sikh women Why are Sikh women always blamed for converting when Sikh men also do it

[proudkaur21]

i saw all these posts of interfaith marriages that were posted and i dont understand why do these people want to have a sikh marriage when they dont even want to live the sikh way of life? I mean whats the point when you will not even live your life like a sikh?Why are these people so obsessed with anand karaj? They literally think of it as a cultural prop.

[Jacfsing2]

1 hour ago, proudkaur21 said:

i saw all these posts of interfaith marriages that were posted and i dont understand why do these people want to have a sikh marriage when they dont even want to live the sikh way of life? I mean whats the point when you will not even live your life like a sikh?Why are these people so obsessed with anand karaj? They literally think of it as a cultural prop.

Blame Nirankaris. 

[Ranjeet01]

It is because  Sikhi is very open and too agreeable when it comes to other faiths.

We don't really stand up for our principles and are willing to concede. 

We need to be less agreeable and more stubborn so we concede less.

[Jacfsing2]

4 hours ago, MisterrSingh said:

On the other hand there's people who we'd consider religious who blast Punjabi rap music in the evenings; 

Guilty as charged  

[GurjantGnostic]

4 hours ago, Jacfsing2 said:

Guilty as charged  

There's good Katha to beats and hip hop like Shaheedi music that's a step up from punjabi rap. 

[Premi5]

 

[Premi5]

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/world/india-interfaith-marriage.html

She Said She Married for Love. Her Parents Called It Coercion.

After a woman, who was born a Sikh, married a Muslim man, her parents accused him of kidnapping. Now, new laws across India are seeking to ban all interfaith marriages.

By Sameer Yasir, Emily Schmall and Iqbal Kirmani

• July 20, 2021

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Manmeet Kour Bali had to defend her marriage in court.

A Sikh by birth, Ms. Bali converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man. Her parents objected to a marriage outside their community and filed a police complaint against her new husband.

In court last month, she testified that she had married for love, not because she was coerced, according to a copy of her statement reviewed by The New York Times. Days later, she ended up in India’s capital of New Delhi, married to a Sikh man.

Religious diversity has defined India for centuries, recognized and protected in the country’s Constitution. But interfaith unions remain rare, taboo and increasingly illegal.

A spate of new laws across India, in states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., are seeking to banish such unions altogether.

While the rules apply broadly, right-wing supporters in the party portray such laws as necessary to curb “love jihad,” the idea that Muslim men marry women of other faiths to spread Islam. Critics contend that such laws fan anti-Muslim sentiment under a government promoting a Hindu nationalist agenda.

Last year, lawmakers in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh passed legislation that makes religious conversion by marriage an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. So far, 162 people there have been arrested under the new law, although few have been convicted.

“The government is taking a decision that we will take tough measures to curb love jihad,” Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and the top elected official of Uttar Pradesh, said shortly before that state’s Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance was passed.

Four other states ruled by the B.J.P. have either passed or introduced similar legislation.

In Kashmir, where Ms. Bali and Mr. Bhat lived, members of the Sikh community have disputed the legitimacy of the marriage, calling it “love jihad.” They are pushing for similar anti-conversion rules.

While proponents of such laws say they are meant to protect vulnerable women from predatory men, experts say they strip women of their agency.

“It is a fundamental right that women can marry by their own choice,” said Renu Mishra, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital.

“Generally the government and the police officials have the same mind-set of patriarchy,” she added. “Actually, they are not implementing the law, they are only implementing their mind-set.”

Across the country, vigilante groups have created a vast network of local informers, who tip off the police to planned interfaith marriages.

 

 

 

 

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The papers show that Manmeet Kour Bali is legally married to Shahid Nazir Bhat and that she has willingly converted to Islam.Credit...Showkat Nanda for The New York Times

One of the largest is Bajrang Dal, or the Brigade of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. The group has filed dozens of police complaints against Muslim suitors or grooms, according to Rakesh Verma, a member in Lucknow.

“The root cause of this disease is the same everywhere,” Mr. Verma said. “They want to lure Hindu women and then change their religion.”

Responding to a tip, the police in Uttar Pradesh interrupted a wedding ceremony in December. The couple were taken into custody, and released the following day when both proved they were Muslim, according to regional police, who blamed “antisocial elements” for spreading false rumors.

A Pew Research Center study found that most Indians are opposed to anyone, but particularly women, marrying outside their religion. The majority of Indian marriages — four out of five — are arranged.

The backlash against interfaith marriages is so widespread that in 2018, India’s Supreme Court ordered state authorities to provide security and safe houses to those who wed against the will of their communities.

 

 

 

 

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Mr. Bhat was accused of kidnapping Ms. Bali by her parents. He is preparing a legal battle to win her back.Credit...Showkat Nanda for The New York Times

In its ruling, the court said outsiders “cannot create a situation whereby such couples are placed in a hostile environment.”

The country’s constitutional right to privacy has also been interpreted to protect couples from pressure, harassment and violence from families and religious communities.

Muhabit Khan, a Muslim, and Reema Singh, a Hindu, kept their courtship secret from their families, meeting for years in dark alleyways, abandoned houses and desolate graveyards. Ms. Singh said her father threatened to burn her alive if she stayed with Mr. Khan.

In 2019, they married in a small ceremony with four guests, thinking their families would eventually accept their decision. They never did, and the couple left the central Indian city of Bhopal to start a new life together in a new city.

“The hate has triumphed over love in India,” Mr. Khan said, “And it doesn’t seem it will go anywhere soon.”

In Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state, the B.J.P.-led government passed a bill in March modeled after the Uttar Pradesh law, stiffening penalties for religious conversion through marriage and making annulments easier to obtain.

The government is not “averse to love,” said the state’s home minister, Narottam Mishra, “but is against jihad.”

At the court, Ms. Bali recorded her testimony before a judicial magistrate, attesting that it was her will to convert to Islam and marry Mr. Bhat, according to her statement. Outside, her parents and dozens of Sikh protesters protested, demanding that she be returned to them.

It is unclear how the court ruled. The judicial magistrate declined requests for a transcript or an interview. Her parents declined an interview request.

The day after the hearing, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the head of the largest Sikh gurudwara in New Delhi, flew to Srinagar. He picked up Ms. Bali, with her parents, and helped organize her marriage to another man, a Sikh. Following the ceremony, Mr. Sirsa flew with the couple to Delhi.

 

 

 

 

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Days after appearing in court, Ms. Bali, right, was married to a Sikh man.Credit...Manjinder Singh Sirsa

“It would be wrong to say that I convinced her,” Mr. Sirsa said in an interview. “If anything adverse was happening, she should have said.”

A written request for an interview with Ms. Bali was sent via Mr. Sirsa. He said she did not want to talk.

 

 

“She had a real breakdown,” he said, repeating Ms. Bali’s parents’ claims that their daughter was kidnapped and forced to marry Mr. Bhat.

Mr. Bhat was released from police custody four days after Ms. Bali left for Delhi.

At his home in Srinagar, he is fighting the kidnapping charges. He said he was preparing a legal battle to win her back, but he feared the Sikh community’s disapproval would make their separation permanent.

“If she comes back and tells a judge she is happy with that man, I will accept my fate,” he said.

 

[Premi5]

 

Indian Parents, It’s Time To Stop Shaming Your Children For Marrying Who They Love
TANVI AKHAURI
October 30, 2021

 

Parents shaming children is, unfortunately, a common reality in India. Every time a person makes a choice on something – from their body to their clothes to their careers – there’s a desi parent watching close by. Nothing escapes their hawk-eyed vision, which is forever on the lookout for any behaviour, speech or decision that doesn’t conform to society’s preset norms. They stop, question and forbid you from proceeding any further with whatever it is you were doing to “bring shame to the family.”
This policing is especially tight when it comes to the sensitive matter of love. One would think that the sensitivity would be to do with the emotions and possibility that romantic love brings to people’s lives. But no. It relates here to how, in India, love incites offence among parents who kick up a storm upon hearing their children – adult children, that too – are under its spell.

Love is too liberating a concept to be mainstream in our conservative society, and so, still carries a measure of taboo. That, in turn, rides on the back on age-old prejudices and divisions parading as ‘tradition.’ Which is why, news of love marriage in a desi household (and by extension, the whole neighbourhood), continues to raise eyebrows.

Someone choosing a man of her liking to marry. Someone opting for lifelong singlehood. Or someone going for a live-in with a same-sex partner. Why do these organic alternatives to arranged marriage – where the family artificially tailors a match in consideration of caste, kundli, religion – terrify parents?

Should what counts as a traditional value system ever be permitted to override individual agency? Picking partners for everything other than love – the colour of their skin, the size of their paycheck, the skill of making chai – is that the tradition we are proud of? How is it fair that women, to prove they are ‘achhe ghar ki ladkiyaan‘ and avoid the risk of being shamed, have to forgo their preferences and bow down to convention?

Parents Shaming Children For Their Love Choices: Will This Culture Cease?
Is love so radical an idea that parents are willing to go the mile to shame their children for embracing it? That families are ready to draw blood for it? That people are losing their lives only because they made a personal choice in favour of something as empowering as love?

The story of Jas Kaur went viral earlier this year. A Sikh woman, she was disowned by her family for marrying a White man outside her religion and culture. As tragic as her plight is, Kaur is one of the luckier ones. Because she made it out alive. So many women in India haven’t been that fortunate. In July, a man in Jharkhand killed his pregnant daughter since she married outside their caste. More recently, an intercaste couple was found dead in Punjab in a suspected case of honour killing.

The frenzy surrounding ‘love jihad‘ is so rabid that interfaith couples are compelled to live in fear of violence. Many feel the concept is only a tool to monitor and control who women love and retain the ‘purity’ of religion through ‘female honour.’

Meanwhile, for the LGBTQIA+ community, the fight to gain legal recognition of same-sex marriages is painfully still on, despite the landmark Section 377 scrapping in 2018. Before the Delhi High Court, the centre is persistently opposing these petitions of hope on the claim that the “sanctity” of marriage in India is something preserved only between a “biological” man and woman.

When laws and legal remedies offer limited solutions to love, can we really expect positive affirmations from Indian parents? 

What scares our society is the social and structural change love is capable of bringing – across the lines of gender discrimination, class privilege, casteism, communal hate. The independence in making your own individual choices is perceived to be a faultline that will disbalance the status quo. And why would the stakeholders of patriarchal systems want that power hierarchy to ever change?

These are everyday ground realities in India. Rosy conversations about the acceptance of love marriages and parents gradually turning soft to their children’s choices are only surface-level, ordinary perhaps in elite urban circles and on upper-class Netflix screens. But frequent headlines of crime inflicted on those choosing whom to love, show that India is far from change even today.

Views expressed are the author’s own.

Read more at: https://www.shethepeople.tv/top-stories/opinion/indian-parents-shaming-children-love-marriage/

[Premi5]

https://www.thewhitepunjabibride.com/post/2019/08/09/my-big-fat-punjabi-sikh-wedding-story-parneet-harvinder

 

My Big Fat Punjabi Sikh Wedding Story: Parneet & Harvinder

Updated: Jan 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this series I will share with you stories of other's, who like myself, have married into the Punjabi Culture and celebrated their own Big Fat Punjabi-Sikh Wedding. Though firstly there is some confusion around the difference between a Sikh and Punjabi Wedding merely because many weddings happen to predominately be Punjabi-Sikh Weddings.

 

 

 

Therefore to clarify, Punjab is a state of India in which many different faiths exist not only that of Sikhism. Which means not every Punjabi Wedding will necessarily be of the Sikh Faith, celebrating the same wedding traditions. Sikhism is a religion that originated in the state of Punjab. So whilst majority of Punjabi's are Sikh's, not every Punjabi will be. Hence why many weddings will be Punjabi-Sikh Weddings given they both are of the Sikh Faith and were born a Punjabi. Though even a Punjabi-Sikh Wedding can be referred to as either just a Sikh Wedding or Punjabi Wedding.

 

 

 

Even so, the rituals and traditions of a Punjabi-Sikh Wedding can vary greatly between regions and family. Therefore even the most common traditions can differ in how they are celebrated and is usually a personal preference as to which traditions are participated in. Though for the most part many are quite similar.

 

 

 

My Big Fat Punjabi-Sikh Wedding Story

 

Parneet & Harvinder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduce Yourself

 

 

 

Hi my name is Parneet, I converted to Sikhism many years ago and have since been known as Parneet. However I am French by birth and have been living and breathing the Indian Culture for more than 15 years. I met my husband seven years ago when I moved from Paris, France to Brussels, Belgium.

 

 

 

We both were bhangra performers for the same performance company and for more than a year we were just friends. I decided to one day help him look for a partner in life so we started to spend a lot more time together talking about what he was after in a partner. Eventually we were talking at least 5 times a day and 3-4 hours on the phone. Then one morning after many months, I received a message saying; "I love you my friend".

 

 

 

I began to think all day about the meaning behind his message and then I realised that I didn't want to be without him and needed to see him everyday. I never answered his message clearly though a few days later it was his birthday. I decided to surprise him with a big box of his favourite sweet, Jalebi, and that later became our first date.

 

 

 

We lived together for 4 years before we married and built our own French-Indian world. It's been a total of 7 years now that we have been together and are constantly working on our relationship.

 

 

 

 

 

Maiyan Ceremony

 

 

 

What Traditional Pre-Wedding Ceremonies Did You Celebrate?

 

 

 

We married in 2018, three days before our marriage we celebrated our Maiyan Ceremony which is also referred to as Vatna or Haldi Ceremony. We held one Maiyan in the morning and one at sunset. Unfortunately my family didn't make it to India for our wedding celebrations because my parent's never travel and are afraid to do so.

 

 

 

Though one of my husband's Aunty's took on a maternal role which made it so emotional for me. More guests arrived the next day when the ladies sangeet celebrations commenced, which was the second night before our marriage. We then finished with a small Jaago celebration dancing and singing around the village the night before.

 

 

 

 

 

The Couple’s Lavaan

 

 

 

Describe Your Wedding Day

 

 

 

Our wedding day was very simple, after we wed during Anand Karaj, we just had a small gathering at home with close friends & family. All the village attended our Anand Karaj, it was so emotional. I am a simple woman and don't like heavily decorated and embellished clothing or jewels.

 

 

 

Therefore I opted for a simple silk Punjabi Suit that is worn for any occasion, paired with a turban. I have been wearing turban's since I converted to Sikhism ten years ago. We didn't incorporate any western traditions as we already celebrated a western wedding in Belgium a year ago.

 

 

 

 

 

At The Temple With Friends & Family

 

 

 

Any Advice For Those In An Interracial Relationship Who Are Planning Their Own Big Fat Punjabi-Sikh Wedding?

 

 

 

If you are going to marry in India just know that it can be challenging, particularly for those who aren't familiar at all with the Indian Culture. However you can prepare yourself by researching on YouTube and watching videos of Punjabi Wedding's; ask your partner to explain the customs involved; connect with other Indian women in your community.

 

 

 

Although you may not understand the customs and traditions involved try to participate as much as you can even though it can be challenging. As these traditions hold a deep meaning to your in laws and by participating it will capture the heart of your future family.

 

 

 

Albeit there are an array of different faiths, a blessing holds one single meaning across each faith. So try not to focus too much on why they do a particular ritual, instead focus on how much it means to your in laws and see their looks of appreciation in their eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Jaago Celebrations

 

 

 

Connect With Parneet

 

 

 

 

Wedding Celebrations

[Guest SikhsRus]

Why do we care about men and women converting to other faiths in the first place?  That is their misfortune and may be they are not meant to be Sikhs.  Shabad "Bin bhaga satsang na labhe" comes to mind and so not everyone is meant to be a Sikh.  We should be just worrying about ourselves and focus on spreading the message of Sikhi to others.  May be the weakness is in us and we are clear ourselves by being doubtful.  Then we will do a poor job of inspiring others to Sikhi because we make actors/celebrities/politicians as our role models and are always in doubt.  Our role models are our Guru Sahibaan and shabad Guru.  We should take inspiration and confidence from Sri Guru Granth Sahib and live our life according to Guru Ji's teachings.  otherwise, we are just living in doubt.