Uniform Civil Code for National Integration

(This essay was originally written for the Super Brain All India Essay Competition conducted by the competitive monthly magazine named Competition Success Review and was published in its January 2006 edition. This article won the first prize on all India level)

“All for one, one for all”

– Alexander Dumas, ‘The Three Musketeers’

Introduction

            Indian humanity, in its dynamic unity, integrally includes a national plurality of all religions namely Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh etc. constituting in Constitutional diction ‘We, the people of India’. The whole populace anticipates a vision of plenary harmony accommodative of secularism sans which our vibrant democracy will suffer a divisive syndrome and our many minorities will miss the mainstream of national life – a travesty of the tryst with destiny India made during its sustained struggle for Poorna Swaraj. The mensuration of the quality of our democracy geared to the preservation of structural integrity and social identity that does not negate the nationalist commitment of the entire population. This is the materialist dialectics and moral dynamics of our Democratic Republic, given shape and beauty by the Founding Fathers as an articulation of the values, which find finer expression in the Preamble and Articles of the Constitution, liberally illumined and hermeneutically pragmatised.

            One of the major problems, which have provoked exciting polemics and aggravated Majority pressures, is the enactment of a Uniform Civil Code for the citizens throughout the territory of India, as desiderated in the Article 44 of the Constitution. Nevertheless, till today there has no UCC taken shape in Indian soil except in Goa which is from the times of Portuguese, regulating family laws, namely, marriages, divorce, adoptions, succession, legitimacy of children, registration etc. Hindu fundamentalists make a militant demand for a UCC and in opposition an apprehension for the Muslim minority that Koran is in danger; that their sacred family law would be jettisoned, and loosing their identity is too on the increase.

            Indian fraternity and human solidarity have non-negotiable validity, be he a Hindu, Muslim or other minority member. To behold a human being as human is the best tribute to secularism as secularism is not, however, merely the broad pattern of management of equations between politics and religion rather it is a spirit of tolerance, universalism and freedom equally to all religions. Amid all these in an Indian family, how could it be fair that there should be one rule for the mother, one for the father, and one for the children, shaking the epitome of our national cooperation and warning our national integration itself?

From precedent to the present

The founding fathers of our Constitution were all wise men of vision, fired by the concept of democracy treating everyone equal before law, and for whom everything subsumed to the fraternity, unity and integrity of the nation. Unfortunately, some of those founding fathers, it must be accepted in retrospect, were the proverbial black sheep whose religious faith could not quite be overcome by national ideals. Thus, some members wanted the Constituent Assembly to believe that the Muslim Personal Law was an immutable law in India from ancient times and believed that enactment of a civil code would be oppressive to the minorities, each of which had a personal law.

It took Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s and K. M. Munshi’s erudition to demolish the myth of the immutability of ‘’divine’’ law and to prove that the proposed new civil code at that point of time would be the most suitable to apply for all citizens, irrespective of their religion. Ultimately, it was only the personal laws of the Hindus that were subjected to scrutiny and then altered. However, the Muslim personal law remained untouched barring a few changes in deference to evolving legal grammar. The pumpkin was quietly buried under secular rice!

Eventually, because of discrepancies in the personal law, numerous cases came before the courts related to Personal Laws. Long years ago, in the Shah Bano Case, the Supreme Court held that Article 44 has remained as a dead letter. The then Chief Justice of India Y. V. Chandrachud observed that, “A common civil code will help the cause national integration by removing disparate loyalties to law which have conflicting ideologies”. Raging controversy demanding the uniform code followed was resisted in full fury by the Muslim minority, with distinguished exceptions. Many instances the Supreme Court directed the government of its Constitutional obligations to enact a UCC like Sarla Mugdal Case, Mary Roy Case V. State of Kerala, Jordaen Deinddeh V. S. S. Chopra, Pannalal Bansilal Case etc. The latest reminder of the Supreme Court setting the cat amongst the pigeons on the matter of a UCC was in the case John Vallamattom V. UOI (AIR 2003 SC 2902). In that case Chief Justice Khare stated that, “We would like to state that Article 44 provides that the State shall endevour to secure for all citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India. It is a matter of great regrets that Article 44 of the Constitution has not been given effect to. Parliament is still to step in for framing a common civil code in the country. A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing the contradictions based on ideologies”.

Lamentably, the concept of a UCC is not made a fundamental right of the citizen but relegated to the position of a concept desirable but not enforceable by any court in the country. The world treads frontward, ever forward, while those damned “secularist” of ours have forced us back to the shameful sinister ages.

‘why’ a uniform civil code?

            Secularism, the cornerstone of our nation and the radical locomotive of social democracy for integration is confused with and propagated by bigoted extremists as the tombstone of the body politic – a terrible outrage! If secularism ceases to be the bedrock of our Republic, Swaraj becomes a mirage. If we, as a people, do not belong to a single nation, politically cemented by a strong sense of human solidarity, we will splinter and flounder. Our national campaign is not pampering majority malignancy or minority prejudices. We must be secular in every cell. There cannot be democracy if any section of society is discriminated on the score of religion or inequality. Therefore, a Uniform Civil Code is the way out to avoid further chaos in the Indian cosmos.

            In advanced Muslim regimes around the world like turkey and Egypt, the personal laws are being amended in tune with modern times, but secular India remains cursed to linger in medieval mindset of the Aurangzeb era. The Muslim clergy had always succeeded in resisting changes under the pretext that Shariat is sacrosanct. To negate, if you perceive countries like Europe and United States, which have a Civil Code, any immigrant has to submit to that Civil Code and never felt tyrannical. M. J. Akbar wrote: “It is a myth that Islamic law is not amendable to re-interpretation. Islam has always been a dynamic faith, not a static one and principles have been placed in context whenever needed”. If the Shariat is to be strictly observed, a thief should have his hands cut. Would today’s fundamentalist Muslims in India agree to this being practiced?

            Diversity in personal laws reinforces gender inequality and injustice. Furthermore, when criminal laws and some aspects of civil laws were common to the country as a whole why then the variation of personal laws? Accepting a Uniform Civil Code, the identity of no Muslim is threatened, only his social well-being is heightened and strengthened. Moreover, is not that what laws are made for? How Muslims will lose their identity by the country, having a Uniform Civil Code? How can a common civil code ever affect faith? What does law has to do with faith? When Muslims in many parts of India went by Hindu law in certain matters, did they become less Islamic? Or less Muslims? In succinct, a Uniform Civil Code is a social imperative, which the people arguing against it yet have to comprehend forsaking their insular thinking.

Conclusion

In future, while implementing the Uniform Civil Code what has to be done, Shourie nicely paraphrases: “A Uniform Civil Code should not be put together as the amalgam of, or the common denominator of personal laws based on religion but as the Code that guarantees the best rights to all citizens, a code in which each provision has been incorporated not because it is to be found in the Shariat or Manu or in Christian or Parsi law but because on that matter it is the most humane and just provision we can think of, the one that is most in accord with good conscience, the one that is not likely to induce good conduct and creative flowering of the individual”.

The melody of communal unity, the beauty of religious amity and the secularity of Indian humanity by way of Uniform Civil Code for national integration – these glorious values are the mission and message to the nation. Let us struggle to sustain this supreme value, lest we, as a people, perish by discordant ideology.

The Way to My God

[This article was originally written to Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer (former Supreme Court Judge) on the eve of his 91^st Birthday in the year 2005]

I heard about Justice.V.R. Krishna Iyer – the ideal, intellectual and the incarnation of god breathing on earth for the maiden time when I was in my 1^st semester – the time when I commenced the jurisprudential scholarly odyssey in the Law College located in the heart of cultural capital of Gods Own Country. The more I heard about this phenomenal personality, the more was my insatiable desire for me: to know him, to get acquaintance with his works and wisdom, in the midst of a bit of awesomeness and amazedness contained in my heart. To discover this human deity, his divinely dedication to the society; his indelible donation to humanity; his enshrined life for the lowest, love for the littlest and the law for the social justice portraying ever remembered history, I searched the dusty books in the cobwebbed cupboards of our college library. That was the dawn of my life in its erudite dynamic direction and the duck of my lazy times of yore in its honesty dissection.

On the way to write this article, I experienced that to discover a man is much Herculean than discovering a no-mans-land. Notwithstanding that, I never turned back, marching forward and endeavored to be ahead in the discovery of my god in-depth.

The first book I read authored by Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer was Religion and Politics, where I comprehended that “truth is the same though it may have various versions and viewpoints”. Truth is tough, it’s finding tougher and if laboriously found will make us free. Its from there, I tried hard to find myself; to find my finer inner being; to realize my potential inferno so as to blaze it into life for the future hope. It is from there, the ovule of passion for books and pleasure for prolific writing started germinating deep-rooted me to the boundless al fresco. It is from there, the extensive realization, the enlightened revelation and the enigmatic renaissance within me took an outline, and the chase clasping the chain of my dreams progressed profusely day-to-day overlooking my yesteryears flippancy and bygone languid past.

The flavor towards Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer’s singular collocation of dictions, the oral rhyming alliterations, quoting of plural quotations and profound insight to the history and posterity fascinated me, anchoring myself in it forever, and never could I dodge from its cerebral gravity. What a charisma in his mysterious words and marvelous deeds? I fell in love with his style of semantics and novel neologisms, be it in his judgment or in his judicious write-ups, enriching the horizon of my thinking, writing, and speaking. By falling in love with these ‘would be legacy to humanity’ of Krishna Iyer’s, actually I was rising, rising and rising to reach higher and wider skies of my ambitious tomorrow reckoning with my aspirations, where his role is in countless and cosmic calculate. Saying ‘Thanks’ to him would be an act deserving neglect; only payback would be my accomplishment for the better cause of this mankind or at least a petite contribution to this illustrious India.

Within seven semesters in LLB, I covered all the books there in our college athenaeum penned by Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer. Numerically, its twelve books and out of it one was his biography written by P. Ramaswamy titled, V. R. Krishna Iyer – The Living Legend. Some of my favorite prose and passage from the read, I used to scribble in my scrapbook in order to quote it whenever time necessitate for intellectualization. I was very fond of his beauteous writing spat from his pen having a poetic and philosophical texture, with extensive search and research transcendence, touching my naked fragile heart stopping, and some acidic note boiling the spirit in my blood for the cause of humankind and breathtaking prose positively haunting me to sleepless nights. Really, no will believe it.

My favorite book of his is Human Rights – Its Dialectics and Dynamics, composed with the quill filled in historical, political, emotional, theological, logical and legal ink. It is crammed with the narration of gory annals of denying and defying the human rights to the common, from the compassionate times of Christ to colonization by Columbus; and condensed with the cruelty and animosity during World War period to the capitalistic hegemony of the new millennium by the elitist class over the weak and meek in diverse realm. It was an eye-opening attempt to bring the truth to reality and reality to this extremity. In totality, it is the best read and heart felt book for me until today. Just like that, the memories of all his books remain a thunderbolt in the welkin of my wide little brain. All his rhythmic and syllabic sentences were enlightening in lightening velocity and were frightening, if I orate to the hearers, and brightening the readers if write in that manner. Yes, the same is what I am doing now making the eyes of my readers protrudes out.

On the itinerary of these actions and exertions, the expectation of meeting the living legend struck me as I had drunk sufficiently the nectar of his verbal creations. My parents compelled me more than my conscience to meet him and seek his blessings. This pressure for meeting him from within and without was there, if I am right, since the summer of 2004 onwards. Nevertheless, how to get to him was the question, which I did not know. Later, I contacted some of my comrade friends who were having communist political reach in order to zero in to his quarter. Even so, nothing came as helpful. In the interim, fortunately, the Editor of our Law College, one of my friends, told me to take an interview of Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer for publishing it in the College Magazine. By knowing that, I started building castles in air; preparing and framing questions; collecting materials needed and told about this good news to my dear and near. Nearly, one month eluded by that time. One day we ringed up to the residence of Krishna Iyer, requested to his Personal Secretary and fixed a day for interview on 13^th of September 2005. in opposition, later on, time was too cruel to me as the Editor dropped the plan due to some other technical rationale within his union, bulldozing my erected castles in air, abandoning me in the Atlantic of orphaned melancholy, feeling me rejected myself and was on the verge of fatal submerging due to undue dejection. However, I never loosed my gargantuan hope keeping these sanguine and sublime poetic expressions of Oliver Goldsmith as my inspiration:

                        Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light,

                        Adorns and cheers our way;

                        And still, as darker grows the night,

                        Emits a lighter ray.

Recovering and reacting more optimistically, I planned to fix an appointment for the interview with my personal interest, for which I ringed the heavens number – 0484-2370088 and pleaded with the Personal Secretary my wish and will. The date went on procrastinated from September 13 to 18 and from September 18 to sine dine to many reasons explicitly, Onam celebrations, state election and above all, with tears in my eyes, Krishna Iyer’s ailing health as a part of his senescence.

            My phone calls in bakers dozen were all an attempt futile. Out of those many calls – in just two calls – I got to converse with Krishna Iyer. When I heard my god’s divine voice for the first time, it seemed like a beckon of a celestial vocalization in my heart of hearts bordered in wonder; like a soothing sonata healing the wounded waiting of my penchant, and raptures my rigorously echoing poignant soul unheard by everyone. A day never to forget and a voice remembered forever in this lifetime – what more I could portray?

            Days passed by; scores of engagements done; but the reason of ‘why’ I was engaged for two months did not happen by. On the day when Indians all over the planet were in a festive mood of Diwali, which fell on November 1, with my mother’s insistence, I simply dialed the residence number of Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer with sky-scraping hopes. I do not know what to do, how to say or from where to say either at 11 a.m. or at 3 p.m. for only meeting Krishna Iyer, not more than 10 minutes, and not for interviewing him. I was convinced without any further arguments; felt absolutely on cloud nine by that call. With that ecstatic and euphoric mood, from the next second onwards, I set and started for the next day’s great and grand episode. A long waiting ended with a symptom and symphony of little relief. I was looking forward with eagerness as never before persuading my inner Lilliputian fear to end; patterning what to speak before him in introspection, and was behind the next holy cockcrow to happen having an insomniac night. When the neighborhood was bursting the crackers, the neighborhood of my heart was too bursting with joy. When the world scintillated for Diwali, my world too was scintillating for my own reasons.

            In this context, since it is ideally proper, let me excavate the mythological mantle, and decipher diverse legend behind the Diwali festival evolved with plural regional customs and religious credence being assimilating with it. At the very mention of Diwali, images, crowd the mind with bursting firecrackers, coruscating diyas, offering gifts, toothsome confectionaries, new apparels etc. These entailing images contain a rational and mythical tale at the rear. The tale goes like this – the son of king Hima was doomed to die on the fourth day of his nuptial tie by snakebite. To thwart this prediction, his wife lit lamps all over the palazzo and laid oodles of ornaments at the portal. When the god of death arrived there in the guise of a serpent, the dazzle of those brilliant lights blinds his eyes, and he could not invade the prince’s chamber. Hence, Diwali is a remembrance of this victory over prophesied bereavement. Moreover, in North India, Diwali marks the return of Rama to Ayodhya. On that stygian amavasya night, the people of Ayodhya light up the route with rows of oil lamps to welcome the princes. In remembrance of this wonderful event, lamps are lit, and the festival bears today’s incandescent impact all over the world wherever Indians inhabit, even an official declaration of a public holiday in the United States. There is also a reference in the Jain custom that the day scripts the passing into Nirvana of Mahavira. The lighting of the lamps is a symbolic material succedaneum for the light that was extinguished with Mahavira’s demise. By crossing various versions of the symbolic lightened lamps and revision of the sensitive enlightened, my date with my god came on the amavasya of November 2, 2005 hoping finer befalling days in enlightenment from thereafter.

            On that auspicious day, I planned to go by Sabari Express and meet Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer in the afternoon at 3 p.m. since Kerala Express supposed to reach at Palakkad in the morning was directed via Konkan route due to the Hyderabad deluge. In this backdrop, how could I ignore to mention the pathetic fettle of the victimized and the terrorized by such natural catastrophes? We witnessed the cicatrized images and heard the helpless yelling recently in the conurbations of Bombay, Bangalore and Chennai inundated under rain, cities of Pakistan lying under the debris attributable to Mother Earths quavering, washed off countless hamlets in America due to hurricane Katherine, Rita and Wilma, mounting the mourn and the damage. Aside to all these, it is needless to mention the man-made apocalypses like the horrendous atomic wars, terror-striking bomb blasts, environmental hazards, vituperation of expanding scientific enlightenment etc. Are these the testimony of the ongoing kaliyug calling for a warning? Quo Vadis the misguided humanity? Who will be our savior salvaging from the looming Armageddon? Or is anyone drawing closer as the Messiah? Though keeping all these haunting questions to a side, with the sacred blessings of my maternally omnipotent mother, I embarked on the Sabari Express heading to Trivandrum, which was rolling behind time by ninety minutes. Tenseness in a trivial scale was in me mainly due to the delayed train, but by ignoring it, I gave more importance on the nearing of my dream on the way. While all are aware of Indian Railways as a public sector known for its common phenomenon of late arrival trains, it would be a convincing excuse no matter what was my consoling signal from my exasperated brain. Along with all these swooping thoughts, I contemplated in the hastening train also about my numerous victimized brothers bewailing for their lost ones, for their broken hopes and their traumatized dreams owing to hurricanes, havoc of seismic tremors and horrifying heavy downpours. After all, it is in our lonesomeness, our innovative and imaginative calisthenics take us beyond all creative horizons, may be by the side of enlightened greenery or via the emotional valley or all the way through the streets of past memory.

            It was sharp 3 p.m., when I reached the gate of my Gods abode named ‘Satgamaya’, which for me was my ‘Destination Heaven’. At my first glance, it seemed a spot in complete serenity though besides the vibrant M.G. Road; an old tile house in a pale yellow, forlornly secluded, nonetheless located amidst the populated commercial metropolis; and appeared as a place glistening with philosophic purity and dainty divinity although in between the dirty and desecrated Ernakulam with its tainted Arabian seashore.

            When I entered directly into the guest lounge, I could witness none in his Personal Secretaries chair rather than with a number of cased photos of Krishna Iyer with great personalities who had carved a niche in the history, few framed titles and honors, not many gold-plated mementos, and lots of intellectual eerie silence. ‘Knock and the door will be opened to you’ stroke a not in my mind at that time. As I knocked the door, soon Krishna Iyer’s Personal Secretary came out eagerly from an inside room. Thereafter, I told my purpose of being there and familiarized myself to him. He said me to wait, and went inside Krishna Iyer’s chamber to ask his leave. Meanwhile, I peeped in through the door since it was open and saw for the first time – My God – who was writing something in his chamber; his eyes fully plunged into the in-depth of the page with scribbled words, surrounded by bulky books kept open over his spacious table. Within few seconds, Personal Secretary came out and informed me to hang around, as Krishna Iyer was busy preparing an article of great interest to be circulated on the eve of Presidents arrival. With complete obedience, I waited observing carefully my surroundings; got ready with the camera and requested the Personal Secretary to take the snap, which he wholeheartedly agreed.

            After a while, Personal Secretary and I treaded in to my God’s sanctum sanctorum. The walls of which, compactly clung with framed antique ‘black and white’ photographs; the corner and fringes of the sanctum crammed in bookshelves full of books and cabinets with vital documents; and floors of the room floored in geriatric gray terrazzo, generating in total, a nostalgic feeling as of a galleried museum. Within few minutes, the God got distracted but not disturbed by the low decibel conversation between the Personal Secretary and me. With a pleasant smile, I wished a namasthe and he too responded in the same way. I felt blessed by that cosmic tone wishing me. Subsequently, I introduced myself and uttered my long fervent yearning of seeing him face to face; how much I struggled to reach there, and recounted briefly that I consider him as my god despite I being an atheist. When he asked what my aspiration is, I replied to him that I wanted to be a civil servant. By hearing that, he got elated and gave me a complimentary cum startling smile: my toil rewarded, my heart bewitched and soul silently pleased. My God presented me a book titled, Legal Service Authorities Act – a Critique, authored by him. He wrote these words inside the book before giving it to me:

                        “Rule of law must serve and defend the rule of life.

                        Wish you a finer future”.

                                                                        V. R. Krishna Iyer

                                                                        2 Nov 2005

The moment of bestowing the book to me by Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer was captured in the camera by his Personal Secretary. I appealed to take one more photo with Krishna Iyer holding his hand and hugging him, which too was clicked. With taking permission of my God, I also osculated his divine feet by genuflecting before him, and him blessing me: purifying my impurities, consoling my inner core of my core, and wishing me a conquering great future. I doubted for a jiffy that I was in a delusory verity or somewhat in a fictional terrain and not in factual reality. Yet, I consciously felt, it was my best moment in my entire life blissfully to hark back, for empathetically cherishing and at times haughtily articulating to others. I thought such seconds come rare: for only rarest of rare person get such blessings. That flashing time entered my history, ineradicably imprinting in my memory and exquisitely blessing my futurity. After everything was done, while coming out of the room, my eyes were filled with indescribable tears: a usual miracle when our dreams come true. Is it not?

            Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer is my alpha and omega in all phases of my life. He is the beginning and the end of my intellection, creation and creativity. His words are my lamp unto my feet and his deeds my light unto my path. Devoid of his images in my imagination, I am nothing and a void breathing aimlessly. His theory will be a paradigm to turn over whenever my futurity requisites for. He is greater than the greatest gods living in this world. Beyond doubt, Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer is a living legal luminary and more over a rarest of rare legendary species who had stepped out of the legal lattices exploring truth and lifting the pennant of justice, ever the world has come across. For me, words seem too small in order for encomium about my God. Why to praise him? Because I pray him constantly, perceive him reverentially and pursue him eternally. Yearning on the way to my God, I comprehended how true this biblical message is:

            “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you”.

 – Bible, Mathew 7:7   

  

 

           

Dowry is a Curse

(This article was originally written for the Super Brain All India Essay Competition conducted by the competitive monthly magazine named Competition Success Review and won the second prize)

“The best of the marriages is one which is least burdensome in the financial sense to the families of the bride and the groom”.

– Prophet Mohamed.

The beginning

Ours is a sacred soil where women are venerated as shakthi; where there are more women deities in our pantheon than male divinities; where Jhansi Rani, Indira Gandhi and Laxmi took birth and icon of maternity like Mother Theresa dwelt. Nevertheless, wife burning owing to curse of dowry – that atrocious species of murder horrendously escalate in many parts of India pre and post independence days despite legislation against it, and giving a chance to evolve as a part of a social custom.

Historically dowry had a legitimate rationale. It was given to a daughter to enable her to support herself independently in her husband’s home without making demands on her new family. It was supposed to provide for her pocket money, allowing her to buy herself anything she fancied including foodstuff, clothing and jewelries. However, in the course of histories peregrination, the meaning and metaphor of dowry acquired a negative metamorphosis.

Moreover, Vedas prescribed dowry and the ancient Vedic custom of ‘kanyadhaan’ and ‘varadakshina’ were in essence of the dowry system. An archetype – when Sita was married to ‘godly’ Rama, her father supplied her with gold, pearls, carriages, horses, elephants, slaves, and many other items. Thus, dowry, which is the very root of the Hindu evils, is given ‘divine’ sanction by the ‘noble’ Hindu gods. Other precedents like Aurangzeb demanding the fortress of Ramgiri on the marriage of his son to a princess from Golconda; Akbar setting the paradigm when Jahangir married the daughter of Raja Bawagan Das; Catherine of Braganza, the non-Indian, marrying Charles II and bringing with her the island of Bombay as her dowry system traversed over emperors reign, region and religion.

Dowry today

The traditional ideas such as ‘kanyadhaan’ and ‘sthridhan’ should not be mixed or mingled with today’s dowry. The ‘sthridhan’ assets that were given to the bridegroom by the feudal land owning class later assumed nomenclature of dowry. This dowry system was intended to indicate the affluence of the feudal landlords and was a status symbol to offer gifts to the bridegroom. Today, it has taken cancerous dimension, acquiring a very new phenomenon and becoming a permanent trait in the lives of the working middle class even.

Under the impact of liberalization and the growing consumerism, the practice of dowry has intensified and expanded its reach. Today, Indian weddings are occasions for conspicuous spending with the invitation of numerous acquaintances, parking of cars outside the wedding hall, costly clothing and jewelry, the cash given to the groom, the lavish dinners, the shamiana lights, band music, processions etc. There is an attempt to equate these tendencies of show-off to ‘dakshina’, which is only an attempt to legitimize a modern monstrosity by linking it up with an ancient respected custom. For the poor, it has turned to be an obligation to marry off their daughters with dowry, with whatever their economic means. Hence, the whole system acts to pauperize families and make daughters a curse. As the customs have taken the form of a compulsive nature, what is surprising is that the imposture has had so much success.

Countless stories of horror, brutality, cruelty and cold-blooded murder in the name of dowry is reported which could rip apart any heart with the crudity of their details. Today dowry seems to have disappeared from national consciousness even though thousands of women continue to be burnt, poisoned, electrocuted or forced to commit suicide every year. Cases of dowry harassment no longer merited prime positions in news papers and stories of dowry deaths were now being relegated to the inside pages, reflecting a clear shifts in social priorities. Why even the women organizations are mute in this matter?

Amidst all these community lackadaisicalness, recently, Nisha Sharma in Delhi, Vidhya in Chennai and Farzana, a Muslim woman calling off their marriages because of dowry demands by the greedy groom’s kin, caught in media and public cynosure. They have set the anti-dowry wave in motion becoming an icon for young brides and women, a case study for Ladies Forum and the torchbearer of the Indian middleclass girls cause. All were waiting for this spark. Let it turn into a revolutionary inferno quenching the hunger in dowry mongers.

Law and legislation

            Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 stemmed from a noticeable increase in the number of Indian brides documented to have died from suspicious and mysterious circumstances. The cause of death was characteristically labeled as ‘kitchen fires’. One of the many cases significant for its contribution to the anti-dowry law in India is the case of Delhi’s Satyarani Chadha, who fought for 20 years to seek punishment for her son-in-law, who had burnt to death his six-month pregnant wife. So long drawn out was the legal battle that even the laws changed during the course of the case proceedings. It was during the hearing of this case that the IPC was amended in 1986 to incorporate Section 304-B and defined for the first time a ‘dowry death’. In spite, the harsher legal amendments in 1968 to that of 1961 Dowry Act such as Section 174 CrPC enforcing investigations of suspicious bridal deaths and stringent punishments for those found guilty and convicted of bride burning, the social evil continues.

            Now a day, Section 498-A is shamelessly abused both by police and by lower judiciary violating all the constitutional guarantees promised in the constitution of democratic India. The process of trial and punishment of the accused in dowry death cases, apart from being lengthy, is fraught with numerous hurdles. The local police (ill paid, ill qualified, incompetent, indifferent and corrupt) refuse to co-operate with the relation of the victim and do a slapdash job by way of investigation. As a result, the prosecution case has no supporting arguments and the accused are acquitted in the absence of suitable evidence. Moreover, the conviction rate according to statistics shows that only 2% are convicted and 98% acquitted in 498-A cases. However, Supreme Court of India on July 22, 2005 held that Section 498-A of IPC is constitutionally valid law and directed the legislature to rethink and rediscover the ways to plug the loopholes in the law.

            There is lot more to be done in the legal parchment and in the legislative pasture so that the cases of the thick groaning utterance of a dying woman in the grip of dreadful agony, to a certain extent, could be slenderized.

The desideratum

            The fight will have to be carried out concurrently on several fronts awakening the collective consciousness. Tradition or no tradition, battle against consumerism and obscurantist politics perpetuating the custom of dowry must go on where young generation needs to work harder. Change of heart ant attitude, economic independence for women and the providing of education for women are the solvent of this pernicious social malevolence. Parents should express their love for their daughters by making them independent and giving them property rights, rather than lavish wedding and unproductive consumables.

            Educating the public about the detrimental effects of dowry is a most imperative task. Dramas in the local language must be staged brining home to the people the evils of the institution. Any information received about dowry must be publicized through wall-newspapers and town criers in villages. The support of enlightened men and women, the press, politicians and officials must be enlisted in this fight. Pressure must be put on political parties to give tickets only to candidates who have worked dowry and to deny them to those who are known to have received dowry.

            Police, administrative authorities and other machineries should be accountable and sincere. Moreover, the Judiciary must deal with dowry cases in a more realistic and humanistic manner and not allow the criminals to flee because of procedural errors or technicalities. Courts have to be sensitive, perspicacious and correctly oriented I sight in drawing to judgments fulfilling the social welfare legislation and lifting the principles of penology in its finer perspectives.

Conclusion

            Dowry acts as a disincentive to spend on daughters, whether on nutrition, health or education, except in ways, which will make them for marriageable. Daughters are denied the very opportunities, which would give them the poise, the power and the proficiency to live a dignified and independent life. Thus, dowry is a manifestation of the devaluation, disparity and discrimination that women experience in Indian society.

            In succinct, dowry is a curse for those who value a relationship more than money and for whom marriage is a sacred knot. For all practical purpose, dowry has spoiled the social fabric and slackened the sacrosanct word ‘marriage’. Now what requires is, mobilizing the social consciousness to ban effectively the vicious survival of the social evil –‘The Dowry’. Remember:

“The love of money is the root of all evil”

– Bible; I Timothy 6:10