In the last week I have written about one of India’s biggest problems, corruption. Another one of those big cancers in the Indian society is the system of giving the girl a dowry when she marries. This tradition has become an enourmous business and has caused a lot of pain and problems in India for both, the bride and the groom.
In older times, when the system of dowry started, the concept was like giving wedding gifts to a newly married couple. The bride’s family gave gifts to their daughter for her new home. These were usually things you needed at home or even money, so that she and her fresh husband had a good start into married life. This – per se – lovely tradition has turned into an ugly business of millions and billions of Rupees.
I have told you many times that in India arranged marriages are quite normal. At some point the parents of a boy, who were searching for a future bride, started looking and thinking about how much the bride’s family would give the newlywed couple. In this way it developed in an unhealthy direction: the value of the bride is now often estimated by how much the bride’s family gives as dowry. And often this becomes one of the main criteria for the groom’s family for choosing a bride.
The groom’s family asks for a certain amount of money, depending on his life situation and his work. If he has a well-earning job, if he is a doctor or engineer, it is the guarantee for his wife that she will have a good life and be wealthy or at least well-situated. For this guarantee the bride’s family has to pay. They do, because they want their daughter to have a good life. The parents of the bride look for a rich family to marry their daughter in because you usually have only one wedding in India and they are ready to give a lot to make sure their daughter will not live in a poor home.
They pay in cash, in gold, in furniture or household items. They often buy a car for the couple or a motorbike for the groom. Last year we heard that the rich family of a bride has even given BMW cars, not only to the groom but also to the groom’s friends!
Such a marriage is then an enourmous show. Of course the celebration will be huge and there will be a showcase or even a whole showroom where the dowry items are displayed. There can be big halls with the cash, the gold, the jewelry and the car displayed so that the wedding guests can walk through and have the chance to see what the groom got from his future in-laws.
There are even marriage bureaus, agencies that match future brides with future grooms. The parents provide all details including how much dowry they will give their daughter or how much dowry they expect from their future daughter-in-law. The agency then matches them according to this amount and some other factors. In the end they get a fixed price from both sides plus a certain percentage of the dowry expenses. Not a bad business, don’t you think? They match their clients according to caste, education and dowry and get rich through it.
Parents of boys put a lot of attention on the boy’s education, too, as he will be valued higher in the wedding market if he has better security for his future. Those who are in western countries of course have an even higher value when they are bargaining the price for the groom. Who can afford marrying our son?
Even though this tradition of giving dowry is forbidden by law, it is still fully practiced and brings a whole lot of different problems into our society.
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That is absolutely true. I believe my generation’s parents are to blame and this generation girls and boys as well. In my experience everyone in India seems happy with this pathetic arrangement.
Groom’s parent want money, girls parents are more than eager to give for all the reasons you mentioned above. Both bride and groom are keen to get as much possible from parents of bride.(seriously and I have seen it with my own eyes). There was one guy in my company who was proudly showing off his HONDA as Dahej and he had no shame. He said that he is going to take his wife only around in that car so she will also not say no.
What an arrangement!!! Everyone is happy while people who are victims of this system are left fending for themselves.
I hate this from my heart. I bought car from my own money for my parents and for myself and did not take a single penny from my wife. I am proud of it.
If only people would understand how their actions hurt society and how much dumb publicly we come across.
There was one guy with me in USA who was even proud of taking dowry and telling it to Americans. I had tough time asking him to keep quite.
Can we do something about it
Dear Ashvini, Thank you for your wonderful comment. Being Indian we have seen this all and have seen people suffer from this. I write this all to bring awareness of wrong things that happen in society and which cause pain. I really hope the coming generations will see and understand and will not follow this kind of wrong traditions. I will write more about it and would love to read more from you. Lets wish for the best.
Thank you for this comment, Balendu! It is such an important issue. I was very surprized to read here in the local news about “dowry deaths”. So if there is this kind of term for it, it must be a serious problem. Actually especially on Women’s Day there was a woman killed in Delhi, where the sister-in-law was suspected to be the murderer because this woman didn’t bring enough dowry to the family. Please correct me if I understood this wrong, but I got the impression that these families get so greedy that they kill their new daughter-in-law to remarry the son to get more dowry. One other interesting point to this issue I read also around Women’s Day and that is that the law that was planned to help out the daughter-in-laws who are being harrassed by their in-law-families because of dowry is misused. The daughter-in-laws accuse their in-law-families, even if they were innocent, just to get compensation money.
This is of course not helping the cause at all!
I also want to tell another story about Finland, that brings a different point of view to the marriage-arrangements there are in different cultures. In the western part of the country, on the countryside, it was ususal, that the eldest daughter of the house got an own chamber. She could have boyfriends staying over night there. The parents trusted her, that she would know here status value her self according here beauty, wealth of the house etc. and would invite only those boys to visit. When the girl got pregnant, she had to choose, whom she liked most. There was of course no absolute certainty about the father of the child, but that was not considered as an important issue! And when the oldest daughter got married and moved to the husbands house, it was time for the next eldest daughter to move into the chamber! (This chamber was by the way decorated very nicely with the textiles, that the daughter had made to present the boy her handcraft qualities! Everything had it’s practical purpose, you see!)
Dear Jenni,Thank you for your comment. Yes, it is a very important issue and unfortunately these dowry deaths take place in the Indian society. I will write more about this in the coming days and I will be happy to read more of your comments.
I have heard that in some tribes in India there are similar kind of traditions to that one which you told of Finland. There a man and a woman stay together for a year and live together. If in that time the woman becomes pregnant, they marry. If not, she will find another man and he will find another woman. I think many people today would also like this tradition! ha ha ha ha….
That is so strange for us westerners to read, because it seems just like what our grand-parents experienced here. Maybe not the agencies and not the BMWs but the whole thought of marrying someone who will bring a good dowry into the marriage. Parents started preparing early and packed away bedsheets, good porcelain, silver cutlery and more for their daughters. Each daughter of the house had a box which she was then allowed to open after her wedding in her new house. It was however quite a nice tradition, too, as the young couple then had something to start with.