A REPORT in an Indian newspaper (November 21) spoke of Daljit Kaur, who jumped to her death from the top floor of a house in Delhi, because her in-laws had been harassing her unceasingly about the inadequacy of the dowry she had brought upon her marriage to their son.
I have since found that she was simply one of the thousands of young brides who are killed, or driven to suicide, in South Asia for the same reason each year. A common way of getting rid of a dowry-deficient daughter-in-law is to burn her alive and call it an accident. Here is a typical incident.
Charanpreet Kaur grew up in a middle class neighbourhood in Delhi. Her father tutored primary school kids, and her mother taught in a government primary school. As Charanpreet passed high school and turned 19, some family friends suggested a suitable “match” in the person of Satwant Singh, who made ten thousand rupees per month as a software engineer. The parents on both sides met in the local gurdwara and made a deal. A few months later, Charanpreet and Satwant Singh were married. The dowry and the wedding dinner for 250 guests cost the girl’s parents Rs. 413,000 (in my reckoning a huge amount for a family of school teachers).
A month later Satwant Singh asked Charanpreet to bring a hundred thousand rupees from her parents for him to set up his own business. They borrowed the money from relatives and gave it to him. A few weeks later, he and his parents made additional demands, which her parents were not able to meet. They then subjected her to physical and mental torture for several months.
On the morning of August 19, 2005 Satwant Singh, his father and mother, and a sister-in-law ganged up on Charanpreet, and forced her into a bathroom. Her husband covered her mouth with his hand, her father-in-law poured kerosene on her head and clothes, set her on fire and left. Moments later, screaming, her entire body on fire, Charanpreet ran downstairs to the ground floor, fell and fainted. Her husband and father-in-law, fully expecting her to remain unconscious and die fairly quickly, took her to a hospital. She regained consciousness and, before dying, gave her statement to the police and a magistrate whom the hospital authorities had summoned.
Now some refreshing news. Nisha Sharma, a computer science student in Deli, was to wed a school teacher on May 11, 2003. The dowry her parents were to provide had already been settled, and it included jewellery, clothes, furniture, a television set, a refrigerator, and an automobile. (This despite the fact that dowry in India is illegal, something of which we will say more shortly.) Minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the groom demanded an additional Rs. 1.2 million rupees as a condition for the marriage to take place. Upon hearing this, Nisha cancelled the wedding, called the police and got the groom arrested. Her courage and defiance, applauded all over the country, made her a celebrity overnight. In the following months a couple of other girls followed her example. But dowry remains a deeply entrenched, and even growing, appendage to the institution of marriage.
Dowry in the ancient world related to the woman’s chance to inherit from her father. In ancient Greece, for instance, she did not inherit. Her father arranged her marriage and provided a dowry as her share of his property. But he could recall his daughter, and the dowry he had given her, to his home any time he wanted.
It seems that the woman in ancient India also did not inherit, but she did receive a dowry (streedhan) upon her marriage. Initially, and for several hundred years, the custom was limited to the Hindu upper castes (Brahmins and Kashatriyas). Gradually, the merchant and farming castes also adopted it. It used to be confined, for the most part, to the Hindi belt: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan. But during the last 100 years, and more particularly since independence, it has spread to all parts of the country and to all classes, except perhaps the menial castes and hill tribes in the northeast.
Dowry is often condemned from the public platform. Mahatma Gandhi once called it a disgrace for the young man who accepted it and dishonouring of the woman whose family had to provide it. More recently (May 2005) the Indian Supreme Court criticized the government for not doing enough to stop the evil. It called upon the government to ask all of its male employees to disclose whether, and how much, they had received in dowry upon getting married, Writing in an Indian newspaper (October 23, 2005) Mr Pritam Pal, a judge of the Punjab-Haryana High Court, has referred to it as a cancerous evil, a social scourge attributable, among other things, to the undermining of woman by the religious orthodoxy, and to ever-increasing materialism and greed.
Barring cases in which parents give their daughter gifts as a gesture of their love for her, dowry in effect means that the groom’s family are putting him up for sale, as it were. They make demands, receive bids, and go with the highest bidder. They are charging a fee for taking the girl in, and giving her room and board. They will want as large a dowry as possible at the time of their son’s wedding, and in addition they will want it as a stream that flows into their home for many years to come.
The practice is abominable, for it reduces the prospective bride to the level of a commodity and thus humiliates her. It oppresses her parents, for in many cases it is hard for them to meet the groom’s demands. Their only alternative, as they see it, is to keep their girl at home, which too is burdensome unless she can be economically independent. Additionally, if she is still single when she has gone past her early twenties, neighbours and relatives will begin to wonder (aloud) if her “character” is still unblemished. Considering all of this, her parents will end up borrowing money to provide the required dowry and spend the rest of their lives paying back the loan.
Needless to say, many families are much too good-hearted to hassle a daughter-in-law even if her dowry does not quite meet their expectations. But some, admittedly a small minority, will hound and torment her, and eventually kill her or drive her to suicide. The numbers are not all that large.
In 1997, Mr Shayamala Cowsik, an Indian diplomat in Washington, spoke of 4,000 cases of bride-burning each year in his country; Ms Carol Bellamy, Unicef executive director, placed the number of dowry-related deaths at 5,000. Other estimates range between 7,000 and 15,000. But it has also been noted that reported deaths make only about 20 per cent of the actual number. Most of the killings are done in middle and upper class homes. On average three young brides reportedly get killed every day in the relatively prosperous town of Bangalore, where dowry and associated cruelties were almost unknown 50 years ago.
Even if the incidence of dowry deaths is modest, the custom is despicable, because it causes a great deal of anguish to countless young women and their parents.
The prospect of having to provide dowry makes the birth of girls unwelcome. In 2002 the number of girls in Delhi had fallen to 865 for every 1,000 boys; in richer neighbourhoods it had dropped to less than 800. New medical technology (ultrasound) can now identify the sex of the foetus in the mother’s womb. Even though illegal, many labs do perform this test and a clinic next door will abort the foetus.
Many middle and upper class families are going in for the abortion of female foetuses. The law in India allows abortion (but not the sex-selective kind), to be performed by authorized physicians in designated clinics. But a great many of them are performed outside the law (reportedly about five million each year).
The dowry-related tragedy is widespread enough for the Indian parliament to have passed a law (1961, amended in 1986), that forbids the taking and giving of dowry. The police are required to presume criminal involvement on the part of the husband and/or his family in case a young woman dies of causes other than natural within seven years of her marriage. But it has been exceedingly difficult to enforce the law. Since far too many people (including those in high places) follow the custom, the police are reluctant to investigate and prosecute violators, witnesses to testify, and judges to convict.
I have written the above with reference to India because the material I have found addresses the practice as it exists there. But we may assume that it is just as prevalent in Pakistan. Little is said of it, possibly because the conscience of the community here is not seized of the issue as much as it is in India. It may, however, be noted that in Pakistan a law passed in 1976, and another in 2000, sought to limit wedding-related expenses to Rs 50,000.
In March 2004, the Jamaat-i-Islami in Pakistan sponsored a “mass wedding” in Nowshera (NWFP) in which 201 couples, presumably belonging to lower class families, were married without the parents having to provide dowry or entertainment. The party paid for the meal and provided gifts to each couple. It is greatly to be commended for this wonderful initiative. One may suggest also that social reform would suit the party much better than politics could.
Nevertheless, the practice goes on unabated. In both India and Pakistan it has become increasingly connected with greed and, where it is given voluntarily, with issues of image and status. The way to curb it has to be the same as that of discouraging other expressions of greed and urges to ostentatious spending. What is that way? You tell me!
The writer is professor emeritis of political science at the university of Massacrusets at Amherst, US Email:
Pakistan Sunday, December 18, 2005 -- Zeeqad'ad 15, 1426 A.H.