What does DV look like in the South Asian community?

The author of this article, Shamita Das Dasgupta, is well known in the South Asian DV community as the founder of Manavi, which was the first anti-DV agency catering to South Asian women in the United States.

The author begins with a brief history of South Asian immigrants in the United States. Although some arrived as early as the late 1800s, she focuses on the immigrants who arrived after 1965, when the United States loosened their immigration policies and invited educated, English-speaking individuals to immigrate. This homogenous group of immigrants grew to be financially and professionally successful, and was generally considered a ‘model minority.’ This group of immigrants, conscious of their status, was unwilling to admit to problems in the community. Another wave of immigrants, many of them women, arrived in the 1980s, following Family Reunification policies. It was at this time that reports of DV in the South Asian community started surfacing.

Although there has been lots of anecdotal evidence, there has been little research on DV in the South Asian community. Those who work with clients from the community, however, recognize some commonalities in the victim experiences:
1. While victims may admit to physical violence, few admit to sexual violence. Marital rape is an alien concept, since many women believe that they have no sexual rights after marriage.
2. The involvement of in-laws in the DV; in fact, in many cases, it is not the husband but extended family members that are primary abusers of the woman.
3. Fear of deportation or loss of children due to the victim’s dependent visa status.

There are three kinds of impediments for women seeking help: personal, institutional, and cultural. At the personal level, women may be afraid of ‘losing face’ or their reputation, or being exposed to hostility in the community. They may also worry about their financial status or lack of familial support. At the institutional level, women may find that immigration, child custody and public benefit policies work against them, and they may experience racism or xenophobia from traditional support structures such as police and the courts. Cultural barriers include traditional views of marriage and divorce, family, parenthood, etc. (for instance, women may believe that divorce may be irrevocably damaging to children). They may also believe that their experience is their destiny, or their ‘karma.’

Dasgupta suggests several interventions to battle these impediments. She suggests that effective intervention should arise from the victim’s own community, since victims may be more comfortable approaching someone with a shared cultural background. Religious institutions and community-based organizations, which have so far proved unwilling, must be willing to confront the issue of DV in their midst.

Volunteers in anti-DV agencies should be better trained to meet client needs, and mainstream agencies should be sensitized to cultural issues. These agencies need to systematize their resources and build a cohesive coalition to battle DV in the SA community.

[For more information, see: Dasgupta, S. D. (2000). Charting the Course: An Overview of Domestic Violence in the South Asian Community. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 9(3), 173-185.]