Granted that the picture of perfection has been darkened somewhat by the struggles and problems of the newer, less-skilled immigrants who have come in the 80’s. Indeed, the affluent segment of society may prefer to drop the stigma of domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse, and general disharmony at the door of these new immigrants. These struggling newcomers have lowered the mean income of the Indian community and are certainly prone to the problems that go hand in hand with culture shock, unemployment or financial crisis. But what these interviews showed was that having a fat bank balance or an Ivy League education was no insurance against domestic disharmony.

While working on this story, this writer received a call from a social acquaintance, a wealthy woman from a beautiful home with manicured lawns. She wanted help in locating a good divorce lawyer but didn’t want her friends to know about it. The reason for the divorce was her husband’s alcohol abuse and when told about the programs available, she retorted bitterly, "What makes you think he’ll agree to go?"

Indeed, the shocker is that highly educated women are no less susceptible to these problems. Manavi is one of the oldest advocacy groups for South Asian women in the country and its co-founder Shamita Das Dasgupta recalls that she would often encounter affluent women physicians coming in with bruises and black-eyes. These women with strings of letters behind their name and prestigious practices were not even allowed to sign their own checkbooks by their abusive husbands!

Domestic violence is a prime indicator of family malaise for women’s issues always spill into children’s issues and the well being of the entire family. Often hidden from view are searing issues such as incest and child abuse. From just one organization dealing with domestic violence in the south Asian community in the 60’s, there are now dozens of organizations scattered across the United States. The need certainly seems to be out there, for the tales the files of these agencies tell are horrific.

"A young Indian bride, recently out of medical school, marries a bright engineer in the United States," writes Tonushree Jaggi in her thesis on Apna Ghar, an advocacy group in Chicago, Ill. "For the first month, she is locked in their Chicago apartment everyday while her husband goes to work. He takes all the phones in the house with him. When he comes home, instead of giving the bewildered and lonely young wife companionship, he beats and rapes her.

"He forces her at knifepoint to call her parents in India and explain that the cause of her marital problems is her sexual frigidity. The heightening violence exploded when one day, he disrobes her, ties her feet, hangs her upside down and beats her with a whip. He tells her repeatedly that she is worthless and that she is horrible because she doesn’t listen to his mother. Nearly a year later, she still loses the criminal case that she finally gained the courage to file."

While not every case of abuse is as chilling or shocking as this one, the transgression can run the gamut from beatings to verbal put-downs, threats of deportation and financial control.

It is important to emphasize that this is not the norm in a majority of Indian American homes, but it is also equally important to accept that domestic abuse is not merely a mainstream American problem but exists in the South Asian community too.

Jaggi further notes, "South Asian-American women, especially recent immigrant women, face dual subordination due to their gender and ethnicity. The independence and freedom that Western society offers women does not necessarily influence this immigrant community. Ironically, these women are more likely to feel ambivalent, bewildered and immobilized in the face of such liberty."

As the Indian community has spread over the United States, the number of advocacy organizations has also grown. Prema Vohra of Sakhi says that in any given month Sakhi receives 15 to 25 new calls from battered South Asian women. And these are just the ones who actually muster up the courage to pick up the phone!

"Is it Your Business if your Neighbor Beats His Wife? You bet her life it is!" reads one of the placards designed by Sakhi. Many educated volunteers from the South Asian community have got involved in tackling domestic violence which is the symptom of so many ills in the Indian family. Many of these organizations have set up shelters and all of them handle crisis intervention, advocacy and cultural specific counseling and legal clinics. They are a haven for battered South Asian women because they offer advocates who speak Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati and serve as interpreters in court.

It is encouraging that several young Indian American men are supporting these organizations and turning up at fund-raisers. One wishes that one could say that this younger generation is so sensitive that that abuse does not exist in this group, but it would not be true. Domestic violence has been recorded — as in the mainstream — even among dating couples and newly marrieds.

Sri Renganathan of Sawera, an advocacy group based in Portland, Ore., says about one in ten women is abused, and that class and wealth are no guarantee of safety. She says, "That’s why our organizations exist — because families are not intact and women are being oppressed. There is definitely a dark side. If only we could close shop and there was no need for organizations like Sawera! We would like to make it redundant and have zero cases. But that’s not going to happen."

She finds that many of Sawera’s clients are educated, women from well-to-do families, many with their own businesses and making over $100,000. Some of the abused women have been physicians and hi-tech professionals, and two of the batterers have ended up in jail.

Yet another woman, a highly trained professional, had been abused at home due to her failure to bring in a dowry. In spite of the counseling and support, she still went back to her abuser. Renganathan puts it to 5,000 years of conditioning, a handed down perception of women’s roles. Many women blame themselves and think things will work out if only they try harder. They attempt to make a go of it for the sake of the children, and to stay within the bounds of society.

One thing one must admit about domestic abuse — it certainly is democratic and affects all women equally, whether they have a six-figure income or are struggling below the poverty level. As Lara Jayasankar, office manager of Apna Ghar, observes, "Just because you may be from good families does not mean you are protected from being abused or becoming abusive; it only means that you can keep it hidden more effectively."

Often domestic violence can be traced to alcohol abuse. There are many stories of shattered lives, especially among new immigrants, where alcohol has been the cause of family break-ups and children being sent to foster care.

Nav Nirmaan is a Queens-based organization dealing with alcohol and substance abuse in the South Asian community. It was founded in 1991 by Anand Walter Picardo who himself was a recovered alcoholic and realized the need for such an organization.

Nav Nirmaan caters to the new immigrant population, a sizable and growing figure — close to 20 percent — of the Indian population. The number of this population living below the poverty level is ten percent, and in California the figure for the South Asians living below the poverty level is 11 percent. According to Roy V. Tellis, director of Nav Nirmaan, this figure is increasing nationally.

Many of Nav Nirmaan’s clients are construction laborers, cab and limo drivers and workers in stores. About 80 percent of these clients have just done the South Asian equivalent of Standard V11, few have a high school education, and very, very few have a college degree.

"I would certainly like to dispel this myth that the South Asian family is a perfect set-up," says Tellis. "It’s important that we acknowledge our family and society set-up as it is back home and as it’s brought over here. It is common knowledge that in South Asia it is a patriarchal family system — the husband is the breadwinner and the provider, the wife is expected to be the caregiver and the nurturer."

There’s a three-stage social isolation process that Nav Nirmaan has been able to identify within South Asian immigrant populations: The male, who usually worked on a farm or drove a truck back home, comes first without the family. He shares an apartment with three or four other single males, and that goes on for three or four years. All the while, he is living in an ethnic cocoon, reading only ethnic newspapers, watching ethnic television, and basically isolating himself from mainstream USA. Since his only contact with the larger world is through his work, he isn’t able to find out how the system really works.

"This is the prime time for the induction of stress-relievers like alcohol and drugs," says Tellis. "It’s a stressful situation for someone who’s come from a solid family structure back home — wife, children, parents, in-laws, extended family. Although as a community we don’t like to admit it and want to perpetuate the myth that it is a model minority — the three major factors that we have been able to identify as stress relievers are alcohol, gambling and sex." Tellis emphasizes that not every one follows this pattern and even those who do, don’t always develop a problem.

After four to ten years, the new immigrant generally bring his wife in, and says Tellis, he sees absolutely no reason for her to go out and learn the language or learn a work skill. Her contact with the outside world is primarily through the gurudwara or the mosque or the temple. Again, fresh problems seem to arise after the children get into the school system and have to juggle two cultures.

"When the conflicts arise, they are dealt with as they were back home, where the position of the family in society was more important than the individual’s. If someone achieves something in life the term we use is ‘he or she comes from a good family’ — therefore if somebody does something that brings shame to the family, he is dealt with severely. Which is why it leads to over control of children and corporal punishment."

When kids show strong individualism, there are family tensions. How does one explain to visiting family that a son has decided to dye one side of his hair blue or that he has dropped out of school? Conflicts often lead to violence and that’s where the whole system gets involved — guidance counselors, teachers, children’s services, 911, cops, family and criminal court.

Parents are often frustrated when the law steps in. Observes Tellis, "They feel furious because the thinking is if ‘I don’t discipline my child, then who will? What do you mean, I can’t slap my own son? He’s my son.’ Because of the isolation process, they don’t know how it works. We bring them to a situation where they see what the rules are here and how they can live within them."

A first offense for domestic violence can get an offender 15 days in jail or he must go for counseling. Nav Nirman sees many of these people and works closely with the agencies and gives progress reports to the caseworkers. It also runs DWI classes, and most South Asians select Nav Nirmaan from a list of 40 centers, as they are assured of culturally sensitive counseling. The organization uses tapes from India and works closely with AA in India.

Explains Tellis, "People who have passed through our programs, who have got their licenses back, who’ve become sober and stopped abusing their wives and kids, and who have straightened out their lives, come back voluntarily to share their experiences with the group, and that is our biggest asset." This pool of recovered volunteers includes Guyanese, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi and Iranians.

Nav Nirmaan has treated over 1,000 people in the last 9 years and seen 320 cases in the last year alone. This year the number of cases have already touched 200 — encompassing alcohol abuse, parenting skills and domestic abuses. Substance abuse is much less though it does exist, and among second generation there is a higher incidence of substance abuse as compared to their parents who mostly abuse alcohol.

Alcohol abuse is not a problem just of the poorer section of society, and social drinking amongst the affluent often escalates out of control.

Says Tellis, "They wouldn’t necessarily search out an ethnic specific, culturally sensitive program — and would probably prefer the anonymity of a mainstream organization without Indians in it. There’s a huge denial — they don’t want to admit it and they don’t want to do anything about it."

For many of the newer immigrants, many of the tensions are caused because they have been thrown into an alien culture without language skills or education. Sandhya Sheth of Parivar, an advocacy group based in Queens, has seen many South Asian families cast adrift due to cultural misunderstandings and language barriers. Often a child is removed from a family if too many members are sharing a room. In India, in large joint families this would be perfectly acceptable, but in the United States with its stringent child welfare laws, it’s a definite no-no.

And when children are taken away, they are often placed in non-South Asian families, since there are no foster families with a South Asian heritage. Sheth is trying to change this by co-ordinating Parivar’s efforts with St. Christopher-Ottilie Family Development Center. which places children in foster care.

Second generation Indian Americans face their own challenges as they juggle their dual identities. Dating, going to the prom, moving out from the family home, sexual orientation and marrying outside the Asian community can only be great stress factors at home and the reason for many arguments and much unhappiness.

Observes Roy Tellis of Nav Nirmaan, "It’s definitely challenging. By this time it’s close to an identity crisis because they are really being brought up in two different cultures. Again, this is generally speaking and not with the whole population. But it is there and we can’t say it’s not there. We keep trying to deny there are problems within our community and that’s not true."

M. Sharma is a young college student who turned to Sakhi in her hour of need. She was involved with an abusive boy friend who would hit her for the flimsiest reasons — like putting a backpack on the bed. When she decided to fight back, she found that for "every one hit, I would be hit twice, for every kick, I would get kicked twice."

When she found out she was pregnant, it was a real crisis in the family. She recalls, "I was petrified of telling my family. His family, upon hearing about the pregnancy, accused me of wrongdoing and denied their son’s actions. One side of my own family found me to be ‘ruining’ the family name, and they are no longer in contact with me."

The South Asian community needs to unload a lot of the cultural baggage that it brings from across the seas. Radhika Sharma is a legal advocate and community educator with Apna Ghar. She observes that many of the ugly aspects of the culture back home find their way into America: South Asian women also report verbal abuse from in-laws and husbands regarding their dowry.

A public health nurse told Sharma that when a young Pakistani American woman had her father imprisoned for raping her, her mother abandoned her and left for Pakistan. Observes Sharma, "Reporting a family member to the authorities and ‘breaking up the family’ is a stigma which will stay with these women as long as society continues to believe that the ‘sanctity of family’ and the dignity of the male are more important than an individual woman’s right to dignity and well-being."

Anita Govindarajan, a board member of Sawera, puts it succinctly: "The South Asian immigrant woman is faced with a multitude of problems due to her culture. A proverb in Tamil states: Kalaanalum Kanavan Pullaanalum Purushan. It roughly translates to ‘Even if he is stone hearted, he is your husband, even if he is weed, he is still your spouse.’"

Male dominance and family prestige are such important factors in South Asian cultures that women often chose to stay in abusive marriages just to save the family name and not ruin the marriage prospects of their siblings. Leaving a bad marriage is also hard because Asian society is particularly hard on its womenfolk, and does not look compassionately at single mothers or divorcees.

"Historically even in South Asia, the family has always been touted as being perfect," observes Sujata Warrier, who is president of the board of Manavi. "It has been believed that joint families work well and the structure is well-maintained because there is a hierarchy, people take responsibility and there is family accounting. But that has never even been historically true. There is no such thing as a perfect family."

As she points out, what this myth has done is mask problems within the family — problems of violence against women encompassing everything from murder of women to infant mortality in South Asia. When South Asians migrated post-65, they brought along many of the same traditions here. Manavi has dealt with cases of violence against women that have included incest within the family and child abuse.

Warrier concedes that in the last decade, the South Asian communities are more willing to talk about domestic violence, probably because of wide publicity the issue has received. "What is often much harder to talk about in Asian families is the whole issue of sexual assault, rape, which includes date rape and child abuse. We treat our children wonderfully, so there is no child abuse — but that’s not true."

She adds, "We have to realize that these are our problems — hiding them is not going to make them go away. Only when we take ownership of the issues can things change."

The South Asian family portrait of the model minority, set in its gilded frame, is an imposing one with its many wonderful qualities of family unity, respect for elders and its passion for hard work and enterprise. If only the people in this portrait would unload the heavy weight of unnecessary cultural baggage from their shoulders! If they would only question some of the so-called golden rules that they follow.

And if only knowing that society is really a structure of glass, they not throw stones at those who err or fall by the wayside. Yes, what this self-congratulatory portrait needs is introspection, a human heart and the courage to acknowledge its imperfections and affect change.

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