Consumerism Fuels Dowry-Death Wave; Bride ...
Prof K.V. Rao ((no email))
Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:00:46 -0400 (EDT)
WP 03/17 Consumerism Fuels Dowry-Death Wave; Bride ...
Consumerism Fuels Dowry-Death Wave; Bride Burnings on the Increase in
India
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
NEW DELHI -- For 20-year-old Asha, marriage was hell. Her in-laws,
she wrote in impassioned letters to her father, berated and beat her and
once spiked her milk with pesticide in an attempt to poison her.
Finally, according to her father, just after her third wedding
anniversary, her husband's family gagged her, beat her unconscious and
electrocuted her with a live wire. They bundled her bloodied body in a
quilt, tossed it in the front yard and called her father to say she was
unwell because of an accident.
"I knew instantly she had been killed," said the father, Gyan
Chand, 54, a government employee. "It was a case of dowry death."
In an era when India is enjoying unprecedented economic advances
and boasts the world's fastest-growing middle class, the country also is
experiencing a dramatic escalation in reported dowry deaths and bride
burnings. The rise of this ancient practice has been fueled by the
intersection of the new age consumerism and Hindu tradition dating from
medieval times.
Indian officials say families of every religious, social and economic
background are turning increasingly to dowry demands as a means to escape
poverty, augment wealth or acquire the modern conveniences they once never
heard of but now see advertised daily on television.
Police say reported dowry deaths have increased 170 percent
nationwide in the last decade, with 6,200 recorded last year -- an average
of 17 married women burned, poisoned, strangled or otherwise killed each
day because of their family's failure to meet the dowry demands of the
husband's family.
"We are becoming a very materialistic and consumer-driven society,"
said Sundari Nanda, who heads the New Delhi police department's Crime
Against Women Cell. "For such a society, dowry becomes a way of betterment
for those in the process of climbing up."
In the nation's rush to embrace modernity, the demand for dowry --
the money and gifts a woman's family provides the married couple and the
groom's family at the time of marriage -- has become a lever for extorting
money and goods from a bride's family for years after the wedding. If her
family does not comply, she frequently is subjected to cruelty, physical
abuse and often death.
"Dowry is a form of theft legitimized by marriage," said M.J.
Akbar, a prominent Indian newspaper editor. "It's economic bondage. And
when the woman stops being frightened by torture, the only option is to
burn her."
While law enforcement authorities said the increase partly reflects a
greater willingness by women's families to report the deaths, they also
said the statistics represent only a fraction of the actual cases believed
to have been committed. They also do not include the tens of thousands of
incidents of non-fatal dowry harassment and physical and mental abuse
inflicted on wives by husbands and in-laws.
Dowry is perhaps the greatest force contributing to the oppression
of women in India and elsewhere on the subcontinent. Originally intended as
a way to provide for daughters in a culture where women are not entitled to
family inheritances, the tradition has evolved into an insidious practice
of bankrupting families and abusing women.
"In these times when dowry demands should become less and less,
instead everybody wants more," said Somvati Singh Alewata, 33, wife of an
Indian soldier and mother of a recently married daughter. "We just ruin our
lives because of dowry. You have to pay dowry, or nobody will agree to
marry your daughter."
From the time of a daughter's birth, parents know their family
will face years -- sometimes generations -- of debt to pay for her wedding
and dowry, prompting the widespread practice of killing baby girls and
aborting female fetuses. If the daughter is allowed to live, the parents --
believing they are only caretakers for the girl, who will eventually be
given to her husband's family -- consider her a burden and often give her
less food, medical care and attention than her brothers. Then bridegrooms'
families believe they are entitled to hefty payments for accepting the
burden of a woman.
In the United States, the average wedding costs $7,500, according
to the Association of Bridal Consultants, a trade group; that is about
one-third of the average annual per capita income in the United States. In
contrast, even the poorest Indian families often spend more than $3,000 on
a wedding -- the equivalent of nearly 10 years' wages for the average
worker. Often, the cost of the ceremony and gifts leaves families deep in
debt into the next generation.
Many dowry harassment cases follow the pattern of Phoolvati and
Bhim Singh's experiences with their daughter, Santara, 19. As in most
Indian marriages today, the family selected a groom recommended by friends.
The boy was unemployed, but his parents were farmers and he was the sole
heir to their property.
"Nobody asked for dowry in the beginning," said Phoolvati, 65, her
face wrinkled as a walnut. "They said, `We don't want anything. We just
want your daughter and whatever is in her heart.' "
Phoolvati, a farmer and mother of six children, was touched. She
and her husband gave their daughter the gifts any family would give a young
bride: jewelry, silver, a bed, a black-and-white television, an electric
fan, a sewing machine. "I gave all this with my own heart's happiness," the
mother said in an interview.
Following tradition practiced at all India's social levels, the
newlyweds moved into the home of the groom's parents in a village about 20
miles from New Delhi. Within six months, Santara's in-laws began harassing
the young bride to ask her family for money to buy a car. "Why don't you go
home and get 50,000 rupees" -- about $1,600 -- Santara said her
mother-in-law told her. "Otherwise we'll throw kerosene on you."
A few months later she carried out the threat, Santara's mother
said, and poured kerosene on the bride. Before she could strike the match,
Santara ran from the house, hid in a neighbor's home and sent word to New
Delhi for her mother to come rescue her.
But Santara then faced another problem common to young brides who
flee troubled marriages: In a culture obsessed with social appearances and
family honor, her own mother began pressuring her to return to her husband
and filed a case of desertion against Santara's husband in hopes the court
would force the groom's family to take her back.
"I could not keep a married daughter with me," Phoolvati said.
"There would be a stain on her honor because she has been deserted. It
would mean more and more dishonor for me."
Six months ago, a judge ordered the groom's family to take Santara
back with a stern warning: "Don't kill the girl or you all will be hanged."
Santara is now back with the family in her husband's village and her mother
said, "I'll wait one year and see if they behave badly."
In recent years a growing number of women's organizations have
begun working to educate women and help abused wives escape dangerous
family situations. In New Delhi, an estimated 150 shelters and homes for
tortured and abused women have opened in recent years. Some organizations,
such as the Women's Vigilance Society, specialize in helping families
negotiate the corrupt and often inept police and judicial systems.
Under a 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, giving and taking dowry is
illegal, punishable by jail and fines.
Even so, few cases make it to court and fewer result in
prosecutions. Often the husband's family bribes police to cover up
dowry-related murders. By the time Gyan Chand, who works in downtown New
Delhi, arrived in the village 20 miles outside the capital where his
daughter Asha had been killed, police had already declared the death
accidental.
Neighbors told him about the Women's Vigilance Society, and he
enlisted its help in forcing police to bring charges against his daughter's
in-laws and arrest her husband and mother-in-law. Although Asha was said to
be the fourth case of dowry death in the village in as many years, it was
the first in which police filed charges.
"Even when charges are filed, the law is not much help for women,"
said Rajana Kumari, who heads the Vigilance Society and has authored a book
titled, "Brides Are Not for Burning." She added, "It can take eight to 10
years for a case to go to court."
Increasingly, some organizations, local governments and families
are fighting the dowry system. In the southeastern state of Orissa, where
police say reports of dowry deaths have jumped 11-fold in the last decade,
the government has proposed legislation sharply limiting the amount a
family could spend on a wedding and gifts.
In some of the country's more prosperous rural villages, where
every modern convenience -- washing machines, refrigerators, other
appliances -- can be traced to dowry gifts, families with several daughters
have begun marrying all of their girls to sons in a single family to help
reduce wedding costs and dowry payments.
This winter, Santosh Aelawati, a farmer's wife who lives in a
village in the northern state of Haryana, married three daughters --
Naresh, 18, Suman, 15, and Pramilla, 13 -- to three sons from another
village family.
"There is nothing wrong getting my daughters married in the same
family," Aelawati said. "Getting three daughters married is a big expense.
This way, we didn't have to give dowry to three families, and I saved money
on the ceremony." Even so, the family borrowed heavily and spent $2,580 on
the wedding and gifts of a television, dining room set, sewing machine and
other household goods.
Although dowry continues to be pervasive even in urban,
middle-class families, a small but growing number of young, educated career
men and women are refusing to accept or give dowry in their marriages.
In an unusually bold move that made headlines in New Delhi
newspapers last fall, Minoo Duggal, 25, a teacher, and her father called
off her wedding to an army captain three hours before the ceremony was to
begin because the groom's family allegedly began making last-minute demands
for more dowry.
Although Duggal's family said they agreed during marriage
negotiations to pay $7,260 for the wedding along with gifts to the couple
and the groom's family, Duggal's father said the intended in-laws asked for
an additional $3,225 the day before the wedding.
With the groom's party ready to begin its parade to the wedding
hall, Duggal's family posted a notice on the doors announcing: "Today's
marriage canceled due to heavy dowry demand. Inconvenience regretted."
"Had I given in to the pressure and quietly got married, later they
would have burned me or harassed me to death with their demands for more
dowry," Duggal told reporters.
But in Indian society, even this story does not have a happy
ending. Despite an initial flood of marriage proposals from men insisting
they would demand no dowry, Duggal has been unable to find a husband and
family members said her actions have sullied the family's name and
jeopardized future marriage prospects.
"We got back everything we had paid the boy's family except our
reputation," said a relative who asked not to be identified. "Even now,
when we go out for social dinners or to the club to play cards we hear the
gossip: `Why did they have to do such a dramatic thing like calling it off?
What did they get out of it. Now the boy is married and she is still
unmarried.' "
Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi contributed to this
article.