Marriages- Past and Present-Part 2

In continuation with earlier blog..

When a girl would have got married in the old Era, her parents might have given her gifts, as a token of love. This is where the mistake began. A father giving gifts to her own daughter is committing no fault, after all she is his daughter, but the groom expecting gifts is seriously sad. Not just expecting, but demanding and thinking of it as his right is a crime. With time, the expectations of the boy increased, gifts later started taking form of TV, fridge, tickets to fly, jewels and money off course. The parents still delighted to make the groom happy, shower more gifts on him, considering he will keep their daughter happy.


His happiness increases, self respect decreases…(or is rather vanished) and he starts placing more orders for expensive and flamboyant gifts, to his in-laws. The groom’s family, trades their son, as per where he stands and asks for a compensation for the amount they have spent in educating and upbringing their son and fixes his amount, which is termed as Dowry.


In India, dowry was originally designed to safeguard the woman and it was the provision of "Sthreedhan" ("Sthree" meaning woman and "dhan" wealth) in the form of money, property or gifts given solely to the woman by her parents at the time of her marriage. "Sthreedhan", an inheritance, was meant to exclusively belong to the woman at the time of her marriage. But sadly, not it doesn’t!

In 1961 with the Dowry Prohibition Act, dowry was officially outlawed, but in reality eradication was far from accomplished. Many of the victims are burnt to death - they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident. In India not only was there an apparent increase of dowry-related deaths from kitchen fires but from this weeds other covert forms of related oppression sprouted. Some of these led to psychological torture, suicides and murder of married women, desertion by their husbands, rampant abortion of female fetuses, and poor families resorting to female infanticide for fear of not being able to provide dowry.

And if there is a death, the groom now has a chance to get a new wife with possibly a better and bigger dowry adding to the one before making the family wealthy. So greed is a big contributor to dowry deaths and if the husband at all feels that the dowry is not enough this usually ends with a bride burning.



The years in 90's showed a steady yearly increase in bridal death tolls, with many more deaths unreported. Every 12 hours a dowry related death claimed to have taken the lives of over 20,000 women across India between 1990 and 1993, and even now a dowry case is reported every three hours.

In this one case a women was burned and survived.


It took nine plastic surgeries for her to look somewhat normal again. The picture shown below is she holding a picture of her before she was burned.

I can state many cases here and the list wont end. But now I’d just wish to have a society where people eradicate such evils.


What can be done: Providing your daughter with a solid education, and encouraging her to pursue a career of her choice is the best dowry any parent can ever give their daughter.
Also, educate your son to stand on his own feet, having self respect and ultimately social responsibility will rest upon the initiative and mentality of that segment of the Indian male population having an understanding that the dowry system is corrupt and illegal.
Youths: Spread the word and your belief, increase awareness and say NO to dowry.

It’s the dirtiest word. Loud and clear..!