By Valerie Reynoso
The practice of paying dowries is rooted in ancient tradition. It began as a Hindu religious requirement in the Manusmriti, a text from around 1500 BC that dictated the way of life and laws for Hindus. Ancient Hindus would gift each other during a wedding as a cultural requirement. Fathers were obligated to gift expensive clothes and jewelry to their daughters and to gift a cow and a bull to the family of the bride. When a woman moved in with her husband, she was provided with money, jewelry and property to secure her financial independence after marriage.[1] Over time, the dowry system has developed into a fully-formed, patriarchal, capitalist mechanism in which Indian women are reduced to being socially-reproductive providers.
In modern-day India, dowry has shifted from financial independence for brides to a system of groom prices in which women have virtually no control over their finances within a marriage. Dowry prices are negotiated verbally between the families of the groom and the bride. The settled price is paid to the family of the groom once married; however, there is often further demand for more money once the bride moves in with the husband. When these new demands are not met, it can have fatal consequences for the bride. [2].
The social reproduction and commodification of women's bodies, as well as the enforcement of private property under capitalism, has resulted in women being rendered as tools for patriarchal exploitation. Social reproduction refers to the work that goes into producing workers who then have their labor exploited in the name of capitalism by the upper class. Social reproduction relates to feminism and gender power dynamics because women are socialized to carry the burden of housework, childcare, and socially reproducing their husbands who then go off to work. In the case of the dowry system and the Indian women subject to it, this dynamic is further intensified due to the demands for dowry and increased patriarchal violence when this demand is not met. Social reproduction theory is the understanding of the "production of goods and services and the production of life are part of one integrated process."[3] It is a historical-materialist analysis which builds on the premise that race, gender, and class oppressions are connected and occur simultaneously under capitalism. This theory explores the relationship between oppression and exploitation.
These oppressive systems have turned dowry culture from one rooted in ancestral tradition where women are socioeconomically uplifted to one where women are socioeconomically exploited, abused, and killed in the name of money and patriarchy. This deviation of the connotation dowry has also signifies how gender is informed by organizational violence, through which the submission of underclass women is maintained by means of financial, physical and psychological abuse. Indian women are seen as assets to elevate the hierarchical status of the men they marry through the forced provision of dowry.
The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 outlawed people from demanding or giving dowry as a pre-condition for marriage. Section 498a of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) states that any female death within the first seven years of a marriage will be automatically concluded to have been a result of dowry harassment. Section 304b IPC refers to cruelty against brides. These laws were designated preventative measures but they have evidently not been effective in implementation, as it is difficult for many dowry victims to make time to go to court in order to get help. [4]
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, 8,233 dowry deaths were reported in 2012, a rate that equals one victim every 60 minutes. This statistic does not include unreported dowry deaths, since women are discouraged from reporting abuses. Some ways women are abused in demands for dowry is by being blackmailed, beaten, burned alive, threats of having their children taken away, and murder. The National Crime Records Bureau also reported that police throughout India have charged around 93% of accused in dowry deaths and only 34% of them have resulted in convictions. In 2017 the Hindustan Times reported that there had been 15 dowry deaths in the capital of India alone between 2012-2017, but none of these cases resulted in conviction. There are approximately 27 million total pending cases in the Indian legal system, which delays the dowry cases of women even up to 20 years[5]
It is considered a stigma for women to return to their parents' home after marriage. Social norms enforce the "sanctity" of marriage along with a lack of financial independence, all of which prevent rural women from telling the truth about abuses over dowry. Many survivors of burnings are coerced to lie and say it was an accident or attempted suicide out of fear of further abuses by their husbands.[6]
Under the current Dowry system, women are seen as a burden to their families. It is common for families to save money for the future marriages of their daughters from birth, such as taking out loans, selling land, and going in debt in order to save for the daughter's dowry. Infanticides are rampant given that many girls are killed at birth because of the financial burden of dowry. Other families also perform sex-selective abortions if the baby is determined to be a girl. For girls who are not aborted or killed at birth, they typically live a life of poor nutrition, abuse, and illiteracy in rural areas of India particularly. Girls are starved in preference of their brothers and are also discouraged from pursuing an education because they are usually married off at a very young age in order for the family to collect, give, and solicit dowry. As a result, girls become financially dependent on their husbands at a young age. Even when doctors note that the burn patterns on women do not match their claims of self-infliction, they are not expected to report it and usually do not. In court, doctors are only asked to say whether or not the woman was fully conscious and able to make a statement to the police. Sometimes police harass women who report dowry abuse and discourage the women from reporting. [7]
The repression of women and girls under the current dowry system represents the relationship between the processes of producing human labor power and the processes of producing value, as indicated by the concepts defined by social reproduction theory.[8] Indian girls living a life of abuse and negligence, for the direct material benefit of their male counterparts, is similar to how capitalists need human labor power in order to extract profit from the value production they do not produce themselves .[9] Indian women are the bearers of the labor power it takes in order to socially reproduce financially dependent men, such that Indian girls are starved and denied education and job opportunities in the name of dowry, so that boys may take advantage of these instead. The dowry system provides Indian men with socioeconomic power that is derived from the physical exploitation of Indian women, who are controlled by financial subordination and sexist gender roles that limit them to the home. This cycle of social reproduction is continued when Indian girls are married off by their families to a husband to whom they will owe a life of servitude and financial dependence. Seeing that marrying off Indian girls at a young age is driven by the collection and solicitation of dowry, their bodies are being commodified as a vessel through which their families can accumulate capital. This happens until the woman is severely abused or murdered when demands for more dowry can no longer be satisfied.
Moreover, the price of dowry varies per one's socioeconomic status. Underclass grooms typically demand smaller dowries but it is still a financial burden for poor families who do not have the means of paying it. Parents will raise money for the dowry by selling land or going bankrupt after the marriage. Lower castes of India, such as the Dalit, obtain money for their daughters' weddings by leasing their sons into bonded labor. Many cotton farmers who have committed suicide in large numbers due to failing crops also did so due to the increased price of dowry, which also increased their debt to unmanageable levels. [10]
Solutions for the human rights epidemic surged by the current dowry system have been posed. In 2006, web entrepreneur Satya Naresh had created the first dowry-free matrimonial site in India and in 12 years only 5,399 men had registered. Naresh stated that not many people have registered for it due to greed - in many cases, even when a man does not want a dowry his parents will still want it and force him to undergo it. World Bank lead economist Dr. Vijayendra Rao stated that a substantial shift in gender norms is required in order to end dowry violence, such as reducing gender discrimination, and increasing female education and socioeconomic independence, in addition to further legal reforms[11].
Ultimately, dowry is a means of enacting socially reproduced violence against women in India through socioeconomic repression and misogyny. The elimination of socioeconomic disparities and gendered oppression, as well as a structural challenge to capitalist modes of production, are needed. This is the only path where Indian women may enjoy equal rights and protection.
Notes
[1] "A Broken Promise; Dowry Violence In India," Pulitzer Center, February 9th, 2019, https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/broken-promise-dowry-violence-india
[2] Ibid.
[3] Tithi Bhattacharya, Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2017).
[4] Ibid.
[5] "'Death by dowry' claim by bereaved family in India, The Guardian, accessed February 9th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jul/18/death-by-dowry-claim-by-bereaved-family-in-india
[6] "A Broken Promise; Dowry Violence In India," Pulitzer Center, February 9th, 2019, https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/broken-promise-dowry-violence-india
[7] Ibid.
[8] Tithi Bhattacharya, Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2017).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] "'Death by dowry' claim by bereaved family in India, The Guardian, accessed February 9th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jul/18/death-by-dowry-claim-by-bereaved-family-in-india
