LA nonprofit engages South Asian community in conversation on domestic violence. (South Asian Network)

Community activist Aisha Ishtiaq has 12 open domestic violence cases. Ishtiaq is one-half of a two-person domestic violence unit at the nonprofit South Asian Network (SAN) in Artesia, Los Angeles’ Little India, which provides immigrant victims with services ranging from housing to legal help. 

But six months ago, Ishtiaq decided that this wasn’t enough.

“I’ve been doing this for four years,” Ishtiaq said. “I had a conversation with my supervisor, and we asked ourselves, ‘How do we get to these women before they get into these abusive relationships?’”

In August, SAN began holding focus groups with South Asian-American women in Los Angeles. 

“We wanted to know about their experiences. If they are single or in a relationship, what pressures to marry are they facing? When did these pressures start? For married or divorced women, what things did they wish someone had told them before getting married?”

To date, SAN has held five focus groups, with three or four women participating in each. Despite the women’s differences in age, education level and relationship status, Ishtiaq has seen recurring cultural and religious themes in their stories.

“Marriage is a value entity” in South Asian-American communities, Ishtiaq said. For women, “the pressure [to marry] begins at young age – for some it began when they were 16, for others in their early 20’s. Many of them feel pressured to marry someone within their ethnic group, and within their religious sect.”

Often, women are told that a married woman holds more importance than one who isn’t, Ishtiaq said. 

Many South Asian women are “told that it is their parents’ duty, so that they can go to their rightful homes,” Ishtiaq said. “Culturally,” Aisha said, that shows women that they “are not their parents’, they belong to their husband and husbands’ family.”

According to Ishtiaq, many of the married women said that even close family hadn’t talked to them about what they were getting into. 

By engaging men and women in a conversation on marriage, SAN is hoping to help break the silence on domestic violence within the South Asian-American community.

Despite media coverage of violence against women in their home countries, including most prominently India, many people in these communities continue to deny it is an issue. 

“Many people still feel that domestic violence is a private matter between the husband and wife, and that everyone else should not have a say in it,” Ishtiaq said. 

“When we do outreach to Hindu temples, mosques and Sikh gurdwaras, religious leaders sometimes will say, ‘This doesn’t happen in our communities.’”

Reach contributor Alexandra Babiarz here.