goes into the travails, the horrors, the swept-under-the-rug realities.

If I were not exhausted when I began reading this it would have been finished in one go, and as it is it was in two days - never read anything that fast for a long time now, and generally I take time to savour reading. But this one cannot put down, not easily. Moreover, when I began and was only about halfway there was some question about if it was a work based on the general stereotype albeit there was no doubt about the authenticity of the whole life depicted herein, of a community living half a world away from their roots and trying to preserve ties to home by the worst route possible, by keeping to the dark ages practices that are now only in poor or rural or generally unenlightened communities back "home", but are far gone into oblivion, especially in urban or middle class and above or educated and enlightened parts of the society (especially in India).

At a few pages more, however. there was no doubt as to the reality, the absolute authenticity of the story being completely autobiographical. One pities the poor rural folk that go to distant lands half a world away and live there in urban settings but dare not open their hearts and eyes and minds to the whole new world of opportunities open to them through education and other freedoms, and work hard and menial labour to preserve and create another copy of their social setting back home where they came from. But this pity can only go so far, while the brunt of their burden is carried willy nilly by the hapless women - indeed little girls - of the emigrants and at the pain of death too, not merely physical abuse and worse.

In a poor society, when the social setting makes it imperative to balance the reality with aspirations, one can understand a lot about marrying children while still young - especially when both the groom and bride are of a compatible age.

There is a twofold reason for this, the urgent one being a security for a girl found early in form of a home and clan that claims her and would at the very least be likely to strike back at anyone harming her, so a girl thereafter can grow up with relative safety from male adults around. A girl in her teens in a poor locality, either rural setting or an urban slum, and without parents strong and rich enough to protect her in the former, might be prey to unsavoury male adults around; but a knowledge of a husband somewhere generally deters such attention from being at a level where the husband and his clan might be obliged to defend or avenge her honour with death of anyone offending.

The other reason of course is that people do wish to secure a marriage for a daughter and if the social custom is to do it early then waiting might leave no good possibilities of a match for her around in the society. So the family tries to find the best possible match for her by doing it early enough so the best possible match is not lost (with another family getting it instead) due to waiting. If the society one lives in has a norm of children being married by the age of eight, one benefits by looking as early as childbirth for a match, and begins to lose by the time the child - especially a daughter - is near ten. Such might be, in fact is, the reality in many parts of the world.

This is far from saying it is desirable much less universally so, and as a matter of fact even in Panjaab (usually spelt Pubjab) where most of immigrants termed "Asian" hail from, there is no dearth of families with better practices and women who not only are not forced into an unwanted marriage (goes without saying men are forced into marriages quite often too, although women suffer more either way), but in fact very often women are exemplary in their careers and they in fact have set universally shining examples too.

Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi and many many more such women hail from smaller towns of Panjaab, and for that matter even Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Provoked is her autobiography) is from a small village - she had had a college education before her relatives looked for a match and she was very central to the process (unlike the daughters of the immigrants in UK who are forced with no voice in the matter) of finding a suitable person, as is usual in an "arranged marriage", a key difference from a forced marriage. Kiranjit Ahluwalia had not known trouble much less pain or abuse until she married a man living in - born and brought up in - UK; and this too is common, daughters in India finding pain and abuse only after they are married.

But when people emigrate to a free country such as UK from rural parts of poorer countries, and then do not see much less allow themselves or their children to take advantage of all the possible opportunities, education and career and development of mind and self, much evil results - and it is all here in this little account of a life and surroundings. And this includes not only beatings and locking up the daughters, but rapes too, by brothers and uncles - since the males bear no burden of keeping virtue by any norm while the women bear it in every way possible.

In a sense one might say such immigrants live in a time warp, where they hang on to a culture they think is theirs but are in fact contributing to the creation of one that is changing rapidly back home for far better, even as they are creating a draconian version of it in a far more liberal and progressive society, wasting all opportunities in their blind quest to hold on to what they left behind.

It is all the more pathetic and horrible therefore to find that those you might think - and they do in fact think - are in a better position in the world are not only harking back to but rather creating all on their own a version of dark ages far worse than one can imagine, what with daughters not allowed to wear clothes worn in society around or possess mobile phones or not being allowed to speak to their local peers (plenty of racism and other forms of discrimination involved, with only those from one's own original roots being termed one's community). Or of course finally being forced into marriages before they are eighteen, with deception of a holiday visiting relatives used to force them to marry and then leave them before they come back (so they can work in low paying jobs to sponsor the new unwanted husbands to arrive in UK) - and in all this suffering physical abuse and other forms of abuse plenty. The descriptions here, all factual, are horrific.

One relatively recent Indo-Canadian documentary film (Canada is the other country where a major population of immigrants from rural Panjaab and neighbourhoods to the north and west of Panjaab flock to) showed a mother living in Canada hiring killers and ordering them to murder her daughter and son-in-law, for the sin of having married someone in India having fallen in love on a visit, against her - the mother's - will. The killers had the daughter speak to the mother on the cell phone, the daughter pleaded for her life and asked forgiveness for having married and assured her she was happy in the marriage; the mother listened and then asked the daughter to give the phone to the assailants. Then she asked her to kill the daughter. The son-in-law was beaten up badly, left unconscious unable to save his much beloved bride, and has been in hiding until the time of the film; the poor and much grieved, bereaved mother-in-law of the dead girl, filmed in the poor rural house she lives in where the loving daughter in law had "adjusted very well" in spite of being a well to do woman from a rich nation, had her body brought home and cremated as per tradition with all the ceremony involved, since the mother couldn't care less apparently, and the body had been thrown in a ditch along the road where she was murdered.

Read Provoked, read this one, and then there is the recent film (Heaven On Earth) too, by Mehta. And then ask yourself if you have been closing your eyes to such gross injustice, nay, crimes and sins, around your home. Chances are, it might be so. School teachers and other authorities in UK have been aware of it all for a few decades, what with students from certain background regularly going missing and their marriages no secret. When they die, just as often it is termed accident or suicide, conveniently. The community knows the truth of honour killings, has always done and has condoned it too.

What is truly wonderful is how this young spirit struggles again and again overcoming various deprivations and abuses, and more than coping finds paths out of the locked situation that others like her are staying in; and what is more goes all out to help others like herself, after getting a degree from a university while caring for her small children and helping other women, and yet dealing with the abusive males (not by passive acceptance, but attempting to have a good marriage until it is clear it won't happen) - and is forging ahead too.

I am already beginning the sequel, Daughters of Shame.