Holiday Brides and Policy Concerns: The Perils of Being in “NOMan’s” Land

The term “holiday brides” became popular in India in the 1990s to refer to wives who were abandoned by their Non-resident Indian (NRI) husbands who returned back alone to their prosperous foreign lands, mainly US, UK and Canada, soon after marriage. The abandonment is apparent when months and years pass by, but the husband does not visit, contact or send any paper work for their spouse to join them in their foreign locations. Shame which prevents many women from reporting such incidents combined with the dearth of studies on the subject matter has resulted in only estimates being available of the number of “holiday brides” in India. Studies estimate that there are close to 30,000 such women in the state of Punjab alone in India. Through an examination of 21 key case laws adjudicated in the Indian courts and literature review, the paper examines the interplay of factors that lead to distinct challenges to advance the legal rights of “holiday brides,” given their so-called transnational identity. An interplay of factors--breakdown of traditional social institutions, globalization, and policy perspectives--shape the unique nature of challenges experienced by this social group of women: women whose “womanhood” is interrupted by the creation of the holography. Through a more holistic approach involving societal and policy-based interventions, this paper highlights the need for a comprehensive international policy to advance justice for the holiday brides. Received: January 26, 2019 Accepted: June 21, 2019 Published: July 5, 2019 Copyright: © 2019 Kapur S. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Corresponding author: Sonia Kapur, Interdisciplinary Studies, UNC Asheville, US E-mail:skapur@unca.edu Citation: Kapur, S. Holiday Brides and Policy Concerns: The Perils of Being in “NO-Man’s” Land. Gender and Women’s Studies. 2019; 2(3):2. Open Access Gender and Women’s Studies 1 of 7 Kapur S. Gender and Women’s Studies. 2019, 2(3):2.