Dowry : A necessary evil

Dowry as a word comes up only when the marriage goes sour. The woman or her family never ever speaks or mentions about dowry when a marriage is going happily. To really eradicate dowry we need to implement the below steps...

CJ: Arnab Ganguly

Tue, Aug 11, 2009 12:24:43 IST

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Dowry in India :

EVERYBODY LOVES to hate dowry but the women’s organisations know that without dowry they will have to shut shop in no time. So continuing dowry in its current form is an essential as the survival of woman’s rights itself.

Dowry- a word which has been used too much these days to basically fund things from Toilets to biased laws for women, is a great revenue generator for the women organisations. Everything for women in India is paid by the government or husbands because women are always said to have to borne the "brunt of dowry."

Dowry as a word comes up only when the marriage goes sour. The woman or her family never ever speaks or mentions about dowry when a marriage is going happily. Only when the marriage starts going sour does dowry harassment comes up all of a sudden. In this latest case, an Orissa IPS officer has been booked for dowry harassment using standard preformatted allegations by his wife, who now after 1.5 years of marriage claims that her father paid 40 lakh as dowry during the marriage.

Nobody knows how much truth is there to these allegations since 98 per cent of cases are false to begin with but let us for a second assume that dowry was indeed given or received.

So why did this self respecting bold woman keep her mouth shut at the time of marriage when a cash transaction to the tune of 40 lakh was done? Why did she not notify the Income tax when this black money changed hands? Why did she not implicate her husband for taking dowry and her father for giving dowry at or before the marriage itself. Why did she not report to the NCW that dowry to the tune of Rs 40 Lakh was changing hands? Nobody forced her to marry a man who was dowry hungry . Was she forcibly married? If yes, then it is her family or her father who forced her to marry an IPS officcer, so will the father be convicted of forcibly marrying off his daughter.

In this case who is the actual culprit, the man who is alleged to have demanded the dowry (The husband) or the man who arranged for such a huge amount of money to pay the dowry (the father) or the daughter who knew that both the husband and her father are committing a crime and still kept quiet was an accomplice in the crime.

Fast forward one year from the date of the marriage. The marriage starts to go sour and the woman realises all of a sudden that she will not be able to continue the marriage due to differences between her and her husband. Now she realises that if she goes back to her house her father will be at loss because he allegedly paid Rs 40 lakh as dowry. So after 1.5 years of marriage, she brings out the dowry sword and claims that her father paid Rs 40 lakh as dowry when she knew this all along and was herself an accomplice in the crime.

Dowry is nothing but an eyewash. The Indian laws have totally failed to eradicate the dowry system because the Indian Anti Dowry laws ultimately have always trapped the good people who have never taken dowry in the first place and has allowed the bad people to get away.

The Anti Dowry law has been a total failure because it has never targeted the root cause of the problem, "the exchange of dowry itself," instead it has always tried to cut the leaves of the tree and tried to handle complaints of dowry after three to four years of marriage, when the marriage starts going sour. If the law would have caught the father paying the dowry, the husband receiving the dowry or the daughter who was an accomplice in the crime right at the time of marriage, then the entire dowry harassment drama would never have happened.

To really eradicate dowry we need to implement the below steps. The steps are already present as laws in the Indian Penal Code in books but have never been implemented in real life for the fear of eradicating dowry altogether, which will lead to women organisations to shut shop in India .

a) To prosecute the dowry givers. Prosecuting dowry givers will instill fear in the minds of people while giving dowry and they will then take a strong stand against giving any dowry. The society will slowly realise that the dowry hungry husbands will have to sit at home unmarried for life because no-one will give dowry because of the strict laws. They will ultimately have to marry in dowry free marriages. But unfortunately, implementation of DP3 act (for giving dowry) is seldom done in India. Dowry giving is never considered a crime although the IPC has punished for five years for any person found guilty of giving dowry.

b) Stop extravagant marriages and have hotline numbers for people to report dowry exchanges. Both the giver and taker families including the bride and groom must be punished for indulging in criminal activities. But marriages worth crores happen every day in India and the government does not bat an eyelid. Organisations like Save Indian family foundation had on many occasions demanded a hotline where Anti dowry activists could report dowry exchanges in marriage for the government to act the prevention of the dowry exchange but the government has never created such a hotline. Dowry exchanges are allowed to happen in open daylight. The government and women organisations look the other way when dowry changes hands and then wants to punish only the husband when the marriage goes sour for the act of taking dowry, while the dowry giver and the women who knows both the taker and giver and is an accomplice of the crime is treated as the victim .

c) Marriages must always with registered in court with the seal of a dowry prohibition officer where the families must swear that no dowry was given or taken. In these marriages, when the bride and groom take a solemn vow that no dowry has been exchanged 498A will not be applicable. Then we would stop seeing cases where the dowry angle is brought only when the marriage starts going sour after a few years .But if this happens then women’s rights will take a severe blow because there will be no Dowry harassment cases at all to sow the world and no cases will lead to no funding. So this is also not implemented by the government or the women organisations.

d) Misusers of the law must be strictly punished and this includes men also from the brides family.

In India, the only set of people who want to eradicate dowry from the face of the country are organisations like Save Indian Family Foundation. Women organisations on the other hand know that once dowry is completely eradicated, they will have to shut their women's rights shop and move elsewhere. So nor the government nor the women organisation want to attack the root of the problem "The act of dowry exchange itself."

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Posted comments (3)

	Which dowry section? Is it 498a or any other. First I would like to know.And I must say that there are misuses of that type of sections.There must be an impliment in this type of section.
	\| 10 September 2009 Reply to Comment \| New Comment \| Report Abuse

	The steps suggested are based on the basic fallacy that exchange of gifts between newlyweds or their families is an evil to be eradicated; should inheriting family wealth be banned? Secondly, it goes against the commonsense that the State is an evil to be kept to the barest minimum. This is particularly so when the laws infringe upon individual choice and personal liberty. Only then can they be implemented properly without leading to corruption and tyranny. If dowry-exchangers are criminals to be prosecuted, the first ones to be jailed will be Dashrat, Janak and their children! Inculcating moderation in such values is the job of community elders of different sects among their followers and not by the government. In short, the laws concerning crimes like breach of trust, torts, libel, physical assault and even murder must be universal and be brief. Bringing in terms like 'dowry', 'cruelty' and such terms only proliferates unscrupulous 'practitioners' living off others.
	\| 12 August 2009 Reply to Comment \| New Comment \| Report Abuse

	Also to add, it might even be the case that no dowry was actually given, but to enjoy at the cost of inoncent husband and in-laws and to fund the greedy parents and siblings, many women slap the allegation of dowry to extort money.
	\| 11 August 2009 Reply to Comment \| New Comment \| Report Abuse