Televisions and fridges, sometimes even cars, this is what people ask for now. Instead of earning these things, people now want to snatch them from someone else.
- Jyoti Chaudhary
It used to be about love. Well, no, in parts of India it's never really been about love. Marriage has always been an economic transaction, and a very serious one at that. The more things change, the more they stay the same....
It can be dangerous to be a daughter-in-law in India, where marriage and money are tied together in ancient traditions.
The fact that dowry has been illegal since 1961 means little. The vast majority of Indian families, from the urban elite to illiterate farmers, still pay some form of dowry to seal their daughters' wedding agreements. Created long ago to ensure that brides had wealth of their own, the tradition has essentially become a fee paid to the groom's family.
When trouble arises, it can be horrific. Authorities talk of brides held down by sisters-in-law as husbands douse them in kerosene and set them afire. Some are locked in closets until they starve or are beaten in front of their husbands' families....
Wealth has only compounded the problem.
There has been a sharp spike in the number of dowry-related crimes in recent years, closely paralleling a galloping Indian economy that has brought the trophies of middle-class life — TVs and motorbikes and matching dining room sets — tantalizingly close for hundreds of millions of people.
For some families, the call of advertisers is impossible to resist, and demands for cash and gifts often continue long after the weddings.
Women may be increasingly educated and well-paid here, but the tradition has grown even more burdensome. The lure of easy money spans Indian society: rich, poor, educated and not, married by arrangement or for love. "The economic changes are not making things better, they're making people more greedy," said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research, a prominent women's organization.
Family get-togethers must be all kinds of fun for these folks.
The sad thing about this scenario is that what should be a big day and a memorable experience for a young woman often becomes mired in greed and avarice. When a woman becomes a commodity- a THING- it suddenly becomes much easier to lose sight of her humanity. The ever-more-desperate deisre to acquire often overpowers all else.
Being a woman can be a very difficult thing, but there are still parts of the world where it can be a very dangerous, and sometimes deadly proposition. Is the life of a young woman worth a refrigerator, or a television, or who-knows-what-else? Traditions often die hard, and greed and avarice have always been universal human qualities. Put a life of a young Indian woman up next to that, and there's a good chance someone's going to get hurt. Welcome to the Age of Enlightenment.
I've known too many little American-citizen Indian girls IN THIS COUNTRY who have been taken to India "to visit family" as young as age 15 or 16, only to be forced into arranged marriages by parents/grandparents who refuse to allow them to have their passports so they can come home. The automatic green card for their spouse and other relatives is the dowry.
One girl I knew in college (she was 19) escaped in the night and made her way to the Embassy, which helped her get home -- only to be locked out of her home by her parents with only the clothes on her back. One former student (age 16) came back from India three months pregnant with a husband, telling me that her grandparents had arranged a marriage and gave her the choice of that or being disowened by the family and turned into the streets to make her living as a prostitute.
I don't understand something--why doesn't the Indian government try to intervene? Are they just too corrupt themselves, or is the country simply ungovernable due it its huge population?
Not to make light of this, but maybe should start insisting that those call centers be returned to the US, if this is the result.
I don't understand something--why doesn't the Indian government try to intervene? Are they just too corrupt themselves, or is the country simply ungovernable due it its huge population?
Not to make light of this, but maybe we should start demanding that those call centers be returned to the US, if this is the result.
They have -- officially.
The problem is that the traditional ways go very deep in parts of the country, and at least some in the more traditionalist minded parties want to keep the old ways. That means that even though the caste system, for example, has been abolished, the distinctions remain and the opportunities open to lower caste individuals are very limited -- making the limitations on minorities in this country look positively non-existant.
The same is true of the status of women. The old ways still rule among the lower classes, and will take a long time to eradicate.
Greed has even altered the tradition. Originally the Dowery was the "Widow's Mite", it was held by a husband and made available to support a widow. The assumption was the eldest son would inherit and the widow would need something to live on until her death.
Now the dower has become a payment to the husband's family and an incentive to kill the wife. The "custom" of the wives jumping on the funeral pyre of the husband was a way to ensure the doweries would not be lost to the husband's family.
If the police and courts won't enforce the laws, there's not much that can be done. As those responsible for enforcement happen to be from the group that benefits from the practice, i.e. men, I wouldn't expect much.
We can blame poverty, tradition, men and "difficulty" all we want. What this boils down to is greed. It is perhaps more noticeable because in these cases the appearance is egregious; but in point of fact it is greed, pure and simple.
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
From the women's fates in India, to the war in Iraq ...