Long ago, I watched this TV drama (I believe it aired from Karachi) back in Pakistan. I don’t remember the name of the drama but it was a good serial and was very popular at that time. One of the female characters in the drama is forced to ‘marry the Quran’. I believe it reflected some sort of Sindhi tribal ‘rasam’ or something (I could be wrong, it may not actually be a Sindhi rasam but only a representation of the dominating male character’s personality vice to repress her sister’s wishes; but even if that was the case, there must be some sort of practise in place as tradition otherwise how did he come up with the notion?).
The idea was to show the cruelty of the rasam (if it is/was in fact a rasam). I’m not sure what ‘married to Quran’ means in its cultural context, however, I can extrapolate that the female was never to get married and her whole life would be devouted to religion etc.
My questions are:
1- Is there really such a rasam in any regional culture (wheather it’s Sindhi or Punjabi or other) in Pakistan?
2- If so, does it still happen or used to practised?
There is no such thing as marrying to Quran. It is not even a rasam, it is clever way of the Sindi wadareys (rich people) to get away without distributing the property to their daughters.
What happens is if there is no guy in the family that a girl could marry to and her parents/brothers are greedy, they will marry her to Quran, so that she does not marry anyone out of family. Because if she marry out of her family, the property will be distributed. And the wadereys don't want that.
Thanks for the clarification Alaadin. Question comes to mind that how common is it among the Wadarays? Is it more like a very rare practice?
blackzero,
Could you please elaborate more which other ethnic group/tribe practices this practise? I was born and raised in Punjab but my knowledge of the Punjabi culture is mostly limited to city environment and some of the 'pind' areas but I'd be interested in knowing if this happens/used to happen in Punjab, Baluchistan etc areas too.
Thanks everyone for your appreciation on my comments.
Roman,
I hope that it is very rare, and hopefully no more in our society. As you know that time is changing..
blackzero
I said Sind because there are more wadairas in Sind than any other province. And it happens where there are people with huge lands and don't want to give away outside the family.... But It might happen in Punjab as well...
I have first-hand experience of such happenings. A once-friend, Sindhi landlord type with whom I have since not been in touch has five sisters. Two of them were maliciously disfigured so that nobody would want to marry them and two were "married to the quran".
The youngest was married off to a first cousin where the exchange of property was equal.
These cases are no more than ten years old and the family lives in Clifton, Karachi.
All sorts of injustices that go against the teachings of the Quran take place everyday right under our noses. Practices that leave us wondering where the law is and where are those that say "That sort of stuff doesn't happen anymore".