QUEENS, New York — In the shadows of Indian society is an illegal social practice that persists today. It is particularly to the detriment of women and low-income families. This illegal social practice is called a dowry. A dowry is a payment made by a bride and her family to a groom. It often is in the form of property, cars, jewelry and/or money. It is characteristic of patrilineal societies in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. However, it is particularly popular in India. From 1960-2008, families paid dowries in 38,000 out of 40,000 marriages in rural India.
Over time, families suffered coercion from grooms and their families to increase the quantity and quality of dowries. The government outlawed the receipt or distribution of dowry with the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act. However, the social practice of dowries persists today and continues to have harmful effects on impoverished people in India.
The Effects of Dowries on India’s Low-Income Community
Dowries in India place an otherwise unnecessary financial burden on impoverished families and their daughters. A bride’s family typically spends about 32,000 rupees on a dowry. A dowry can be worth as much as several years of household income for a woman’s family. This is a significant problem for impoverished families.
Furthermore, many low-income families in India do not have bank accounts. Thus, they cannot extract loans from the bank to cover the cost of their daughters’ weddings and dowries. As a result, some low-income families obtain loans from upper-caste moneylenders at high-interest rates. Many of these families cannot repay the loans. They then often enter into bonded labor at the moneylenders’ service to repay the debt.
Dowries in India have negative economic impacts on the country’s poor and have negative social impacts. An inability to pay a dowry often means intense social shaming. There are even cases where brides or their family members commit suicide when they cannot pay the groom’s dowry because they cannot withstand the pressure imposed upon them by the groom, his family and society.
Grooms and their families have even murdered brides who could not fulfill their dowry. In 2020, a husband received gold as a dowry, but weeks after the wedding demanded cash. When his wife refused to comply with his outrageous demand, he burned her alive. India’s National Crime Records Bureau provides a horrific statistic: “every hour an Indian woman is driven to suicide or is murdered over a dowry.” So, where does India’s Dowry Prohibition Act fit in all of this?
Challenges of Combating Dowries
India’s Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 legally prohibits the receipt and distribution of dowries in India. According to the law, the consequences of such actions include a fine equivalent to the dowry in demand and up to five years in prison. India’s Penal Code also makes it possible for a woman’s husband to be imprisoned for life if culpable for her dowry-related death. The problem is that institutional congestion and a lack of enforcement sacrifice the efficiency of these laws.
The Dowry Prohibition Act is difficult to enforce because the law allows voluntary gifts but prohibits the demand for a dowry. Proving in a legal setting that a groom or his family demanded a dowry is difficult when the pressures a bride and her family feel are often intangible. The law essentially provides a legal loophole for the groom and his family to claim they were merely the recipients of a voluntary contribution of gifts from the bride’s family.
Along with a lack of enforcement, India’s courts are also backed up with dowry-related cases. In 2019, there were more than 13,000 dowry-related complaints and more than 7,100 dowry-related deaths in India. Additionally, less than half of the 3,516 dowry-related deaths tried in court actually resulted in a criminal conviction.
Combating Dowries in India
One nonprofit organization working to prevent women and their families from falling victim to dowry-related harms is the Kanyadaan Foundation. The foundation helps alleviate the financial burdens of Indian marriage ceremonies and traditions on poor brides and their families. The organization provides them with the funds and resources they need for marriage. In providing these services, the Kanyadaan Foundation grants poor Indian brides the opportunity for marriage without facing the life-threatening pressures and high costs that characterize paying a dowry.
Work remains to combat dowries in India. JP Yaduvanshi, the founder of the Kanyadaan Foundation, expresses that the path forward is one of government action and social progression. In an interview with The Borgen Project, Mr. Yaduvanshi stated that the government should provide tangible assistance to low-income brides in mass weddings. State-officiated mass weddings would offset the costs of marriage for low-income brides and their families. He also believes that the government needs to enforce dowry-related laws more efficiently. Unclogging the courts and closing legal loopholes that allow grooms and their families to escape punishment for dowry exploitation is of great importance in the fight against the persistence of dowries as a social practice.
Mr. Yaduvanshi also highlights the need for society to progress beyond the misogyny embedded within the “old mindset” to which dowries belong. He emphasizes the importance of awareness campaigns, like his organization conducts, to bring attention to the adverse effects of dowry on women. The hope is that the greater the stigma constructed around dowries, the less willing people will be to participate in the social practice.
– Savannah Algu
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