DOWRY: Isn’t she responsible too?
By Meenakshi Mehta
STATISTICS that reveal dowry deaths in India are shocking. Every day the nation witnesses 17 reported dowry deaths. The annual figure reported is a whopping 5,000. This is no surprise, considering even a relatively small city like Chandigarh has contributed 169 reported dowry deaths in the year 1999.

• Womanspeak

DOWRY: Isn’t she responsible too?
By Meenakshi Mehta

STATISTICS that reveal dowry deaths in India are shocking. Every day the nation witnesses 17 reported dowry deaths. The annual figure reported is a whopping 5,000. This is no surprise, considering even a relatively small city like Chandigarh has contributed 169 reported dowry deaths in the year 1999. What can be more appalling than the realisation that there is one such death after almost every two and a half days? And this, so to speak of, is only the reported figure. Satiation through dowry is akin to the quick-buck syndrome that has quipped alike the male and female alike. Women are, in fact, as much a party to initiating their own sorrows and sufferings. With the initiation through, they have little or no control once things get moving and either end up being mediators in the transactions, so as to avoid the wrath of their in-laws, or are tortured to a premature, painful death with only psychologically scared children as mute witnesses.

How else can one explain a girl from a middle class family spending up to four or five lakh merely on her trousseau? Is it essential to purchase a lehnga or even a saree worth Rs 25,000, which she knows she is not likely to wear for more than a few hours in her lifetime?

"Most parents prefer to give their property to their sons. So it's the girls' right to have a decent, if not lavish, wedding. Once the brothers are married, it's seldom that they give you anything, so this is the only time for us," says Gurinder who is to get married soon. "I don't feel guilty buying such an expensive lehnga. Actually it's a long-term investment. Can't you see it will set my standards at my in-laws place as well as at my parents?," she asks

According to Neeru, who got married in December '98. "It's not dowry we take. They are gifts that my parents give me to date. They had given me expensive gifts such as home appliances etc at the time of my wedding. How else could we begin our new and independent life?" asks this wife of an engineer. "I must have spent around three lakh on my trousseau. My mother too feels that whatever is my share, it is in this form. Both my sister and I prefer gifts to a share in our paternal property as otherwise it would strain our relationship with our brother, "opines Neeru whose father is a senior bank manager.

Is this female attitude to sponge benefits from their parents, a torpedo against the tradition that thwarts their acquisition of any share in property? What is ludicrous is the conviction that dowry, if termed “gifts,” ceases to be villianous. According to the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act:'dowry is defined as any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given in connection with the marriage..... at the time of marriage or any time after the marriage’.

When the government possessed the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, for equal distribution amongst legal heirs of property of the deceased, it was to eliminate gender bias. Unfortunately this has boomeranged. Along with the little good, it has brought evils like taut brother-sister relations, in-laws growing greedier and the brewing of such plots as would put even the plots of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet to shame.

‘‘ No law can force parents to give a share of property to daughters. Their mind-set doesn’t permit it,’’ says Gurinder. ‘‘My sister lives with dignity at her in-laws because of her dowry. Naturally, I too want that. Besides, if money can remove tensions then why not let it?’’ Couldn’t this so-called tension be a figment that allows flaunting easy and expensive acquisitions? ‘‘My parents have done it for one daughter, so I guess it’s only sensible that I take what is rightfully mine. Expectations have been set and so they must be met. In any case my brother is the future owner of a lot of property besides, when he gets married his wife too will bring similar gifts’’.

‘‘Laws can’t change parental attitudes”, says Neeru. ‘‘Only when parents and brothers are mentally conditioned can giving property to the daughters as well became a tradition.’’ And tradition, we apparently can see, pays court not even to law. ‘‘In the meantime we have to be happy receiving gifts’’ she says.

‘‘My parents have no choice but to spend so much’’ says a bride-to- be, who prefers anonymity. ‘‘The fulfillment of my in-laws’ expectations are very important for my future happiness. We all know the fate of those who don’t take along a dowry’’. When contacted, the ma-in-law to be felt no differently. ‘‘It's the children who benefit from dowry, not us.’’ Yes, that cliched and face-saving statement. ‘‘Let's face it, judicious parents settle their daughter with money. Gifts are all they offer to their girls, sons are in any case secure with the property they will inherit.’’ Look who’s talking!

Such convictions, and all from women! Women who have or will suffer, in some degree the pangs of dowry! How can the idea of eradication of this deep-rooted social menace be even conceived if the very sufferers at its hands are, sadly, its prime propagators? If women grudge the benefits of property their brothers are going to enjoy it’s only wise for them to perceive themselves in the same position at their homes with their husbands and in-laws. Dowry is nothing but greed that has cloaked its hideous face in tradition.

‘‘It's not that dowry gets a wedding going. After all people outside India do have successful marriage. Dowry is a bait that, in fact, puts a marriage on the wrong footing even before it takes place. After all the girl who has got a booty along can’t be expected not to flash it at the slightest behest to reaffirm the status her parents have bought for her. “ May be it even makes her feel that adjustments are not for her to make,’’ says the father of a girl. If a father is against giving or taking dowry would he withdraw from marrying his daughter to a family seeking dowry? ‘‘Sometimes, more than the in-laws, its the daughters’ demands that parents wilt under. The fear of hurting their sentiments make parents concede’’.

The irony of it all lies in the fact that if there is a good soul happy to receive no dowry, suspicions falls immediately on his a) character (b) mental and physical abilities (c) bachelorhood and what have you. And then begins the rigmarole of enquires, some direct, most indirect, till finally they convince the fairly decent guy that after all its only civilised to expect and actually demand dowry.

In the days of yore, when women were not given education and were expected to look after household chores and children, perhaps dowry was their emotional and financial security in case of the husband’s( the only earning member’s) death. Times have changed. A majority of the women are working today. Dowry today is redundant and if anything, is only a false security. If girls stop running after this mirage they will realise that the true strength and security is their education and their jobs that help them adjust better to build homes, not mere houses. Patience and faith between couples is the mantra that will get them all and much more.

Womanspeak

Women’s virtue is man’s greatest invention

—Cornelia Otis Skinner. 

How much we distort ourselves in trying to please others. Women have historically been controlled by the demands and expectations of others. We have been so willing to let others define us and so eager to fit that definition that we have lost all track of who we are. As we come more in contact with ourselves, we realise that many of the definitions of who women “naturally are” are generated to take care of others. For example, it has been an accepted truth of psychology that women are’’ natural nesters’’. Yet in recent times, when women have been getting divorced, it appears that it is the men who quickly find another woman to make a nest for them, while women become the wanderers. So many of our definitions of who we are have been invented for us by others, to please them and meet their needs, and we have desperately tried to fit their images of what is acceptable. A virtuous woman is someone who is herself.

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Women who set a low value on themselves make life hard for all women

— Nellie McClung

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We’re swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen

— Nathalie Sarraur