VAWA in the Lives of Battered South Asian Women in the United States
CUNY Law Review Footnote Forum
November
VAWA in the Lives of Battered South Asian Women in the United States
Shamita Das Dasgupta 0
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Follow this and additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Shamita D. Dasgupta, VAWA in the Lives of Battered South Asian Women in the United States, 18 CUNY L. Rev. (2014). Available at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol18/iss1/19
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Recommended citation:
Shamita Das Dasgupta, VAWA in the Lives of Battered South Asian Women in the United
States, 18 CUNY L. REV. F. 58 (Nov. 21, 2014),
http://www.cunylawreview.org/vawa-20vawa-in-the-lives-of-battered-south-asian-women-in-the-united-states-by-shamita-dasdasgupta/ [https://perma.ccE7PY-K8MB].
1 Naukrani is a Hindi term that means ‘housemaid.’
2 Manavi is the first community-based organization that focused on violence against
South Asian women in the United States. See About Us, MANAVI.ORG,
http://manavi.org/about-us/ (last visited Dec. 22, 2014).
3 Anannya Bhattacharjee, The Habit of Ex-Nomination: Nation, Woman, and the
Indian Immigrant Bourgeoisie, 5 PUBLIC CULTURE 19-44 (2002); Shamita Das Dasgupta,
Women in Exile: Gender Relations in the Asian Indian Community in the U.S., in
CONTOURS OF THE HEART: SOUTH ASIANS MAP NORTH AMERICA 381-400 (Sunaina Maira
et al. eds., 1998).
4 By ‘mainstream,’ I mean the ideas, attitudes, activities, and practices that are
disregarded South Asian women’s distinct needs under the argument, ‘you
are in this country now, therefore…’ Yet, South Asian women’s
experiences of abuse in the home were palpable enough to warrant an
organized community based response that was linguistically appropriate and
sensitive to cultural nuances. Manavi’s birth was based on this premise.
By the time Manavi was gearing up to operate effectively and the
selftaught advocates were learning the ropes, a daunting barrier appeared in the
guise of Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments (IMFA) in 1986. IMFA
was passed to balance extensive immigration based on family reunification
and fraudulent marriages, and may have had men in the crosshairs.
However, in South Asian communities, battered women became the
unwitting victims of the decision. Stories of women being terrorized by
their violent husbands who could, at whim, render them deportable
residents of this country, abounded. IMFA became a tool of abuse in the
hands of violent spouses who successfully thwarted the timid bids of escape
by their immigrant wives by vowing to throw them out of the country in
ignominy. The best that we as advocates could do for women is to help with
individual appeals for permanent grounds under their feet and gather each
case for some unknown use in the future.
As a community based and volunteer led organization, Manavi had little
financial backing to develop systematic and consistent responses to the
victims and perpetrators of intimate abuse. It persevered with tiny donations
from individuals who believed in the issue and minuscule grants from small
foundations. Even though there were non-governmental anti-domestic
violence agencies in every state and county, South Asian women were
invisible in this panorama. The South Asian battered women’s movement
was gathering force when we received requests for sending in stories of
women who have experienced ‘immigration abuse.’ That is, women who
have had to endure their spouses’ brutalities lest they are made ‘illegal’ in
this country. We were galvanized into action. Manavi sent in women’s
stories and testified in front of a commission that was convening meetings
of community based organizations to gather information around the
country. Those pieces of lives of women that we shared then became a part
of the fabric on which VAWA was passed in 1994.
While VAWA-19945 provided an escape route for battered immigrant
women, it still required them to lay a trail of police reports and help seeking
records from advocacy agencies to provide credibility for their complaints.
For South Asian women, who attempt to salvage their marriages until the
last moment, such a condition was tantamount to abandoning them to their
considered ‘normal’ and conventional. These tend to be related to the dominant community
in a nation.
5 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. §13701 (1994).
CUNY LAW REVIEW FOOTNOTE FORUM
abusers’ control. Consequently, the resource remained out of the reach of
most South Asian battered women. Nonetheless, advocates realized that the
policy was mandated to support battered women’s charges against their
abusers. Even though there were serious gaps in knowledge of domestic
violence practitioners, and the law enforcement regarding the lived
circumstances of South Asian women and the barriers to their seeking help,
these could be ameliorated by educati (...truncated)