India’s Burning Blindspot

A long time ago, India set out to eradicate dowry. Have we failed so badly that we’ve stopped trying?

Last year, I was travelling through Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, and found myself at the district court. Here I met a man from Vasai (near Mumbai). His daughter, it turned out, had been burnt. His lawyer kept referring to the incident as a ‘durghatna’ (accident), not murder. So, I asked solicitously, “Is she in hospital?” The father said, “She’s dead.”

That’s when it came out—the D word. He kept using the words ‘parampara’ (tradition) and ‘swechha’ (free will), directing his anger at ‘that party’ (groom’s family), and that too, only for having demanded more than what had been discussed. I asked, “Why didn’t you bring the girl home as soon as the demands started?” They stared at me, lawyer and client. The lawyer said, “But he gave dowry. These demands were extra.” The father added, “How can one anticipate such a thing?”

“How can you not anticipate it?” I cried. How could he not know that a girl in a hostile, greedy household is practically a hostage? The lawyer shook her head mournfully: “This is a social problem. People should protest.”

I didn’t remind her that people did protest. When bride burnings became frequent news items in the 1980s, women’s groups had protested. Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code is a result of that movement. This law, in addition to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, punishes cruelty or harassment by ‘the husband or relative of the husband’ with prison terms of up to three years. ‘Cruelty’ here is defined as conduct that ‘is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health, whether mental or physical’, and ‘harassment’ is in the context of ‘a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security’.

But, even now, we read newspaper reports of dowry harassment. Some high-profile cases have even made it to the front page. The case of Tina Ambani’s niece Mana Chatterjee, for instance. And the absurd one of the film producer Gaurang Doshi; the drama that unfolded in Mumbai tabloids was like something out of a spoofy film, with the producer hiding inside his apartment, cops parked outside his door for five days, and his wife accusing him of dowry demands.

Bollywood hungers for love stories. And we urban Indians like to think of ourselves as a changing society where Dad (or Mom) can say: “Go, get her, son!” at critical moments. Most of these stories end with a wedding. What nobody spells out is that a lot of dads (and moms) are probably saying: “Go, get her, son, and make sure she brings a 2-BHK flat. Or at least a Bullet with two helmets.”

I find it hard to understand dowry in this great city where millions shove, spit and battle loneliness. That fellow whistling in the air as he rides the footboard on a train, scrutinising a girl in the next coach—is he wondering if her dad will pay for a Honda? Probably. How else do we explain dowry?

Over the past year or so, I’ve been forced to think a lot about dowry. Much has been happening. Someone came up with a computer application called The Dowry Calculator. Girls were undertaking sting operations against greedy grooms. People in Bihar have been kidnapping grooms. Sunita Singh has written an article about ‘pakarvah bibah’, in which she says that between 1995 and 2000, about 845 grooms were kidnapped, of which 556 were forced to marry at gunpoint. There was a film about it, Antardwand, which won a national award. There were screenings of Kundan Shah’s Teen Behnein, based on the suicide of three sisters who can’t deal with the whole dowry-marriage mess.

Someone on my Twitter timeline retweeted a sad brother who said his little sister, a bride of two months, was killed for dowry. Last week, a journalist emailed me the story of her maid, who is getting her computer-skills-enabled daughter married. The maid must cough up a ‘reasonable’ dowry—Rs 50,000 cash and 10 gm gold, demanded outright—and fund the wedding.

Meanwhile, the Big Fat Indian wedding continues to be glorified on TV and in cinema. Nobody seems to wonder who pays for all that jazz. Usually, the bride pays. Sometimes, she pays with her life.

This month, a pregnant woman in Mumbai killed herself, citing dowry.

In Meerut, a woman was strangled and her family mentioned dowry harassment. Earlier this year, I read of a woman whose husband had broken her leg and was demanding, among other things, a goat for Eid.

It was tempting to believe that it doesn’t happen to us—educated, urban professionals. But when I began talking to my friends, nearly everyone had a dowry anecdote. A Sindhi friend mentioned a relative’s engagement, broken off since “the diamonds in the necklace were not of good quality”. She laughed, adding, “Sindhis deal in diamonds as big as Oprah’s butt. None of the marriages I’ve seen exchange gifts like cars, Scooties or kitchen utensils. Dowry is invisible. They call it ‘izzat’. A common relative will suggest: ‘The family is influential, so you must bestow izzat on the mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother, sister, cousins, aunt, uncles.’ If ‘izzat’ is not given, it takes a long time for the girl to ‘adjust’.”

And then, in October 2011, a Delhi court acquitted a family of dowry harassment charges, with the judge observing: “Section 498A has become the consummate embodiment of gross human rights violation, extortion and corruption, and even the Supreme Court… has termed it ‘legal terrorism’.” Since 498A makes dowry demands a non-bailable offence, it has led to much heartburn. There’s a clutch of websites that fight misuse of the law, with tips on how to protect your family.

I’d heard of failed marriages where wives attempt suicide or falsely accuse in-laws of dowry harassment to get back at their husbands. And the ‘misuse’ factor was brought home to me through my tailor’s excuse for delaying two blouses. Apparently, her brother’s wife was threatening to destroy his life by invoking section 498A. So the family decided to hurriedly sell off their property, fearing that his wife might lay claim to it.

Lawyers say that it is nearly impossible to prove—or disprove—harassment, but there is no denying that some women have used Section 498A as an unfair weapon. Aarti Mundkar of the Alternate Law Forum agrees. “The law has misuse built into it. 498A is used to address  violence at home, arising out of any context, which may have nothing to do with dowry. But the complaint is only taken seriously when a woman accuses the in-laws of dowry harassment,” she says. However, she adds, Section 498A is only as misused as any other law.

The trouble is that dowry is not just a financial transaction. What it translates into is ruined relationships, threats and violence. For nearly three decades, academic Madhu Kishwar has talked about the need for a nuanced approach to dowry in modern India, particularly the unfairness of legislation that places the burden of proof on the accused. In a 2003 essay in Manushi, she argued that the law cannot be implemented. On the specific requirement that gifts be transferred to the bride after the wedding, she asks: ‘Does it mean that all that furniture must be kept in rooms meant for the exclusive use of the daughter?… Why should women’s parents not give gifts to their husband’s relatives as a goodwill gesture when the bride is expected to become a claimant in the husband’s income and property?’

Besides, the legal emphasis is conveniently and wholly upon the taker of dowry. Kishwar refers to the Nisha Sharma case in Delhi, when the bride’s family was lauded for accusing the groom. But right until the day of the wedding, they kept complying with all dowry demands.

It is a fair point. Perhaps the real problem is that nobody has a real problem with dowry. Not until the violence escalates. Not until you ask for more than someone’s ‘swechha’ permits. In fact, my generation of women is in shock about the fact that dowry harassment isn’t just something that in-laws do. It can also be something you do to your parents.

A journalist friend, Smriti Lamech, says her family has a history of marriages across religious as well as north-south divides. The elders were usually too much in shock to ask for dowry. But there are relatives who do their bit of ‘give and take’. She also mentions a colleague who made her family cough up a hefty sum just so that her lover’s parents would accept her.

Another friend, G, mentions a cousin who had a love marriage. The groom’s family was hostile at first; when they relented, their blessings came with a price tag. G recalls that the bride’s mother felt so betrayed at a daughter demanding her own dowry that she went into depression and required therapy.

Linking modern dowry to the disinheritance of Indian women, Kishwar has argued that most women do not want a dowryless wedding, lest ‘their brothers end up with an even bigger share of family resources’. But parents who bring up daughters as their sons’ equals must be wondering: where did they go wrong? Grandmothers in Kerala must be wondering: why are well-qualified girls paying for grooms?

J Devika, assistant professor at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, who has been studying dowry amongst Nairs in Kerala, says, “You basically buy a groom. The price depends on what job he holds, the state of his health, age, etcetera. If you are in a highly respectable profession, like medicine, you are assured of a huge price. But even unemployed guys charge high dowries.”

And so here we are—a modern republic where boys’ parents want to be paid for the creation of grooms, and girls’ parents don’t want to pay. A few months ago, there was a news item about a woman from Najafgarh, Delhi, who lost an eye after her husband attacked her. He also demanded Rs 1 lakh as ‘compensation’ after she gave birth to a girl.

To nobody’s surprise, our sex ratio in 2011 is actually worse than it was, if you look at the 0-6 age category. While reporting on female foeticide in Madhya Pradesh a few years ago, to understand why they didn’t want girls, I tried talking to people. Two reasons cropped up again and again—dowry, and fear of a girl’s sexuality. Communities with no dowry tradition have no incentive to kill baby girls.

Now there are reports that Madhya Pradesh, which suffers from a particularly negative sex ratio, is calling for a ‘social boycott’ of families that demand dowry. It may help, but I doubt it will be enough.

Praveena Kodoth, who has been researching gender, food security and caste in Kerala, says the dowry problem is linked to restrictions on women’s sexual freedom. Among matrilineal castes, dowry entered marriages only after ‘reforms’ that held up an ideal model of marriage—indissoluble heterosexual monogamy. Her research shows that even Leftist (political) leaders dissuade people from marrying beyond their caste. Kodoth says women’s groups and the ‘progressive’ Left believe and invest heavily in the ideal of marriage. “They condemn dowry but they get cold feet when questions are raised about marriage.”

And thus, girls from Vasai are married off in Mandla, because girls have to be married off at any cost. And they have to stay married at any cost.

Travelling through Mandla, I had also run into a fisherman’s family—four daughters, a handicapped mother. The eldest was married but had returned home. Her husband drank. He first drank his way through her jewellery, then sold off her pots and pans, then beat her and threatened to set her on fire.

The girl was asking me for advice. I asked her to file a case under Section 498A. The girl said, “My father said we should wait…” “Wait for what?” I scolded. “For your husband to act on his threats?” Then I asked why she didn’t ask for a divorce. Her mother stared at me. “Nobody has ever gotten a divorce around here.” And so that was that.

I doubt if we can resolve the dowry problem without accepting divorce as a normal, even desirable, facet of marriage. And we cannot prevent dowry harassment until we stop being afraid of the sexuality of single women.

Is modern India willing to go that far? I don’t know. The bereaved father from Vasai had sneered at my anger. “In Mumbai, people get married anyhow. They book a hall, feed a few people, that’s all. Some girls even make a match for themselves,” he exclaimed. His disapproval of such girls was evident. A burnt-to-death daughter hadn’t cured him of that.

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