Widows are still shunned in India

Shunned from society, widows flock to city to die. Whatever the cultural reasons for the abandonment and shunning of widows, I still find it a disturbing practice. It's not clear how widespread this custom is, or whether it is restricted to certain segments of society.

See also Deepa Mehta's movie Water for an artistic treatment of the subject.

Elizabeth Hurley's Indian Wedding

Local reactions to the Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar wedding this week in Jodhpur.

"Is it this old woman who's getting married?" asked Kastury Ghosh, a bridal shop manager in the west Indian city of Jodhpur, as she peered over her glasses at a picture of Elizabeth Hurley.

...

But even if India is only just getting to know Hurley, she may endear herself with locals who understand the need for lavish, attention-grabbing wedding celebrations.

Marriage remains a fundamental rite of passage and symbol of a family's status in India. Even the humblest family will save up to make sure their children are paraded regally around the neighborhood by lantern-bearers and a brass band.

In India's fiercely hierarchical society, most people are expected to marry a partner from the same background, caste and religion, so Nayar's marriage to a white, non-Indian and non-Hindu woman has also attracted curious comment.

"An Anglo-Indian wedding has never happened here before," said Durgsingh Rathort, another bridal shop worker.

But no one thought to criticize the arrangement - in India, the rich can make their own rules.

"Liz who?" ask locals in Indian city

Transnational love: transforming society?

Korean men are looking overseas for brides because of gender disparities at home.

Now, that industry is seizing on an increasingly globalized marriage market and sending comparatively affluent Korean bachelors searching for brides in the poorer corners of China and Southeast and Central Asia. The marriage tours are fueling an explosive growth in marriages to foreigners in South Korea, a country whose ethnic homogeneity lies at the core of its self-identity.

In 2005, marriages to foreigners accounted for 14 percent of all marriages in South Korea, up from 4 percent in 2000.

...

The business began in the late 1990s by matching South Korean farmers or the physically disabled mostly to ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors, and the foreign brides came from a host of countries.

Most of the Vietnamese brides come from rural areas. Part of the attraction for them is that Korea is very fashionable right now in the pop media -- and that glamour influences much of their conceptualization of their future life.

Some potential social impacts as a result of these transnational marriages: (1) Koreans re-evaluate what it means to be Korean because ethnicities are evolving. (2) Entrenchment of core-periphery as Koreans become the "power" country that draws from "poor" Vietnam for brides. (3) Rural areas where the brides end up become more like urban sites of cosmopolitanism with cultural and ethnic mixing.

Korean Men Use Brokers to Find Brides in Vietnam