Why this dowry system in India?

Question

Time has come when we should do away with the present dowry system and instead of considering it as charity from the side of parents, it should be the share of the daughter in properties of the parents.

Answer 1

Dowry System

An important consideration in the mate selection process is the giving of the dowry by the girl's parents to the boy's family. According to Leela Mullatti (1992), "the custom of dowry has taken the form of a market transition in all classes and castes irrespective of the level of education" (p. 99). The dowry system was initiated with the intention of providing security for a girl in case of adversity and unexpected circumstances after marriage. The parents gave whatever they could to their daughter (consequently to the groom's family) for this purpose. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the custom had deteriorated to a point whereby the prospective groom and his family had become very greedy. They made tremendous demands, which if not met after marriage result in dowry deaths—burning girls alive if the dowry is insufficient, so that the boy can remarry another girl for a higher or better dowry (Mullatti 1995). The more educated a man is, the higher the family is in the caste and social hierarchy, the better his employment prospects, the higher is the expectation for dowry at the time of marriage. This makes it difficult for families with daughters who are highly educated to arrange marriages because the girls are required to have even more educated husbands (Seymour 1999).

Answer 2

Dowry not only exists in India, it exists as well in Arabian and Middle East culture and even in Europe there existed costumes similar to it.

Dowry is a form of wedding gift widespread in India, which is also sometimes called price-of the-groom.

The dowry system was a security blanket for married women in case of marital problems or abandonment by her husband. It was also meant to be an emergency fund setup by the bride's father and brothers and was rarely cash, and instead consisted of valuables such as jewellery, and immovable property.

The dowry system also acted as the girl's inheritance from her father, because the Hindu joint-family system afforded all the property to the male descendants.

Sounds good in theory, right? A security for the WOMAN… but it has turned obviously in something abusive towards the women who should be originally protected by the dowry; call it the abuse of the dowry practice. The abuses have developed in India and became the biggest problem of women and her families. Many marriages are anxious because of the dispute over dowry, and in numerous cases the disputes about dowry, the greed of the in-laws demanding more and more has leaded to the practice of "burning brides", which means that newly wed girls either committed suicide or were burnt alive by the in-laws over dowry disputes.

Dowry should originally protect the women against the violence of her in-laws and give her security. Dowry originally was meant to be for the WOMAN and to be her life insurance for the case that something went wrong with her marriage or anything else. Nowadays the in-laws take the dowry as if the brides parents has to “buy” their son-in-law…

Girls also expect a fair inheritance from their fathers; and of course laws have changed (at least officially) and girls inherit the same way as male children do; but the greed of the in-laws and the proper grooms have grown in the same way and they started to demanding more and more.

It seems that the pride, status and prestige of a girls family depends on how much dowry they are able to pay to get the daughter married and in the case her family could not pay the expected amount many families literally ruin themselves with credits just to make a appropriated wedding possible for their daughter, as otherwise they would feel humiliated in society and even worse the wedding could be cancelled by the grooms family… the brides parents in many occasions will have to pay for that wedding for the rest of their lives.

Of course law forbids dowry, the Indian courts have banned the practice since 1961.

But what happens is that traditions are stronger than laws, so in today's India, the dowry system still plays a huge role. Of course it’s illegal, but who cares… obviously it is still the most important point for forming of marriage alliances.

Paradoxically the dowry system, which was originally meant to protect the woman when she gets married, is nowadays the primary cause of female infanticide in India.

Dowry system is the one to blame that everybody wants to have only male children. The system of gift giving has turned into a system of ridiculous burden, and one of main harassment of women in modern times.

Educated women reject more and more the dowry system itself and claim that it is humiliating towards women… modern parents also reject it… at least this is one positive view in the dark.

I hope that more and more women open their eyes and reject this practice and that more and more young men simply do not follow the greedy ideas of their parents and simply marry for love, so the next generation who would be born out of parents with a new conscience would not have to suffer the same consequences.

When I got married I got married for love and no dowry was necessary...