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Posted on 10/09/2003 3:03:20 PM PDT by blam
India's young brides rebel against the dowry demand
By Phil Reeves in Delhi
10 October 2003
A new and unlikely front has been opened in the battle by young Indian women against illegal dowry demands, this time within a bastion of religious and cultural conservatism, Varanasi on the Ganges.
The ancient holy city, where devout Hindus traditionally go to die, has become the venue of a high-profile and decidedly contemporary confrontation between a media-savvy young woman and a man whose family she accuses of illegally demanding money for her hand.
In May, Nisha Sharma, a 21-year-old computer software engineer, became a heroine among India's secular young by cancelling her wedding and summoning police after her groom's family demanded $25,000 (£15,000) at the last minute.
Ms Sharma became an overnight media celebrity, feted by women's groups and civil rights organisations. She was soon receiving offers of marriage from several dazzled Indian men. In the ensuing weeks, at least three other middle-class young women from the Indian capital secured the arrest of prospective grooms or their relatives over dowry demands, which, though common practice, have been illegal in India since the 1980s. Shortly afterwards, a woman in Madras in the south, also a highly conservative society, shocked wedding guests by informing them her nuptials were off because of demands levelled by her prospective spouse
The latest case involves 20-year-old Priya Pande. Her case has caused noisy divisions in Varanasi, a 2,000-year-old city not only considered holy by Hindus but also seen as the national temple of learning and civilisation. As ever, the domestic details are disputed. Reports claim she says she married her lover, Babloo Chauchan, in a secret ceremony this year but he lost interest in her and refused to let her live in his home. She says she has an affidavit with his signature on it to prove it. She also says the family demanded 400,000 rupees (£5,400) as a dowry, a violation of India's Anti-Dowry Act. But his family says there was no wedding, and accuse her of trying to extort money.
Last week, Ms Pande, accompanied by TV cameramen, scribes, Hindu nationalist activists and supporters, led a parade to Mr Chauchan's home, forced her way in, and began giving interviews to journalists about her right to live there. She seems acquainted with the soundbite, an art which, with the advent of multiple 24-hour TV news channels, Indian activists are rapidly mastering. "I want to send a message to society that women are not dumb dolls, and should not be taken for granted," she told the BBC.
She is also familiar with the power of television imagery: she had specially kitted herself out in the finery, including vermillion headwear, that denotes a married Hindu woman. After she was thrown out by Mr Chauchan's family, she complained to Varanasi police of harassment and illegal dowry demands. The police arrested him, but only after she threatened to immolate herself.
Varanasi has a strong conservative streak. In January 2000, the Indian-Canadian film director Deepa Mehta arrived to make a film about India's millions of widows who, ostracised and penniless, survive on prostitution.
She and her crew were almost run out of town by angry crowds primed by misinformation by hardline Hindu activists who accused them of disseminating Western decadence.
Well, this was one problem traditional Hindu society didn't face. Widows were torched along with their husband's corpse. No "widow problem."
,,, if these people traders had cooled down and thought it out, they would have realised that this amount could have been spread over the first ten to twenty years of marriage in easy monthly payments.
I saw a report on this on, of all venues, Sixty Minutes. With so many aborted girl fetuses lowering the eligible female population - women in India are beginning to sense their own self worth.
Her only problem is that she lives in India where a woman is generally acceptable as a bride only if her parents offer the groom’s family a sizable bribe, otherwise known as a dowry. It can cost her family as much as $100,000.
Worse than that, thousands of women in India after the marriage have been murdered if they can't pay extortionate demands that often come from their husband’s family.
Demanding a dowry has been illegal in India for more than 40 years, but the tradition is so entrenched, almost no one defies it. Correspondent Christiane Amanpour reports.
Nisha Sharma is a 21-year-old college student studying computer programming in New Delhi. Before her wedding day earlier this year, her father made a deal with the groom's family. Like most in India, her marriage to a computer instructor was arranged.
"I thought he's really hard working, smart guy, best for me," says Nisha.
Nisha's father, who owns a car battery factory, found the groom by placing an ad in the local paper. He negotiated Nisha's dowry with the groom's family, and says they insisted he give them two sets of appliances - one for the new couple and one for the groom's brother.
Her father saved for ten years to pay for the car, the reception, and even the wedding video. But it still wasn't enough. Flower girls were already welcoming the groom, along with 1,500 guests when the groom's mother made a last minute demand. Nisha’s father said she asked for another $25,000 in cash.
When Nisha's father refused to pay, the wedding video captured a shoving match between the two families. That's when Nisha made a split second decision that changed her life forever.
"I called the police and I said I don't want to marry that guy," says Nisha. "Because that time I was thinking they don't came to marry with me, they just came to marry with the money."
The police arrested Nisha's would-be husband, and her story caused an immediate sensation. But instead of being ostracized, Nisha became a national hero, a poster girl for all those fighting to rid India of dowry abuse.
And it wasn't just the activists saluting her. Nisha started getting support and even love letters and marriage proposals from people all over India.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, Nisha may even become India's new super hero in a soon to be released action comic book.
It’s all been a bit overwhelming, admits Nisha: "It’s too much for me because I'm so small and fame is so big."
But her battle is an uphill struggle because in today's consumer oriented India, lavish weddings and huge dowries have become the norm. Complete with parades of elephants and carriages fit for a king and queen, it's a way for the bride's family to show off their wealth and status and buy the most eligible groom.
By speaking out and breaking the silence that surrounds dowry, Nisha has inspired other young women to ditch their greedy grooms. And that's good news for women's rights activist Ranjana Kumari, who has been fighting against this tradition for more than 20 years.
"I can't go because I have seen what happens when dowry is taken and given, and the kind of cases that come to our centers and the kind of tortures and harassment that our girls go through," says Ranjana, who refuses to attend a wedding in India. "You see, [a] dowry is not one time deal in Indian marriages. If he's setting up a business, he will start putting pressure on the wife, get money from your family. If he has to buy a car, it's easy money, it's money you can extract from the girl's family."
Ranjana says it’s extortion.
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A wing of Delhi's maximum-security prison is reserved exclusively for mothers-in-law and their accomplices. All of them have been either convicted or accused of dowry-related crimes. Police here report that nearly 7,000 women are murdered every year, and human rights groups report that the number could be as high as 25,000. All of the women have been killed by greedy husbands and mothers-in-law trying to squeeze more money out of the young brides.
To avoid crushing debts that go with marriage, many Indian families are now aborting all their girl babies.
"Certainly there is a link. You see, the parents who think about the economic burden that they will carry, it is sometimes ten times more than their income, life income," says Ranjana. "And if it is a female child, female fetus, abort it."
The problem escalated when women were able to tell the sex of their unborn child at cheap ultrasound clinics. Now, so many girls have been aborted that it's causing a dangerous population imbalance.
It's gotten so bad that the Indian Government has banned pre-natal sex determination tests. But that has only driven them underground, as Dr. Reicha Tanwar discovered.
"We've had a number of sessions with a number of gynecologists, radiologists," says Dr. Tanwar. "And even though they know it's legally banned, they have gone on record by saying that they have had cases of women come to their clinics - one single person, come to their clinics seven or eight times, to get an abortion done because it was a female child."
But what really shocked Dr. Tanwar is the latest census figures in her state, which now show that almost twice as many boys as girls are being born among the better off and literate.
Across the country in Bombay, doctors Anarood and Angeli Malpani run an IVF clinic. One of the only ones in the world, that pre-selected embryos to guarantee the birth of a boy. But that too has been declared illegal, much to Dr. Malpani's disgust.
"I think it's perfectly ethical and acceptable to use the technology. I think it's actually unethical not to use it and to let someone else sit in judgment and say no because you're an Indian couple you should not be allowed to have a boy. The whole point of living in a democracy is that you allow individuals to make decisions for themselves," says Dr. Anarood Malpani.
"My point is that you're effectively saying I am the right person to make that decision, and that particular individual is too stupid to make that decision for herself."
But the shortage of girls is already causing problems, says Dr. Tanwar: "When these children come of marriageable age they are not going to find girls for marriage, and life for a girl is going to be very difficult. They are going to be kidnapped, raped, picked up, sold, bought. I fear to think what will happen if this goes on."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of those fears are already being realized in one village in northern India.
Hundreds of men there aren’t married and can’t find wives to marry.
"It's a very alarming situation, because if we can't control this now, the crisis will spread to all of India," says Bhushan Das, the village's Hindu priest. "Without women, our world will come to an end."
But the only way that will change is if the dowry custom is eliminated first, and that's why Nisha's story has hit such a nerve here.
"I want to become a symbol for the girls," says Nisha. "Dowry is a black spot on our country or I can say on the earth."
"In our part of the country, people grieve when a daughter is born in the family. There is no celebration," says Dr. Tanwar. "It is these girls, these kind of cases, which are going to encourage others to emulate it, and put a stop to it. If girls themselves put their foot down, maybe some change would come. What is the other way? I don't see any other way."
link down, see here http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/common/images/story_image_pop.gif
,,, India and China will manufacure everything the west needs at cheap prices and we can export our gender feminists [not equity feminists] to them.
I was invited to an Indian wedding a couple of years ago. Oodles of people attending and they all talked all the way thru the ceremony. Some paid attention to the ceremony, but it was like a giant gossip-fest. The women wore brilliant coloured saris and most of them were very attractive. The dowry deal is a real scam but that's the only negative thing I have to say about Indians. They're good immigrants where I am.
Sounds like "The South." We paid to attend as well, gift certificates to HomeDepot or Neiman Marcus. Not quite hushed whispers about the size of the bride's waist, tacky bridal finery and speculation on the cost. I love weddings!!
The only part I find distressing is the modern custom of cramming wedding cake up the brides nose- instead of the tender sample offered by a loving groom. Still...beats the hell out of dousing the bride in kerosene and setting her ablaze!
China which looks,at first glance, to be overtaking the West economically and thus militarily must hit the wall at some point due to the one child policy. An already rich population may be able to limit itd numbers for a more comfortable existence without collapsing but a poor society cannot. It must rely on population increase and free markets to expand its economy.
Viet Nam doesn't abort its girls or its boys and the postwar baby boom combined with the almost universal use of bottled drinking water, ensures that an economic "miracle" will occur soon in that highly industrious population while the Chinese government has been working to abort its own economic burgeoning.
As the population of China stabilizes, so will the economy. It will "run out of steam" as have the European economies and begin to contract. The effects will appear sooner because there are no hordes of would-be immigrants for China to replace the squandered fertility.
The police arrested Nisha's would-be husband, and her story caused an immediate sensation. But instead of being ostracized, Nisha became a national hero, a poster girl for all those fighting to rid India of dowry abuse.
And it wasn't just the activists saluting her. Nisha started getting support and even love letters and marriage proposals from people all over India.
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