Dowry Deaths

At one time or other in most societies, the practice of the brides parents giving a dowry (a gift of money, furniture and clothing), to accompany the bride in to her new life was common.

Many Anti Dowry Campaigns Failed

In some societies, the dowry was the bride and grooms 'seed' wealth, until the groom received his own fathers inheritance in due time e.g Europe. Whilst in others e.g. South Asia, it was the grooms father who controlled it, as the bride was entering in to his 'control', after leaving her father's control ~ women in all societies at this time were usually in a subordinate status in their families, and effectively 'owned' by men.

Now in many Western societies the practice of dowries was weak amongst the poor, and barely followed, with the brides wedding trunk contents sufficing, and so it effectively died out well over a hundred or more years ago, the exception being perhaps amongst the very wealthy (think American heiresses marrying poor British aristocracy ~ often unhappily) in the first quarter of the last century. However we still carry the last vestiges of this practice, in the tradition of the brides parents paying for the wedding.

However elsewhere the practice of dowry (and of women being effectively owned by men) still persists, with for example the burden of dowries still afflicting 90 per cent of all Indian marriages (both Hindu and Muslim), with reports suggesting that between 1950 and 1999 alone, dowry payments in India were estimated to be equal to about a quarter of a trillion US dollars.

The practice of both giving and receiving dowries was made illegal in India in 1961, because it was recognised as being a social evil .... yet it still largely persists, unhindered by the law. The consequences of the illegal practice range from:

• Throwing many of the girls parents in to poverty and debt, with current demands in middle class families ranging around 5 to 6 million Rupees ..... that's between $61 - $73,000 US (£48,000 to £57,000), and that would be for each daughter. 
• To the abortion of millions of baby girl foetuses, as parents try to avoid having girl children. The UN estimates that as many as 400,000 female foetuses are aborted every year, after pre-birth screenings for the babies sex. This screening practice is also illegal, but is still very obviously rampant in India (and regretfully amongst the South Asian communities in the diaspora).

This slaughter of Indian girls continues even when they are old enough to marry, because figures suggest that on any given day in India, 200 brides are killed by their husbands relatives (often by burning them with cooking fuel, in staged 'kitchen accidents'), when the girls own families fail to come up with enough dowry. According to India's National Crime Record Bureau, between just 2017 and 2022, at least 35,493 young brides were murdered by the grooms families.

There are no figures estimating how many girls commit suicide, or are even killed by their parents as adults, after failing to get married because of a families inability to raise enough dowry to satisfy the prospective groom families demands ... but it will likely be at least a few hundred (if not thousand) each year.

This femicide (for what else can you call it?), is all caused by this one social tradition that fails to go away, even after it being illegal for over 60 years. Despite millions of Indians professing that it should be stopped, all the Indian governments since 1961 have failed to enforce the law vigorously enough, to discourage and eliminate dowry demands by prospective grooms families ....

National Cadet Anti-Dowry Poster
(by L/CPL ANJIMA RAJENDRAN, L/CPL ARSHA SURESH)

..... so this pernicious practice continues to blight the lives of millions in India. Surely it's about time that an Indian government finally acted to stamp this shameful practice out?