Dowry victims, please put up a fight!
Reeta Sharma

IT is high time that parents begin to share the blame when their daughters get ill-treated and abused at their in-laws’ houses. For ages, society has been sympathising with girls and their parents in matters of marital disputes. But, unfortunately, even educated parents are refusing to break themselves away from feudalistic and orthodox ways of handling the marriages of their daughters.

I do not expect the majority of the Indian parents, who are either uneducated or poverty-stricken, to take any radical or even a marginally forward stand when their daughters get abused in the marital homes. These parents are buried under the weight of social customs, trends and age-old practices. These are the parents who have no knowledge that they can seek the aid of the Dowry Act or the mahila adalats or the cells handling crime against women.

What is agonising is when I find educated parents and educated daughters trying hard to please society. They refuse to set any examples for the ignorant and uneducated parents. In fact, there is no difference between either set of parents.

These educated parents let their daughters go through physical and mental trauma for days, months and years together. And only when all barriers of human dignity are broken, they come knocking at the doors of this very faceless society to seek sympathy for themselves and their abused daughters.

Allow me to present the latest case of Navjot Kaur, daughter of B S Dhillon, whose marriage has broken. As per her account, she was a student of Ph.D., when her parents found a match for her. The prospective groom had the "tag of a selected DSP but was trying to appear for PCS." The first question that comes to my mind is why do educated parents and girls chase a tag and pay little thought to the qualities of the proposed husband? Why don’t they verify the credentials of the boy? When marriages are weighed in tags and money and not quality and values, the end result often is disastrous.

Let me introduce you to Navjot Kaur. The only child of her parents, she had acquired M.Sc. degree in biotechnology with honours. She was a brilliant student and had secured 82 per cent. She was half way through her P.hD, when she got married. Her father, an academician, was at that time working as Head of Economics and Sociology Department of PAU, Ludhiana. As per Navjot, her parents spent more than Rs 35 lakh before and after her wedding. Her father-in-law, Veer Singh Lopoke, is a sitting MLA of the Akali Dal (Badal). Her husband, Ranbir Singh, can only be introduced as ‘his father’s son’.

Here is a quote from Navjot in a section of the media. "We were told that being an Akali MLA, a PCS post for Ranbir Singh was not a big deal. He used to visit our home in his car with a beacon light." Now, I wonder, why a highly educated girl like Navjot could take it for granted that a PCS post would come to her husband. Secondly, how could she fail to see that Ranbir Singh was simply basking in the glory of his father, while travelling in a car with a beacon light? It is quite apparent that while Navjot acquired academic growth, she terribly lacked in education of progressivism. Society, which included her parents, her school, her college and her university, did not teach her to look at life from a healthy progressive point of view. It only taught her to remain shackled in feudalistic and orthodox traditions, conventions and practices.

I must admit that her father truthfully answered all my queries. He was asked: why an educated father like him let his daughter go through physical assaults as a result of which she suffered a hair-line fracture in her nose and her ear membrane was damaged (she was also dragged down the stairs in the advanced stage of pregnancy by her husband)? Since Navjot was his only daughter, he could have supported her, both morally and financially. Then, why did he insist on repeatedly sending her back to her in-law’s house? Had he not read about thousands of such cases, wherein, parents push back their daughters into a hellish marriage?

Dhillon did not defend himself. He said, "I am from a rural background. I wanted my daughter to adjust in her marriage. My reading was that the boy was frustrated because the expected PCS post had not come his way. I could see through their greed when they wanted me to sell all my land and houses and to give everything to him. But I still thought that my daughter’s marriage should be saved".

During the last Assembly elections, when the Lopokes wanted to put up a good image before the public, why did Dhillon send his daughter back to her in-laws? "The Lopokes entreated repeatedly. They were so persistent and gave assurances in the presence of so many people that I had to relent. I may be financially well off but I am socially garib. I kept thinking that everything would be all right, as time is a great healer. After all, we have to live in this very society."

But it is this very society and its rotten practices that we have to change. The amount Rs 35 lakh that Navjot says was spent on her wedding should have been directly invested in her own name to provide her security, as is the practice in many states of South India. Similarly, when it was found that the girl was being abused by her husband, the father should have taken a stand to put a stop to the ill-treatment. However frustrated a man may be, he can not be condoned for physically abusing his wife. The question is that in frustration why did Ranbir Singh physically torture only his wife and not his parents or his sisters? Dhillon was willing to excuse his son-in-law because his mind accepted that such physical abuse does exist in Punjab.

Similarly, when Navjot’s in-laws refused to accept an Indica car and demanded a Matiz, once again both, Dhillon and his educated daughter, failed to see the greed. On the contrary, they made all-out efforts to buy a Matiz and gift it to the in-laws. Both, father and daughter, made no effort to fight slavery of the mind and injustice being heaped on them.

It was also pathetic to observe Lopoke holding a press conference and trying to make this personal issue seem to be an Akali-Congress tussel. That Navjot Kaur tried to contest panchayat elections at the behest of the Congress is a laughable matter. Since the Congress had its own candidate, how could it risk dividing its own votes by making Navjot contest from the same constituency?

As per Dhillon, the Lopokes went to the court in the most deceptive circumstances. "I never wanted to file a case but was forced to do so, once I realised about their gameplan".

While the police and the courts will take ages to decide about all the cases between Navjot and her husband and in-laws, it is once again time for parents like the Dhillons and girls like Navjot Kaur to break themselves from self-imposed shackles of society. You can carve out a society for yourself, which allows you a dignified life. Will Navjot Kaur do it for her daughter, so that history does not repeat itself?