MIXED MARRIAGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

MIXED MARRIAGES

INDIAN'S ENGLISH WIFE FIGHT AGAINST PREJUDICE Mrs. Lombah, the English wife of an Indian doctor practising in England, told an audience of women'in London recently of her fight to secure social recognition. She was addressing the British Commonwealth League's Conference. Mrs. Lombah, who has been married for twenty years, said:—"lt has been sixteen years' uphill work, but now, instead of being called the black doctor s wife, I am known as the Ranee of Bilston." When mixed marriages were not a success, Mrs. Lombah remarked, she believed it was often due to the criticisms and interference of relations. " When I first went to live in the North," she said, " people used to collect outside my house and peer in my babies' 4 pram" when they were taken out by the nurse. I bought a double hood for the pram and paced up and down my - drawing-room wondering what I could do. " I decided I had to face it out. I took the hoods off the pram and walked out with the nurse. When the women came to look at the babies I smiled, and said: ' Aren't tliey pretty ?' and they agreed that my babies were lovely. . "Then I talked,about the other,women's babies. Gradually they came to smile and talk to me. My troubles were over. Woe betide the girl who marries an Indian and thinks life is going to bo one long ride in a high-powered car." A Moslem Indian, Atiya Begum, said: —" If I wcro asked, I would say to any English girl: 'Please don't marry a Hiiidu unless you are going to live in India, Marry an Englishman, not an Indian with all his difference of outlook.' "