Dowry

The issue of dowry has long cast a shadow on the Indian wedding scene and despite the passage of time there appears to be no respite for girls born in lower income families. Parents who want to marry their daughters off are sometimes forced into making payments that are beyond their means and a failure to do so can lead to abuse and other forms of mistreatment in the hands of husbands or in-laws.

Approximately 8,000 deaths are recorded each year as being dowry related, some are suicides and others are the result of abuse. The figure however does not accurately reflect the number of women that are impacted by this rather unwholesome practice and it would be fair to say that the figure in reality is much higher because many of these cases go unreported sometimes due to fear of reprisals.

Some of these women are educated, professional women, who are more than capable of bringing home a decent wage but in many instances that doesn’t seem to make all that much of a difference because despite the fact that the wife is able to bring home a decent income or contribute equally towards the household expenses, she is still required to make some sort of a lump sum payment prior to getting married either in terms of cash, jewelry, chattels or property in order to be bestowed with the title of a good daughter-in-law.

In some communities the prevalent attitude appears to be that a groom can demand a dowry prior to getting married and there are instances where even when the demands are met; the bride is still abused and mistreated and despite the passage of time and the advent of modern technology and the numerous advances in many other fields, there appears to be no escape for women born in lower income families.

Let’s go back to the basics. Is it illegal to ask for dowry in India? Well, according to the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, with the exception of Jammu and Kashmir, it is.

The act goes on to define dowry as any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly prior to the wedding.

However, it is not illegal for obvious reasons, to give gifts and these gifts could be gifts of cash, jewelry, chattels or property. The act itself isn’t entirely convincing and while it says that would-be grooms cannot demand items of value as a precondition to marriage it does not say anything about receiving gifts and in all instances, it only becomes an issue if the aggrieved party makes or lodges a complaint. If no complaint is made, then nothing else is ever said about the matter and even if the marriage breaks-down at a later date there is nothing to compel the husband to return any items of value that he received prior to the wedding.

No one gets married or enters into the ceremony of marriage expecting it to break-down, but nothing is certain and there are many compelling stories that suggest that the law should somehow make these gifts returnable if the marriage breaks-down.

The penalty for accepting dowry is quite steep and if convicted the accused can be jailed for a term that is no less than 5 years so the law does to some extent protect women but then again it is a matter of these women stepping up and lodging a complaint and in most instances, many of them just put it down to hard luck.

Parents can refuse to pay a dowry but in most cases most parents if they can afford it and some even if they can’t, agree because it is a social and cultural norm and a lot of families are just happy to marry their daughters off regardless of whether their daughters are happy or not.

The way things stand at present, it is not only important to give a girl an education, but it is also important to make sure that there is enough left in the kitty for her wedding and that can be quite strenuous especially considering the fact that education is not cheap, and a good college degree is quite costly. It is a vicious cycle that women from lower income families in the subcontinent get trapped in.

Copyright © 2025 by Kathiresan Ramachanderam