The Curse of Dowry
From the moment a girl is born in some parts of India, her tragedy starts.
Parents
want male children. They will abort the fetus if they know it is a girl. If the mother delivers a girl, it is discriminated against from the day of its born.
Parents have to part with a large sum of money as dowry. The amount to be given depends on the boy’s education and job, his family status. In certain places apart from the huge amount, other items like furniture, cattle, household utensils, car and so on have to be handed over. It all depends on the final agreements between the elders of the two families. There is a lot of bargaining in the process and it becomes like the sale of a commodity. The only difference here is that the bride’s family has to give the girl and the price for it (commodity and the bargained amount). What a contradiction? The buyer ends up getting the goods and the price.
Even after all the transactions are completed and the girl transferred to the groom’s house, she has to bear a lot of pressure from the in-laws to persuade her parents to give more. If the dowry is incomplete, real tragedy awaits her. The in-laws try persuasion before they start the real
torture. In some cases she will be killed or burnt which will pave the way for a new marriage and substantial dowry. The only thing is that the in-laws will have to prove she committed suicide –which is quite possible if they are influential or powerful enough. Statistics show that in India about 20,000 brides are killed in about 3 years by the in-laws for providing dowries deemed insufficient by the in-laws.
Dowry was outlawed in 1961. Still the practice is widespread among all the communities of India. If the dowry is insufficient or not fully paid up the bride’s life will be pathetic indeed! There are changes slowly coming into the metropolitan area where the women are emancipated and the society modern. But dowry is still a curse in most of the regins of the country.
. What a strange way! How can a man marry a woman to live like one body and one soul and bargain for money and other material things from the girl’s parents? If it is to compensate for the girl’s share, let the laws be suitably amended and make every girl child have equal right on the parent’s property. But to bargain, to torture for more-- looks to be inhuman and not suited to the great traditions of tolerance and peaceful co-existence of this great land.