Driven by their home society to return home to marry, Indians living abroad take their wives with them. As they emigrate with different visas, they do not enjoy the same rights as their husbands. Abandoned after marriage, they often lose contact with their children and their basic rights. There is still no Indian law that requires men to appear before a judge for their abuse.
New Delhi () – In South and Southeast Asia there is an increasingly frequent form of abuse against women: abandonment after marriage. This is a long-known phenomenon whereby a man of Indian origin but living abroad, after seizing her wife’s dowry, divorces her. He leaves her in his home country without a visa and without the possibility of seeing his children. Tens of thousands of Indian women have suffered from this type of domestic violence in recent years.
India is the country with one of the largest diasporas in the world, with almost 32 million Indians living abroad who at some point, for cultural reasons related to their community of origin, return to their country to marry. Some women are drawn to the idea of marrying a “Non-Resident Indian” (NRI) who might offer them better life chances abroad, but often what should be a fairy tale ending turns into a nightmare.
Abandonment is often accompanied by other forms of domestic violence: Priya, a computer engineer who had followed her husband to California, was thrown out of her home after an argument. Her husband broke her arm. She did not report her abuse to the police because her husband threatened to commit suicide if she told anyone. Returning to Pune, India, Priya became another victim of transnational abandonment: her husband had secretly prepared divorce papers and returned to the United States alone. After a legal battle with her in-laws in India, Priya tried to reconcile with her husband in California, but he did not want to know anything more about her.
Despite great advances in gender equality, India’s patriarchal culture encourages domestic abuse: women must submit to the wishes of their husbands (and often their family of origin). Once abandoned, the woman becomes a “damaged commodity” in the eyes of Indian society. The payment of the dowry, which was declared illegal in 1961, is still in force but more sophisticated forms are used, such as the purchase of a house in which the newlyweds will later live. According to a survey conducted in a community of Indians living in the United States, more than half say they have been victims or have knowledge of domestic abuse. 40% of those surveyed said they stay in abusive relationships to keep up appearances or out of fear of retaliation from family or fear of losing money or contact with their children.
Meanwhile, Priya’s visa, linked to her marital status, would have expired after two months: in the United States, foreign workers, and especially Indians employed by large technology companies in Silicon Valley, reside in the country on visas. H1B. Their health insurance, bank accounts, driver’s license and other legal documents are tied to that visa and not their spouse’s, which prevents them from looking for work, making Indian wives in Silicon Valley financially dependent on their husbands , even though they are often engineers or computer scientists themselves. With this type of visa, they risk being deported after the divorce.
The Indian government claims to have received 6,000 reports of abandonment cases between 2015 and 2019. Almost 3,000 cases were recorded between 2017 and 2019 alone, but a 2013 study estimated that there were at least 30,000 abandoned women in India. The phenomenon has reached such proportions that it has been necessary to publish an information booklet on the legal rights enjoyed by wives when marrying foreign men, and some Indian states have created special police departments to deal with cases involving NRI divorces.
A 2020 bill provides for marriages to non-resident Indians to be registered in India as well. The lack of evidence certifying the union that took place abroad prevents legal action. However, due to the pandemic, the legislation is still under discussion in Parliament. In 2019, the Indian government canceled the passports of 33 non-resident Indians who had abandoned their wives, but this is not enough: some women have pushed for their ex-husbands to be extradited and tried in India for their abuses.
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