Blood money: the sinister side of India’s dowry system

The practice of sending off a bride with a dowry dates back to ancient times but has gone out of fashion in the developed world.

In India however, despite rapid modernisation, the practice continues to thrive and has been implicated in the deaths of thousands of Indian women, killed because their dowry was insufficient.

In 1961, a law was passed prohibiting the forced giving and receiving of dowries. But the law was rarely enforced and loopholes meant dowries continued.

As India became industrialised and wealthier, the costs of dowry started to soar, with grooms’ families making astronomical demands and brides’ families prepared to spend well in excess of their yearly income to ensure the marriage took place.

Some women discovered that even after their dowry was paid, the requests to their families for money and luxury goods continued.

If the demands were not met, the women were often beaten or tortured and in more extreme cases, forced to commit suicide or murdered, leaving the way clear for the husband to marry again and another dowry to be obtained.

One particularly common way of killing was to douse the woman in a flammable substance like kerosene and set her on fire, an act that could easily be passed off as a kitchen accident. This has been given the name ‘bride burning.’

In the mid 1980s, it was estimated that between 300 and 400 Indian women died in dowry-related killings every year. Since then the number of deaths per year has risen sharply.

In 2000, UNICEF estimated that 5,000 women died each year while the 2007 figures from the Indian National Crime records Bureau state that 8,093 dowry deaths were reported nationwide.

Some people think the real number may be higher as some dowry deaths have been disguised as accidents, while others have gone unreported. In the case of beatings and torture, police have in the past been reluctant to investigate as they see dowry disputes as a family affair.

Indian women’s groups have been particularly active in moves to tighten the existing laws, particularly as the practice seems to be spreading rather than dying out. A 2001 survey by the All India Democratic Women’s Association revealed that groups like Muslims and Dalits (India’s lowest caste, also known as ‘untouchables’) are now demanding dowries, even though they hadn’t previously been part of their cultural tradition.

There are signs that India’s establishment is preparing to take a harder line on the issue. In June 2009, Justice Markandeya Katju, while presiding over a bride burning case was widely quoted in the Indian media as saying he believed that the people behind bride burning should be hung,

In India, the practice of dowry, illegal as it is, has become more than just a way of giving a daughter her inheritance in advance. It has become a system of enrichment, which unscrupulous people have twisted into a motive for murder.

By Jo Blick