Chaudhary Rashid a 54 year old Man in Georgia was charged with the killing of his daughter Sandeela Kanwal(link) .The purported motive is that his daughter reportedly was not happy with her recent arranged marriage that took place in Pakistan to a man who now lives in Chicago.
“The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband,” the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid’s wife. “This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father,” so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said.
This one has been filed under “honor killing” which is a great misnomer – there is zero honor in the slaughter of innocents in the name of some undefinable , vaporous idea of “honor”. One sensible quote in the article:
“My immediate reaction was that this is an anomaly in the South Asian community,” Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told CNN Tuesday. “Most South Asian-American families enjoy wonderful relationships within their families.”I
I think there’s ways that we can rationalize it and make sense of it, particularly in thinking about new immigrant communities in the U.S. and thinking about some of the struggles that they face and the generation gap and the cultural differences that children do face,” he said. “I think there are some issues there, but by and large, this isn’t a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities.”
Without minimizing the horror of a crime when a parent deems it fit to kill his offspring over a choice that she made about her own life , I’d like to point out the inevitable playing up of the “arranged marriage ” angle by the press.See this for example. This is unfortunate because it implies that arranged marriages are the cause of such heinous crimes, whereas the issue is far more complex and has more to do with antediluvian attitudes towards women and lack of cultural assimilation. Its sad because while simultaneously sweeping the real and terrifying aspects of domestic violence under the carpet, it vilifies the institution of arranged marriages. From what I have seen – though not having had an arranged marriage myself- the vast majority of them work. There is a difference between an “arranged ” marriage and a “forced” one- a distinction that unfortunately seems to escape most journalists.
Meanwhile in the annals of reality TV, we will soon get to see “Arranged Marriage” ( tip: Karthik via email) – a proposed reality TV show that – and I quote from the website here, plans to :
introduce America to an ancient practice that may have a great deal to teach our modern relationhips……
In my opinion, this is okay. If you can allow abominations shows like Tila Tequila’s Shot at Love and Flava Flavs messy attempts at finding love- why not a show on arranged marriages? This one actually seems to approach it from the viewpoint that the majority of these marriages work. It will follow four couples through the first year of their marriages – which would have been “arranged” by their close family and friends.
Maybe some good will come of the reality show.Maybe people will realize that deranged actions of abusers are not morally equivalent to marriages arranged by concerned families and friends.
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