Young Girls Are Deserting Pattar Boys????

PATTAR BOYS, YOUR GIRLS ARE DESERTING YOU… HAVE YOU WONDERED WHY?
Please don't be annoyed by this title. It is deliberately kept frivolous. To draw attention to a major problem.
While a community’s material wealth can be reckoned in terms of money, gold and land, its social wealth includes its culture, its traditions and most important, its women who are the repository and executors of its cultural heritage and above all .. are a key to propagating the community’s genes.
Women have as important a role as men in carrying on the genes. But more important, it is to a community’s womanhood that its traditions and culture are anchored. The practice of women lighting the traditional lamp is not a mere symbolic act but is an affirmation of the fact that women are the torch bearers of a community’s culture and traditions. Let us not forget that even Lord Jagannatha Shri Krishna took his first steps in the world through Ma Yashoda and that Chhatrapati Shivaji who rose to become the torch bearer of Hindu renaissance had Jeejamata, his mother as his guru.
It is in keeping with this maxim that communities the world over accord a special place to women and make every effort to protect them and keep them within the community. Some communities like the Muslims even go to the length of keeping them isolated in zenanas behind purdahs.
What is true of humanity is general is applicable lwith equal force to the pattar community.
In my article Pattar Demographics published in this portal I had drawn attention to the alarming male-female ratio among pattars with males outnumbering the female population at 988 females to a thousand males. I had also drawn attention to the alarming rate at which pattqr awomen are marrying aoutside the community.
Over the last two and a half months I have attended close to 23 marriages of various communities. Of these 17, marriages involved pattars. While eight of these seventeen marriages were between pattar boys and girls, an alarming number of nine marriages involved pattar girls with bridegrooms from other linguistic and religious groups. Of the nine bridegrooms, two were Christians, four Maharashtrians, one Punjabi and one Bihari. In other words, 51per cent of the pattar girls involved, married outside the community.
True, the statistics mentioned here pertains to a very limited geographic area, viz. Mumbai, and a very short time period viz. 75 days But considering the fact that the total pattar population overall is around 3.5 lakhs, that Mumbai is home to around 40 per cent of this population, that the over 50 pattars constitute a preponderant majority of this population thanks to the Hum Do Hamara Ek norm which has seen a drastic decline in pattar growth rate with fewer youth of marriageable age in the community and with even fewer females, this revelation is alarming. Startling because girls marrying outside the community amounts to denudation of everything that the community can boast of . Thousands of years of carefully evolved genes, culture, traditions and above all value systems. Impoverishment of the pattar community. Enrichment of other communities at its cost.
Is it not time for the community as a whole to get out of its physical and mental ghettoes, out of its temples, its bajan sessions and sadhya halls and take stock of the situation. Find out why pattar girls are progressively moving out of the community’s fold seeking comfort and solace in other communities. Cutting themselves off permanently from the community? Carrying away with them permanently large slices of our culture, traditions and genes?
To do this, the community has to do a lot of introspection. The first question would be why do pattar girls prefer boys from other communities? The logical corollary to this would be, what is wrong with pattar boys? In other words, what is it that boys of other communities have that our boys lack? Another question that comes to mind is : has the community provided sufficient mooring to its girls? Does the extraordinarily male oriented marriage market with the girls and their parents at the receiving end of the stick act as a deterrent to girls looking forward to a decent marriage within the community? (I have in one of my previous articles in this portal described the harrowing time girls and their parents undergo in the pattar marriage market).
And as far as the boys ago, are they really good bridegroom material? Do their physical, educational, cultural and social norms match with those of boys of other communities in this era of increasing intermingling of sexes of various communities, the exposure of our girls to the world and society. Are our boys capable of incapable of competing with boys of other communities?
And again, what role should the family, the community and society with its myriad of temples and sadhya halls play to reverse this trend?
There are no ready answers which I can offer to these questions without raising the hackles of the community in general and the traditionalists in particular, without being at the receiving end of the stick and the choicest of expletives and even threats of assault. Not that I am afraid of any of these. But it would be of great help if the community debated these issues and arrived at consensus.. This could be followed up by setting up an action committee not only to reverse the trend of pattar girls marrying outside the community but also to bring about reform and change in the community in keeping with the times.
And a tip: While deliberating on these questions, let us re-read Ms. Preeti Sethi's articles which contained certain startling revelations about pattar boys. A lot of us hauled the intrepid lady over the coals. But there could be truth in what she said. Let us be honest, humble and modest in trying to accept the truth however unpalatable it might seem.
Sarma