What is Dowry System in India ?

Marriage is an integral part of society, a source of joy and festivities as well as of new beginnings.

Making demands of dowry is punishable by a minimum imprisonment of 5 years and a minimum fine of 15,000 rupees.

In 2003, in Nodia, a suburb of Delhi, a young woman named Nisha Sharam and her family stood up to the unreasonable dowry demands when the family of her prospective husband demanded and additional $25,000 on top of the dowry—including a car, two televisions, two home theater sets, two air conditioners, two refrigerators—they already received, saying her family was too cheap. The families of the bride and groom began fighting. Rather than submit to their blackmail she called the police and had them arrested on the dowry laws. He husband ended up in jail.

Yet, one of the longest standing evils associated with marriage from a woman’s point of view in the Indian society is the Dowry system.

Incidences of cruelty by the husband or his family against the wife have been addressed in the Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and Section 198A in the Criminal Procedure Code.

The Indian media got wind of the story and defended her actions. The headlines of The Times of India read: “It Take Guts to Send Your Groom Packing.” Sharma called the whole thing off. An investigation into the groom’s family found that they were frauds. The groom was a computer instructor rather than a computer engineer as he claimed. His mother claimed she was a vice principal at a school but she was just a gym teacher. Sharma became famous and her act of defiance inspired a popular movement> Her name was attached to a popular beauty product.

In 2005, a similar situation happened to Pooja Path, a resident of a village about 200 miles from Varanasi. Her family had given the groom’s family numerous expensive gifts, including a $700 motorbike. After the groom’s father said they would not welcome her into their home unless her family produced a new color television and video player, which the bride’s family had promised to produce in a couple of months.

Despite a lot being said and done against the custom, it is still prevalent in the 21st century, in both subtle and obvious ways.

Section 113A added in the Indian Evidence Act further provides the family of the bride to charge the husband’s family of abetting suicide of their daughter within 7 years from the date of marriage.

The groom’s father reportedly demanded the television right then and there and kicked the bride’s father as he kissed the groom’s father’ feet as an act of surrender, apology and subservience. Pooja confronted her husband, who blamed everything on his father. She then told her husband, “If your father told you to eat cow dung would you eat cow dung.” The husband and his father were arrested and Pooja was lionized by women’s groups as a hero.

The root of a host of social atrocities against women, the custom of presenting dowry is the crudest expression of the male-dominance in the society.

Every year several thousand Indian women are murdered by their husbands or in-laws in dowry murders. The murders don’t just take place in rural villages, often they occur in middle class families in some of India's most affluent neighborhoods. Only a handful result in convictions. According to a Harvard University study, released in 2000, between 11,000 and 13,000 Indian brides die each year in dowry disputes, an increase of 175 percent from 1990.

Enforcement – it is never enough to just introduce acts and amend sections to fight against a social evil.

It is most often the mandatory custom of a girl’s parents having to provide a considerable amount of cash, gold in the form of jewelry, electronic equipment, movable or immovable properties, to the groom and his family, at the time of marriage.

In many cases, particularly in urban areas, a groom's family makes excessive demands on the bride's family--even after marriage--and when the demands are not met, murder the bride, typically by setting her clothes on fire in a cooking

This requires strict and ruthless enforcement of such laws.

Although the origin of the custom lies with parents trying to assure financial stability for their daughters, in current perspective it has translated into parents paying up for the assurance of well-being of their daughters

That aspect still leaves a lot to be desired. Although such allegations are taken very seriously by the authorities, lack of proper investigative procedures often leads to the accused going free.

The male and female in-laws implicated in these murders have seldom been punished. Such dowry deaths have been the subject of numerous media reports in India and other countries and have mobilized feminist groups to action. In some of the worst areas, such as the National Capital Territory of Delhi, where hundreds of such deaths are reported annually, the law now requires that all suspicious deaths of new brides be investigated. Official government figures report 1,786 registered dowry deaths nationwide in 1987; there is also an estimate of some 5,000 dowry deaths in 1991.

The jewelry and cash that a bride brings with her from her parents’ house is often referred to as “Streedhan” and in theory is the property of the girl, but in reality it is often treated as their rightful due by the groom’s family.

The government needs to ensure a zero-tolerance policy for such offenders and ensure enforcement of the law through systemic changes.

According to Indian custom, if a dowry is too small the groom's family may persecute or immolate the bride. Sometime men murder their wife and marry again to collect a second dowry. The sums of money are so large that the murders can still turn a tidy profit after lawyer fees and bribes to police and doctors have been payed.

The sum to be paid as dowry has no set standard, the yardstick greatly depends on the groom’s profession/social standing and is often perceived as the groom’s family as the compensation of efforts they have made to educate their boy.

Social Awareness – creating a widespread awareness against the evils of the dowry system is key first step towards eradicating the practice.Campaigns should be designed to reach the deepest strata of the society and aim to spread knowledge about the legal provisions against dowry.

A social worker told the New York Times. "Here's one case. He's a lawyer. He killed her and put her in a gunnysack and dumped her in a lake. He was acquitted. He’s a lawyer and he used his influence to get off."