Big fat Indian weddings told to slim down

LEADERS of Delhi's Sikh community have called for an end to lavish weddings featuring meat and alcohol on the grounds they encourage the dowry system and female feticide.

The Delhi Gurdwara Management Committee, the city's top Sikh body, has told the capital's one million Sikhs to boycott weddings that are not teetotal, vegetarian and over by noon.

Similar measures are being considered in other Indian cities.

Sikhs are supposed to avoid unnecessary expenditure, but their weddings have become increasingly ostentatious in recent years. Many last for days, beginning with the groom's procession to the bride's home and culminating in a banquet and dancing into the night.

The committee has ordered Delhi's 350 gurdwaras (Sikh temples) not to issue wedding certificates to families who ignore its guidelines. Those who hold wedding processions in the evening will not be allowed to marry in a gurdwara.

"Our fight is against the exploitation by those who pose demands on the girl's family to organise elaborate weddings," committee president Paramjit Singh Sarna said. "It is this splurge of wealth on ceremonies which is promoting dowry and practices like female feticide."

Although it is technically illegal to demand a dowry, most Indians ignore the ban.

The bride's family is expected to pay for a sumptuous wedding and give the groom's family cash and gifts. As a result, daughters are traditionally seen as a financial burden and many Indians kill newborn girls or abort female fetuses.

The Indian Medical Association says about five million female fetuses are terminated every year.