At 27, Manpreet Kaur married a man she had met through a Sikh temple in west London. It grew to become a disaster, and within 12 months, she changed back domestic together with her mother and father. For ten years now, she has been hoping to find some other husband but has reached a sour conclusion: most Sikh men do not need to marry a divorcee.
“If you divorce me, you’ll never marry again,” my husband shouted at me before I left him. He said it to hurt me, but he knew it might turn out to be actual. And so did I. Divorce is shameful within the Sikh community, especially for girls. To start with, I turned into ashamed of myself. I felt dirty and used. How should I look at every other man once I knew he would regard me as a used well?
Other people bolstered this feeling. My grandma in London advised me that I must have labored at my marriage, even though she knew what I had been through. My dad’s own family in India said they had been disillusioned that I was domestic; I became ashamed of them. My mother and father supported me one hundred percent; however, I felt I had let them down.
For five years, I infrequently went out, but in 2013, I started to appear once more for a companion. When I asked people to look out for an appropriate man for me, they could regularly be satisfied to assist. They would start asking questions – how vintage I changed into, in which I lived, where I worked – but as quickly as I told them I was divorced, their facial expression changed. It becomes a glance that says, “we can not help you.”
My marriage has been semi-arranged. People kept telling me I was growing old and placing pressure on me to marry, so I asked the temple in Southall to introduce me to a person. After my divorce, when I commenced looking for a brand new husband, I went to the Hounslow temple to sign in its matrimonial book. I knew the temple could most effectively introduce me to contributors to my very own caste, even though rank isn’t vital to me. But what I didn’t realize was that, given that I changed into a divorcee, they could simply introduce me to divorced guys.
Once the volunteer saw my info on the form I had crammed in, he said: “Here are guys who are divorced – they are the most effective ones suitable for you.” But in at least two temples, I have visible divorced guys being brought to women who have never been married. So why can’t divorced girls be introduced to guys who’ve not been married before? It’s as though guys can never be held accountable for a divorce, but women can.
I asked the man in charge of the Hounslow temple’s matrimonial provider, Mr. Grewal, to explain this to me, and he informed me it wasn’t his desire – it turned into the men searching out a bride, and their mother and father, who said they didn’t need a divorcee. “They aren’t going to accept divorce, as it should not show up in the Sikh community if we follow the religion,” he said.
But Sikhs do get divorced every so often, similar to everyone else. The 2018 British Sikh Report says that 4% had been divorced and another 1% had separated. Some of those who admit to having been divorced might also have remarried. However, I’m pretty sure that a wider variety ticks the “single” field even though they’re divorced – it’s not any such taboo.
As divorce becomes more commonplace, attitudes will help maximize the likelihood of exchange. Younger people have told me it is now longer such a big problem for them. But in my culture, even human beings who’ve divorced sisters or daughters in their family will nevertheless judge every other divorced lady outside their circle of relatives. These are the sorts of things human beings say to me: “You are too vintage to have youngsters, you’ll find it hard to meet a person now – you’ve left it too late. You have to find anybody and marry them.”
