Time to wrap up the hugely procrastinated dowry series.
I’ve defended dowry as a good and useful financial tool. The main argument against this (pointed out by Ritwik) is that dowry is still indefensible- especially because in UP and Bihar dowry will not be used by entrepreneurial sons-in-law as capital and it will drive girls’ parents into bankruptcy.
My instinctive response to this would be: ‘So? There are so many cases in which dowry is used as enterprise capital and doesn’t ruin the girl’s family? Why should those families be classified as criminals?’
The problem with the instinctive response is that I have no real numbers on how many families take dowry and don’t ruin their in-laws. So it’s all mute conjecture. I would love it if there was data, but for now I’ll have to stick to theorising.
Ritwik also points out that while harassment and dowry deaths can be dealt with under existing laws, having a specific anti-dowry law and a special anti-dowry cell empowers people to go and complain about harassment and be more effective.
I think this point is arbit. If laws on murder and extortion are ineffective, that’s an argument for reforming the police and courts, not to throw in a new law specifically on dowry. Also, criminalising dowry gives a weapon to girls’ families when a marriage turns acrimonious, even if no dowry was involved or dowry was given willingly. (My own family has been a victim of this, so perhaps I am losing some objectivity here.)
One final point, on defining dowry and whether it is a voluntary transfer of wealth or not.
Consider the following examples:
- The father-in-law hands over a suitcase of currency notes to the son-in-law.
- The father-in-law creates a huge fixed deposit in the name of the son-in-law.
- The father-in-law creates a huge fixed deposit in the name of the daughter.
- The father-in-law creates a huge fixed deposit jointly in the name of the daughter and son-in-law.
- The son-in-law starts a trading business. The father-in-law becomes a partner.
- The son-in-law starts a trading business. The daughter is the legal sole propreitrix on paper though her husband is running everything. The capital comes from the father-in-law.
- The son-in-law starts a trading business. He is the sole propreitor. The propreitorship’s balance sheet shows that the equity is all his, but that a major source of funds is unsecured loans from his brother-in-law.
- The son-in-law starts a trading business. He is the sole propreitor. He goes to a bank and gets a loan for the business. As collateral he offers a residential property registered in the name of his wife. The property was actually paid for by the father-in-law.
Okay, which of these is dowry? To complicate matters further, will 5-8 be dowry depending on when the son-in-law starts the business? Before the marriage? Immediately after? Ten years in?
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not the financial transaction which is worrisome. It’s the control or the lack of control which the wife has over how the wealth is utilised that is the bigger problem. In an ideal world, the wife would have absolute control over a fixed deposit or real estate in her name. Her husband would not even know about it. In the real world, the husband will know, will manage the property, and will borrow against it and get away with just telling the wife to sign at the relevant spots. That is not going to be cured by banning dowry, but by creating a society where women are encouraged to manage their own assets. That’s a long and painful process but it has the advantage of working.
This is the last post. Comment away!
Aadisht,
And I may be losing some objectivity here because there have been so many instances of dowry-related tension (nothing serious, but quite repulsive all the same) in my family that the word has terrible connotations in my mind.
You are right that it is the amount of control the girl has on the money rather than the financial transaction itself that is important. However, if I was to elaborate further, it is none of your examples 1-8 that I think of when I think of dowry. It is rather things like this :
One refrigerator for the guy’s parents’ house, 200 gms gold, motorcycle for the son-in-law , 5 lakh cash, sofa-set again for the in-law’s family, etc.
As for the ‘laws on murder/extortion’ bit, you are right that the attempt should be to create a system where laws cannot be misused. The difference, of course, is that murder and extortion do not have social sanction while dowry does. So, I intuitively support anti-dowry laws. Even so, I agree that my point of ‘illegalize it to reduce its social acceptability’ is not borne out by anecdotal data. Dowry has been illegal for years, the social sanction still persists. I think some data on dowry-related complaints and crimes should be useful here – will try to dig it out.
It is ok for parents to give their daughters money/property when she gets married. But it could be termed as dowry when the groom/groom’s family makes monetary demands before/after the wedding. In an ideal world, the girl would have complete control over her ‘inheritance”. And in the ideal world, she could always lend it to her husband, if he faces money crunches. But in the real world, this is not always so. Even if the money is in the girl’s name, her hubby dearest could threaten her to give it to him. He could drink with it, and come back home, and have fun hitting her. I personally know women who tolerate such men. I know men who hit their wives making demands for money. And the state of these women is pathetic. And this happens in all sections of socitey, – lower, middle and uppere class. There should definitely be stricter laws to protect women from such harassment, because such harassment is not as obvious as other crimes such as murder, robbery etc.