The practice of dowry began as Streedhan (woman鈥檚 wealth). Since ancestral wealth in a farming community was largely tied up in land, when a woman married she was given her share of the family wealth as dowry in the form of jewellery, utensils, or cash.
This custom has been perverted into its modern, dangerous form. Despite stringent anti-dowry laws, it still continues in India (and also in Pakistan and Bangladesh), fuelled by liberal economic policies and globalisation. Husbands and their families now demand consumer goods such as televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and even cars 鈥� and the higher the economic status of the bridegroom, the flashier the brand names have to be. 鈥淭he frequency with which [dowry-related deaths] are happening clearly shows that a greedy, acquisitive society, wanting to have an easy life, is finding an easy [source] in women,鈥� says N. R. Madhava Menon, vice-chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
While victims are mainly women from the poorer classes, middle and upper class women are also dying. And women of every religious group are affected, be they Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a blemish, a shame,鈥� says Justice Michael Saldanha of the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore.
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Sadly, the Indian community has taken the custom abroad. The ethnic Indians in Fiji, for instance, have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Earlier this year, the US State Department expressed suspicion about this in its country report: 鈥淚n addition to the rise in domestic violence, there have been approximately 30 鈥榮uicides鈥� by Indo-Fijian women that appeared to have been bride burning.鈥�
The Indian community in Fiji is one of several around the world founded by people forcibly taken as indentured labour when the British ruled India. Such populations exist in the Caribbean, South America and Africa.
But dowry rears its ugly head even in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to the new type of Indian emigrant: skilled, educated and affluent. 鈥淲e do see domestic violence cases directly related to dowry issues,鈥� says Narika, a women鈥檚 rights organisation based in Berkeley, California, though there are no reports of deaths.
But focusing solely on dowry deaths obscures other forms of violence against Indian women, warns Donna Fernandes of Vimochana in Bangalore. A woman in India can be tormented, abused or even killed because she鈥檚 suspected of infidelity, or has not borne a male child.