he arrived in New York less than
four years ago, a bride from India hoping for a good life with a man who
bragged of being a millionaire. The reality broke her heart and nearly
cost her life.
Pervinder Kaur, the hopeful bride, knew very little English and less
about America. Alone and vulnerable, she saw herself turned into a prisoner
of her in- laws' home, forbidden to make friends outside the family. Her
husband tried to force her to turn over money, then beat her, she said.
But two phone calls set her free. Finally, she called the police, who
got an ambulance and sent her to a hospital. Later, she called Sakhi.
"Sakhi is my family now," she said.
Sakhi — the name means "female friend" in Hindi — is a still-struggling,
10-year-old support group based in Manhattan and run by South Asian women
to help other women from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Indians
in the Caribbean. It is part of a growing movement led by young South Asian-Americans
who want to confront social issues that have often been taboo in their
homes and neighborhoods.
Sakhi teaches women about their rights and how to exercise them in the
United States. Among its services, the group helps women find places to
live. It also offers language assistance and legal advice in court cases
and dealings with city services. Sakhi volunteers, some of whom are lawyers,
sometimes accompany women to the courts, or to interviews with the police
or other city agencies.
Similar organizations have formed in recent years in Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Texas, California and Washington State. They all offer not just
help, but also the comfort of a familiar culture in an alien world.
"They spoke so nicely to me," Ms. Kaur said in a soft voice, remembering
her first contact with Sakhi volunteers. "They talked in my language. Until
then, I could not talk about it, what had happened. I always started to
cry."
Now, there is a chronicler for the work of these organizations and the
issues they confront. Margaret Abraham — born in India, a Ph.D. from Syracuse,
head of the sociology department at Hofstra University — could be just
one more story drawn from the most successful new immigrant group in the
United States.
Statistically, Indians have the best educations and earn the most money
among new Americans. They enjoy an annual wage almost double the national
average, and wield buying power of as much as $20 billion each year, according
to the news magazine India Today.
But Dr. Abraham was troubled by something not readily discussed among
South Asians here, the domestic violence that arrived in the social baggage
of migrants from the Indian subcontinent. She began to wrestle intellectually
with what she called "the myth of the model minority."
"Any strong community is one that celebrates and takes pride in its
achievements, but also acknowledges and takes action against its social
problems," she said. "That makes for a stronger community."
In most of South Asia, the status of women, Hindu and Muslim, is measurably
the lowest in the world. Women like Ms. Kaur often arrive in New York as
brides in arranged marriages, strangers to American life and to the men
they marry.
Thousands of miles from home and family, they are easily victimized.
Fearful of summary deportation and unable to make themselves understood
to the police and the courts, where they sometimes meet derision if not
hostility, they endure abuse in silence. Some die.
As a sociologist, Dr. Abraham said, she saw abuse compounded by the
failure of social and legal services to deal effectively with poor, often
illiterate, non-English-speaking victims of any ethnic group. With the
encouragement of Hofstra, she set out to document the phenomenon of violence
in South Asian families. This year, her book, "Speaking the Unspeakable:
Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States," was
published by Rutgers University Press.
Dr. Abraham's book, which not only tells a series of tragic stories
but also looks at ways women fight back, reinforces the experiences of
Sakhi volunteers.
They have seen women in New York who have been psychologically wounded,
physically battered, beaten and burned. In India, by its government's own
figures, at least 6,000 brides are burned to death every year because the
dowry they bring to a marriage is deemed too small — or because a husband
decides he does not really like the woman selected for him by his parents.
Megha Bhouraskar, legal counsel to Sakhi, said the organization grew
out of a demonstrable need. "Existing organizations were calling individuals,
saying, `We have such-and- such person in our office,' and there were language
issues or cultural issues — a communications problem." Volunteers were
found to help.
"At that point, none of us had this expertise," Ms. Bhouraskar said.
"Some of the situations involved women we knew personally, and we would
have never known that they were in this situation except that we got a
call."
Courts and welfare organizations frequently do not understand the dynamics
of an extended South Asian family, where an abused woman may need a restraining
order not only against her husband but also against her in-laws, said Prema
Vora, who was Sakhi's executive director until last month.
It is hard to quantify domestic violence among South Asians in New York,
said Dr. Abraham, because the work of Sakhi and other organizations is
relatively new and Indian immigrants have been reluctant to explore the
issue.
With the help of research from Columbia University's Social Intervention
Group, Sakhi has begun to develop a local database. The organization gets
15 to 30 new calls for help each month.
The New York City Police Department is working with Sakhi to train officers
to deal with abuse in South Asian families. And in recent months, Sakhi
has moved into new territory, taking its campaign to Hindu temples, Sikh
gurudwaras and churches that Indian Christians attend, said Dr. Abraham,
whose South Indian family is Catholic, part of India's Christian minority,
from the state of Kerala.
Hindu temples are important institutions for women fighting domestic
violence because they are avenues for working within Indian culture, not
in conflict with it. Moreover, some temples here are susceptible to a rising
tide of Hindu fundamentalism in India. Indian-American women want to deliver
a different message.
"We are trying to take space in the community and not let the fundamentalists
define it for us," Dr. Abraham said. "Our community cannot be defined by
one group. We are a huge spectrum of people."
Dr. Abraham, who is married to an Indian and has a 7-year-old son, was
criticized at first for airing the subject of violence. "There was negative
reaction: `Why are you bringing this out?' " she said. "We have not just
addressed the issue of domestic violence, but challenged the myth of a
model minority and also addressed issues of class, race and caste."
Purvi Shah, a writer and graduate student in English literature at Rutgers
University in New Jersey, said her generation's job was to "provoke our
community not to accept violence."
"We spoke first of domestic violence because that was an easy, coherent,
immediate problem," she said. "But now, if we look at the directions we're
moving, we also look broadly at issues of sexual violence and incest,"
subjects about which there is still a huge silence in among Indians, she
added.
Young Indian women, and men, are showing a greater interest in social
issues, both here and in India, the women at Sakhi say. Gulab Bhouraskar,
a ceramic artist and Megha Bhouraskar's mother, recalls a time when New
York had only a few professional families from India preoccupied with establishing
themselves in a new country.
"We were building a community, and our thoughts were like, `Where do
you find a grocery store, where do you find a priest, where do you find
fresh cilantro' — it was those basic issues," Gulab Bhouraskar said. "But
over a number of years, the community has grown and all levels of society
have come, so all issues have come."
Most women in South Asia are illiterate, and as more are brought here
as brides or domestic laborers, the pool of vulnerable women grows. To
them, the outside world is strange and terrifying. Even taking a subway
train can be intimidating. That was Pervinder Kaur's story.
Her new husband — who, she soon discovered, had been married and divorced
three times — first put her to work in a gas station. Then, as she became
more confident, he confined her to the family home. They had a daughter.
"He knew I loved her," Ms. Kaur said. "He threatened to take her away from
me."
The story could have ended in violence and death, as others have. But
Sakhi helped her through her husband's arrest (the case is pending), a
divorce, English lessons and training as a medical assistant. Living alone
with her daughter now, she is a new woman. To prove it, she shows photographs
of herself as a frightened immigrant, taken only a few years ago. The contrast
with the confident woman she has become is startling. Ms. Kaur is so self-assured
that she continues to worship at the Sikh gurudwara her ex-husband attends.
It sets an example for others, and is an act of bravery, Dr. Abraham said.
Less than two years after those two fateful telephone calls that changed
her life, Ms. Kaur said, "I feel very good. And now I know a lot about
this country."
