(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
