July 25, 2004 7:20 AM

And you think you have issues with your mother-in-law??

Deadly Dowries: In India, the cost of marriage for many women is their life.
In-laws' quest for cash and such gifts as TVs and refrigerators can end in death.

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.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on July 25, 2004 7:20 AM.

Symbolic is better than nothing at all was the previous entry in this blog.

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