By Suman Guha Mozumder Oct 6, 2017
(contribution by InterfaithShaadi is bolded, along with some others)
When Indian-American actor Aasif Hakim Mandviwala, professionally known as Aasif Mandvi, married Shaifali Puri, CEO of the poverty aid nonprofit Uplift, in a Hindu-Muslim ceremony in Atlanta in August, it was more than the celebration of their 4-year romance — it sent a message as well.
“Obviously, our wedding was not primarily a political or social statement; it was first and foremost a declaration of our love in celebration with our family and friends. However, the optics of it are what they are, and if it sends a message to the larger Indian community and the American community, then we are both more than happy for that,” Mumbai-born Mandvi told India Abroad.
Although interfaith marriages are nothing new, the wedding of Mandvi, a Daily Show correspondent, and Puri was one of the first such celebrity marriages involving a Hindu and a Muslim from India, performed with the blessings of both families.
Puri, who described herself as a proud wife, said she and her new husband were both fortunate that their families supported the union wholeheartedly. “The act of intermingling our faith and our traditions was something our parents and siblings also embraced and actively helped us figure out how to do in the most beautiful way possible,” said Puri.
“I know that too often, this kind of unconditional support is not offered within our community to interfaith/cross-cultural/interracial couples, not to mention same-sex couples,” Puri said.
Mandvi and Puri tied the knot on the main stage of the famous Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Puri’s hometown, before more than 200 guests. The wedding blended Indian Hindu and Muslim cultures – from the ceremony, to the food, to the music, to the clothes. There was wide media attention owing largely to their name recognition.
“Congrats are in order for Aasif Mandvi and Shaifali Puri!” wrote Brides.com last month.
In its landmark U.S. Religious Landscape Survey in 2008, the Pew Forum found that only 10 percent of Hindus in America married outside their faith, reflecting the trend in India where not many people marry outside their religion. The survey covered 257 Hindu families, 86 percent of whom were immigrants and 58 percent between the ages of 30 and 49, focusing on the first-generation Hindu immigrants from India.
The marriage of people like Mandvi and Puri indicates that trend is changing thanks to the second-generation Indian-Americans coming of marriageable age, and the upward mobility of Indian-American professionals who travel far from their hometowns. And most importantly there is the influence of the ubiquitous Facebook and other social media providing a platform for young men and women to meet.
In fewer than 10 years since the 2008 Pew Survey, experts say, 38 percent of the marriages of U.S.-born Hindus, Jains and Sikhs have been with people of Abrahamic faiths, meaning Christians, Jews and Muslims.
“Historically in India, interfaith marriages among Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are quite common, but not with Muslims or Christians because there are fundamental differences between the beliefs and practices of the two major groups of religions — the Dharmic and the Abrahamic. Now in America, the Dharmic group is also beginning to marry outside their faith and with people of Abrahamic faith,” Dilip Amin, founder of web forum InterfaithShaadi.org and author of “Interfaith Marriage: Share and Respect with Equality,” told India Abroad.
Amin, who is a director of the Peninsula Multifaith Coalition of the San Francisco Bay area, said he wrote the book to promote “interfaith marriage with equality.” He said a lot of couples hastily decide to marry without giving much thought about issues that appear insignificant before marriage but can later can blow up.
“I am not against such marriages, neither am I propagating it,” Amin said. “All I am saying is that there should be an equality in marital relations between husband and wife from different faiths and before tying the knot couples should be aware of the practical problems that may arise once the initial romanticism wears off.”
But whether such couples give enough thought to issues such as living together as equal partners or raising their children in one or both religious traditions, research indicates that interfaith marriages are clearly on the rise in the United States, including Hindu-Christian, Hindu-Jewish and Hindu-Muslim marriages, although their percentage remains low compared to interfaith marriages among Hispanic Catholics and Black Protestants.
A Council on Contemporary Families report in 2014 said that although interfaith marriage has become more common among all religious groups, it remains relatively rare among Asian-American Hindus at about 6 percent. A substantial number of religious communities still believe it is important for their children to marry within their religious tradition. It noted that young adults across America are increasingly likely to approve of religious intermarriage and to reject the idea that shared religious beliefs are essential to a successful marriage.
Amin gave examples of how some marriages between a Hindu and Muslim, or a Hindu and Christian did not last after the initial euphoria.
Mohua Roy (not her real name), a Brahmin woman from Canada who had settled in the U.S. had split with her Muslim lover over issues over her strict vegetarianism and her lover’s family slaughtering a goat during Eid. Later on, the lover disclosed that his children would have to be raised as Muslims.
In the book, Roy was quoted as saying that this was not reasonable. “I wanted my kids to be aware of both Hindu and Muslim traditions, grow up broad-minded. He couldn’t understand the concept of pluralism,” she said in the book.
Conflicts can occur from as simple an issue as having a separate puja room, or children’s names and religious upbringing. “These kinds of issues are not given serious thoughts in the initial stages of romance or before marriage, but in the long run they likely contribute to marriages falling apart,” Amin said. But some experts who have performed interfaith marriages say divorce rates among interfaith couples are not higher than in marriages within the same faith in America.
No marriage has guarantees
Varadaraja V. Raman, professor emeritus of physics and humanities at Rochester Institute of Technology, has performed several interfaith marriages, including some among his students. Raman says there is no guarantee whether a marriage will last or not regardless of whether it is interfaith or not.
“I think that marriage has become such a complex Institution in our own time that there is no guarantee that it will work well just because both the partners come from the same caste, religion or linguistic group. There are many Hindus who get divorced both here and in India and on the other hand there are interfaith marriages that last a lifetime,” Raman told India Abroad.
“No one partner should be asked to change his or her religion before marriage if people really believe in interfaith marriage. That’s the number one condition for a successful interfaith marriage,” Raman said.
Sometimes the faith of a partner can enrich the faith of the other partner, as exemplified in the book “Saffron Cross,” by the Rev. J. Dana Trent, an ordained Baptist minister. Trent tells the story of her marriage to Fred Eaker, an American-born Hindu convert who spent five years as a monk at a Gaudiya Vaishnava monastery in California. Trent says in the book that three years after marrying him, she is a better Christian than ever.
Anu Malhotra of Chicago, an Indian-American woman priest who has been performing marriages, including interfaith marriages, for the last 15 years, sees more interfaith marriages involving Hindus. “I would say before 2010 maybe three out of ten marriages were interfaith marriages where one of the two couples would be Indian-American Hindu. From that time, it has now increased in my estimate, to four or five out of 10 ten such marriages, almost an increase of 50 percent.” She said the openness of the millennial generation has boosted interfaith marriages. Parents’ views are changing too.
When Sunita Viswanath, who is a Hindu, married Stephan Shaw, who is Jewish, the couple had parental blessings and the embrace of one another’s culture.
Brooklyn-based Viswanath married for the second time at 37 after her first marriage, to a Hindu, fell apart. Viswanath, who has two children from the previous marriage and one with Shaw, describes her union as a perfect match. She and her husband are raising their son Satya to be both Hindu and Jewish. “I believe the best way to be a Hindu is to serve selflessly,” she says.
A marriage with a message
In the current political climate in the U.S., the marriage between a Hindu and Muslim like that of Mandvi and Shaifali may also have a larger and more important connotation.
“We are living in a divided time,” Mandvi told India Abroad. “Our president has led the charge with divisive and hate-filled rhetoric and others continue to follow his example often with deadly outcomes. I hope that in some small way mine and Shailfali’s wedding symbolized inclusion, in every way, whether it be the ceremony itself, the food, the clothes or even the fact that the first image when you walked in to the venue was a statue of Ganesh next to a quote from the Koran.”
He said it was important to replace hate with inclusion – and the wedding was a symbol of such inclusion. “As Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Blacks, whites and Asians all danced and sang in a Barat [bridegroom’s marriage party] together down Peachtree Street outside the Fox Theater in the heart of Atlanta, it was hard to ignore that we are what makes America great again.”
Here’s a beautiful story found on Pinterest. It simply says — Amber’s story: “This is a photo of my husband and I. He is Indian and I am African-American. After much adversity and nearly four years of the both of us being judged by his family and fighting emotionally and spiritually, we became one December 2012. And we’re happier and more in love than we’ve ever been! With God all things are possible!”
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