Marriage
Mirage In Kerala
By K A Shaji
27 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Thirty-nine-year-old
Kunhamina has no identity of her own. "Take a taxi to Kuttikattoor
and ask for the 'Arabian bride' Kunhamina. She is famous there because
of her ludicrous marriage. And no need of a postal address or phone
number," advises a senior special branch police officer attached
to the City Police Commissioner Office in Kozhikode.
In Kuttikattoor, about 20
km from Kozhikode city, Faizal Abdulla Quid Ahmed and Ahmed Abdulla
Quid Ahmed refuse to be photographed. "Policemen regularly come
knocking on our door, threatening us with deportation. My mother has
been running from pillar to post for the last 14 years, trying to get
citizenship for my younger brother and me. No photographs please as
they mean nothing but further humiliation," says 21-year-old Faizal,
an engineering graduate.
Kunhamina holds a slightly different view. "I will continue to
strive for Indian citizenship for both of my children. They have no
place to dwell other than India. You take any number of my photographs
if they can ensure citizenship for my children," she says.
Kunhamina's husband Abdulla
Quid Ahmed, a Yemeni national, is an exception among the hundreds of
aged Arab men who come to Kerala every year and marry poor Muslim women
of the region. He spends about six months each year in Kuttikattoor
with his Indian wife and children, and supports them financially. Kunhamina
is very worried that her two teenaged sons are neither citizens of India
nor Yemen.
The problem began when Ahmed,
who was 60 when he married for the third time, took his 16-year-old
Indian bride to Sharajah where he worked in a private firm. Kunhamina
returned to India with her children years later. Now, however, the three
feel extremely insecure as they have no ration card, no passport and
no official permission to undertake any job. They have to renew their
temporary permission to stay here annually for a fee of Rs 1,400.
Two of Subaida's three daughters
face the same problem. Subaida, who lives in Vattakundu near Pallikandy,
however has no husband to turn to for moral and monetary support. In
1987, when she was twenty-four, she was married off to Haji Farooqui,
a 60-year-old Iranian and went to live with him in Dubai. Subaida returned
to India with her three children nine years ago. There has been no word
from her husband for the last five years, and she is not waiting anymore.
Her children Fathima and
Azna, who do not have Indian citizenship, are facing deportation. After
many years of representation to various governmental agencies, she has
lost all hope. "As a last resort, I met Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan
last week and pleaded for his intervention. He promised maximum efforts
on the part of state government to persuade an otherwise unwilling Union
Government," she said. "Since a large number of children of
Arab marriages were born in Middle East and came here with their Indian
mothers, they do not have the citizenship in either country and face
deportation, when they become adults," points out VP Suhra, president
of nisa, a voluntary agency that works with Muslim women in Kozhikode.
In fact, the issue of citizenship
is just the tip of the iceberg. Married and cast away shortly after
honeymoon by their Arab husbands, hundreds of poor Muslim women in the
northern coastal districts of Kerala are cursing their fate. "Arab
marriages are taking place clandestinely in north Kerala even now, though
there is widespread propaganda that they are not taking place in this
literate and progressive state. Barely an year ago the Kozhikode police
arrested two Arabs on charges of marrying teenage girls and sexually
abusing them," says a top police official who wishes to remain
anonymous.
From Kasargod to Ponnani
in Malappuram district, poor girls along the coast have always been
married to Arabs in return of meher worth a few hundred rupees. Such
marriages are rampant in Kozhikode, especially in Kuttichira, Mughadar,
Pallikandi, Kampuram and Kappakkal — places where slums dot beaches,
the men-folk are usually fishermen or timber workers, and women work
as housemaids in city homes.
K. Shuhaib, a social activist
in Kuttichira, introduces us to Ayesha, who at 34 has already been married
four times. None but one lasted beyond 60 days. She fails to recollect
her second husband's name. She has two children, fathered by two of
her former husbands.
Fathima alias Arakkal Pathu
of Chappayil has a similar tale of woe. Forty-five-year-old Mohammed
from Qatar married her when she was only 12, and abandoned her and their
son three years later. She married a Saudi Arabian national later and
he too left her without even waiting for the birth of her second son.
"I have never seen my
father. I have no clue about his whereabouts. Even the name and address
he gave to my mother's family were fake," says Pathus's second
son Abubacker, a headload worker. Pathu is fortunate in that she has
only two children to take care of. Other women in a similar situation
often have to raise many children fathered by different men. As per
rough estimates, there are more than 900 such forgotten children whose
fathers came from across the sea, in Kuttichira alone.
Sixty-seven-year-old TT Bhathimayyi
of Thangal's Road recalls that her father got Rs 200 as meher when she
was married off to the Bahraini national Badre Mohammed Ahmed Rasheed
52 years ago. No communication was possible, as her husband only knew
Arabic and she Malayalam. They lived as man and wife for three months.
Her son Mohammed Mustafa now works in Bahrain after he obtained his
citizenship there with the help of his step-brothers.
About 15 years ago, Subaida
of Mughadar came to know of the death of her Iranian husband Hussain
Mohammed in a shipwreck near the African coast. She was six months pregnant
when Hussain had abandoned her. Now, she lives with her two daughters
and a son. "Now, I am struggling hard to forget the bitter experiences
of the past," she says.
"My father, Yusuf Mubaraq,
has done nothing for us. But his three sons in Oman helped us a lot
financially after his death. However the extreme humiliation and neglect
by the society had already crippled my ambition to excel in life,"
says Ramla, daughter of Amina of Kozhikode South Beach. A school dropout,
Ramla is now working as a housemaid to look after her 13-year-old daughter.
Like her overseas father, Ramla's Indian husband divorced her without
any reason some years ago.
There are scores and scores
of such 'Arabian brides' in the densely populated, poverty ridden coastal
area; the story of Aminas, Suharas, Subaidas and Bhathimayis is repeated
over and over again.
Now things are done secretly.
The secrecy is the result of a number of arrests since 1985. The people
living in the coastal belt know marriages take place, but will not tell
you where, when, how or who is getting married. The logic is simple:
"It is poverty that makes these girls get into such marriages.
Sometimes a kindly Arab might look after the girl for a lifetime. Why
prevent that?"
The social reason behind
these 'sales' is directly linked to the dowry system. The girl's family
has to shell out a huge dowry in cash and gold in Muslim marriages.
Girls who get married to aged Arabs come from poor families. And the
meher Arabs give, which could be as little as Rs 3,000, is a boon to
the family. The sanction by the clergy is another cause why the practice
continues. The male-dominated clergy is least bothered about the poor
women and their unfortunate children. All this, coupled with general
lack of education and awareness, has made intervention by social organisations
difficult. "If anything worthwhile is to be done, poverty should
be wiped out. There can be no cosmetic changes," says Suhra.
Fearing the clergy's wrath,
no political party in Kerala is taking up the issue. When the National
Women's Commission organised separate sittings on Arab marriages in
Kozhikode and Malappuram last year, the State Women's Commission —
comprising nominees of the previous Oommen Chandy government —
decided not to cooperate with it. The body has come under sharp criticism
by women's groups. Suhra is demanding a multi-pronged approach by the
government and the civil society to address the problem.
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