Keep the Religious Institutions Out and Let the Love Ride INDIA ABROAD Letter, Dec 22, 2017
Satish Master in his letter (India Abroad; Dec. 8, 2017) expressed that phenomenon called love is more important and nothing else. However, I agree with the first part but would say one could gain the same “love” without submitting to irrational expectations from religious institutions.
In Jagdish Patel’s case (India Abroad; Oct. 13, 2017), the Mormon church will want conversion of his Hindu daughter for the marriage and keep Hindu parents from their own daughter’s church wedding.
Likewise here, Master failed to mention that along with attending Catholic marital counseling, the Hindu son had to sign a pre-nuptial agreement stating “my future spouse has promised to live out the Catholic faith as a practicing member of the Catholic church and raise our children in the faith of the Catholic church and I do not have opposition to this.” Why Master has no concern about giving up his Hindu heritage when other options were available? Alternatively, if the couple had intention of raising children as Hindu, why did the couple lie to the Catholic institution and signed one sided pre-nuptial?
From a Hindu, a Christian church will want baptism, Muslim imam will want Shahadah/Sunat and Jewish rabbi will want a bris or bar mitzvah for the interfaith marriage or promise to raise children in the respective Abrahamic faith only. It is time to take controls away from religious institutions and stop fake-conversions.
Interfaith married couples should have liberty to share two faiths in one marriage; that is not normally acceptable by Abrahamic institutions. Further, the couple should learn to respect each other’s faith and with equality.
It is high time to end the religious labeling practices and let the interfaith couple decide their own religious fate.
–Dilip Amin , the author of book–Interfaith Marriage: Share and Respect with Equality
Let’s Count the Benefits of Interreligious Marriages INDIA ABROAD Letter, Dec 8, 2017
What Vanamali Thotapalli (IA, Nov. 10) missed is a simple phenomenon called love. In this case, a parental love —father’s love for his daughter and a girl loving a boy. Jagdish Patel as a loving parent honors his daughter’s wish, who must have been blindly in love with her Mormon boyfriend/fiancé. Besides, Thotapalli did not have to resort to a stereotyped racial bias, further claiming his religion being superior. Our older son married a white, non-practicing Catholic who respected her mother’s will to have her marry in the church in which she grew up. So our son and his fiancée had to go through the Catholic marital counseling classes. Our son did not mind. On the contrary he enjoyed as the priest focused on the concept that woman should love and obey her husband.
Our second son married a non-practicing Mormon and they got married in a Buddhist abbey. We have three grandchildren between the two sons and neither skin color nor religion has ever been an issue in our family. We love and take care of our grandchildren and most importantly, we gained two daughters, making our daughter jealous.
–Satish Master Portland, OR
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