History
The history of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is under dispute. Russian and later USSR colonizing powers made the ancient practice of the nomads illegal, and so with the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of the Central Asian nations, many have revived old customs as a way of asserting cultural identity. Rejecting a kidnapping is often culturally unacceptable for women, and perceived as a rejection of the Kyrgyz cultural identity. The practice is also associated with asserting masculinity. Recent studies challenge the claims that bride kidnapping used to be prevalent. According to Kyrgyz historians, and Fulbright scholar Russell Kleinbach, whereas kidnappings were rare until Soviet times, the bride kidnapping tradition has dramatically increased in the 20th century. The rise in bride kidnappings may be connected with difficulty in paying the required bride price (kalym).
According to the United States Embassy, two American women were bride-kidnapped in rural Kyrgyzstan in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Ala Kachuu
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)