Source: www.guardian.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, January 11, 2010: My engagement present was a book of pocket psalms, with yellow highlighter streaked through passages that warned of the eternal damnation that non-believers face. It was presented to me in the small, dark room of a village house on the outskirts of Nairobi by my future father-in-law, a lay preacher. I had gone there to ask for my girlfriend’s hand in marriage, and to meet her family. I’m a Hindu.
It’s not that I oppose inter-racial or inter-religious marriage, because I’ve enjoyed mine. But there is a dark side to it, and sometimes the choices it forces upon you are more trying than deciding between curries and roast dinners.
Cross-cultural matches can light up an unexpected bonfire of bigotries. My parents, for example, were remarkably accepting of our union, but my extended family much less so. For many traditional Indians, fairness of skin is the yardstick of beauty; it’s inextricably linked to social status too. When she passed through Mumbai, on a work trip, they took the opportunity to quiz her on why she wanted to marry me, wondering aloud if it wasn’t so she could get a British passport. The fact that she wasn’t Hindu didn’t seem to bother them too much, though.
If color lay at the root of my family’s objections, then religion was my father-in-law’s prejudice of choice. They had no problem with my race – “we are all brothers in Christ!” he repeatedly insisted. His problem was with my faith. For these reasons he didn’t speak to my fiancee for six months before I went to Kenya, and threatened never to again unless she broke off our engagement. Fortunately for us, he broke his silence the day before I arrived, in exchange for the opportunity to have a crack at converting me.
Despite these trials, they didn’t put us off marriage, and if anything strengthened our resolve. So I’m not suggesting that anyone should give up their big romance out of fear of tripping up on family prejudices; that’s clearly not the right message. But there’s something worrying about fetishising cross-cultural marriage or trying it out for novelty or to prove just how liberal you are. It won’t be a “magical journey” for everyone, and sometimes it can place strains of family that take them to breaking point. In fact, they should come with a health warning: cross-cultural marriages can seriously damage your relationship with your parents.