Taboo: Wife Abduction in Kyrgyzstan

Taboo has different meanings in different cultures (think supernatural versus FCC), but the one we may be most familiar with in our culture is that taboo is something that is banned on the grounds of morality or taste. Well some examples of things that might make some people ill at ease, would be self-mutilations, incest, and polygamy. In this occasion of taboo, I will take a look at a practice of marriage that reminds me of cave man days, with clubs and women being dragged behind by their hair. Only these men use taxi cabs and the aide of taxi drivers to get their future soul mate and they don't need a club. They just need brute force and some mental coercion for the beautiful wedding day.

Relaxing to a little PBS the other day, I caught an episode of Frontline called Kyrgyzstan- the Kidnapped Bride. From what I know about the country of Kyrgyzstan, it is a rather mountainous area with not very much development in terms of manufacturing. It was a gateway to China along the Silk Road and was under Soviet Union rule for years until the Soviet collapse in 1991. During Soviet rule, the cultural practice of bride kidnapping was outlawed, but now that Kyrgyzstan gained independence, the people are trying to gain ethnic identity to their past cultural activities. Although bride kidnapping is outlawed still, the laws are mainly ignored by the courts, because many of these courts are a group of elders that want to go back to past Kyrgyz customs.

During this show, they follow a young man and his friends as they go out in search of a girl that he had seen and was interested in as a kidnapping prospect. His mode of transportation was a taxi cab, which shows you that bride kidnapping isn't too taboo for cab drivers, who sometimes help with the abduction for a small fee (the wife stealing tradition was usually on horseback). Once kidnapped, the bride to be is brought to the grooms home, where she is surrounded by all the women in the groom to be's family as they try to convince her that she must get married. They try to convince her that this is the way things are supposed to be and that they too were at one time kidnapped and now they are happy. If the girl lets them put on the ceremonial white wedding scarf, then the woman must accept the marriage. Now Frontline was able to actually show a kidnapping take place, but the one they showed was possibly mild, because it was being filmed. However, there are times when the kidnappings are accompanied by violence and rape and sometimes lead to the young women committing suicide. Mostly though, when they talked to the people of Kyrgyzstan, they seemed to accept the tradition at face value and had no problem with forced marriage, especially in rural areas where more people in the family, means more workers.

Wife abduction is not limited to Kyrgyzstan, but also takes place in other areas of Central Asia as well as in China, Africa and European gypsy cultures. At first glance, wife abduction seems like a very barbaric and primitive tradition that is extremely taboo. One quote from the Frontline show that really made me wonder about marriage overall was when a groom was asked a week later how the marriage was going and he said, "We're happy. Keep visiting and we'll be happier". I was left thinking, is forced marriage any worse than arranged marriage? In both situations, people are left without a choice in who they will marry. Still I think what makes wife abduction so taboo is that it takes the choice out of who you fall in love with and you get forced into being with some stranger that may or may not repulse you or be a complete idiot. The only positive thing that I can think of that comes from wife abduction is that the woman doesn't have to worry about growing old alone. So when you are out partying it up at some clubs tonight ladies, be thankful you don't have to worry about being kidnapped and forced into marriage with some McDonald's cashier or a Mechanic instead of that Doctor that you always dreamed about.