Thread: Dowry System in India

Dowry is derived from the ancient Hindi customs of “Kanyadaan” and “Stridhan”. In “Kanyadaan”, the father of the bride provides money or property, etc to the father of the groom while for “Sridhan”, the bride herself gets jewelery and clothes at the time of her marriage, usually from her relatives or friends. More than 9, 5000women are killed each year in India over Dowry.

Dowry's menace still haunts india, mostly the rural parts of india where women are tortured and even killed for the sake of dowry. I don't find any reason why should the bride and her family have to pay money to the groom for the sake of getting married. Its just the people sticking to their age old practices and due to lack of their education, the system is still being followed without any apprehensions.

Dowry Custom In India is increasing day by day. "No dowry, no marriage" is a common notion circulated in almost all parts of India. With newer globalized economy price-tag for a groom is bolder and bigger. In spite of government's dowry prohibition act, announcing fine of Rs 15000 and 5 years jail for person giving or taking dowry, women organizations' protests dowry still continues to be signature of every marriage.

Dowry system prevails in India since ages. Though it is strongly imbibed in Indian culture, few have stopped following it. But it still haunts many of the poor families who cannot meet the demands of the dowry from the grooms family. It is only upto the youth of India to bring the right changes in our culture. Do you agree?

In Muslim community this happens rarely because if no dowry no marriage. In other community some times they agree to give a part of the dowry after the marriage if they do not keep their word then it becomes cheating. then the girl has to suffer.

Since this is a special case, we have two ways to deal with it. Either government control the dowry system by implementing fixed scales and monitor the payment closely (they can also think about dowry loans).

Or

Enforce the law, which is very difficult because this is an age old practice and everyone (even the law enforcer) is a part of this system.

Dowry system still haunts our Indian society. We can still find many cases of murders for which dowry is the underlying cause. Though we are educating ourselves and trying to rationalize our thinking in other aspects of irrationalities (such as following Omens) we still live with many social evils and one of them being dowry system. Atleast from our generation we should take a pledge not to promote such social evils.

Dowry system is still very much prevelant in Indian society. Dowry system started with the good intention but has taken a real bad turn today. Women are being killed mercilessly for dowry. Women are being subjected to various crimes such as domestic violence, forcing them to commit suicide etc. It is now the duty of today's generation to fight away such evils from the society and make India a better place to live.