Among the many things that need to be revamped in the mainstream Pakistani society dowry would probably be one of the major ones. Sure no harm in giving the bride gifts on her wedding for her home and personal use but with the growing number of girls start staying unmarried simply because the parents don’t have the money to meet the ‘demands’ of the groom’s family, then it is a quandary that needs to be looked into. The most irksome angle of the dowry situation is that the tradition for an increasingly elaborate dowry is set by the people who don’t even need dowry’s from the girls in order to ‘run their homes’ or ‘support’ the grooms in any way. When the more educated and bourgeoisie class stoops to an all time low, the uneducated ones can only be expected to follow.
Dowry is a massive social ill on both sides of the Pakistan-India border and who hasn’t heard of the infamous bride burning where the girl who brings insufficient dowry is burnt ‘accidentally’ by her in laws so that a new ‘prey’ may be caught who can bring in a better dowry.
Since there is no practice of conducting studies on this issue in Pakistan, the actual dowry related accidents have for the most part gone unrecorded. Shahnaz Bukhari is the founder of the Islamabad-based Progressive Women’s Association and has handled 17,000 cases of women who have been subjected to dowry related violence such as rapes, murders and stove burnings.
It wouldn’t be altogether fair to state that the government has remained oblivious to the disaster this dowry-demanding has caused in the society. Back in the 1970s in an attempt to curb the escalating violence over dowry, Pakistan attempted to make dowry giving or taking entirely illegal. A new law in 1976 set a certain amount of dowry to be permissible where the bridal gifts and marriage expenditure could not exceed 50,000 rupees (about $900). But as was seen in this case, the lack of social responsibility and firmly rooted trends rendered this law practically void.
We don’t need facts and figures to tell us about the havoc dowry is causing for the middle class and lower middle class families. All of us have undoubtedly witnessed distressing cases within our families and the families of our friends, neighbors, cleaning women etc. etc where the good looking and educated girls are unable to get married because they don’t have the dowry to fulfill the demands of the greedy, near-carnivorous grooms. We can write and preach all we want but the practice can never really go away unless we show by action that the educated class not only abhors the tradition but has decided to do away with it for good.
Not only should there be no dowry but it should be announced to everyone present at the wedding by the groom’s family that they are taking the girl home in one suitcase of clothes. If she wishes to bring along her personal stuff such as books and memorabilia, that would not constitute dowry that is currently running into lacs of rupees, with furniture for nearly the entire house, fridges, TV, DVD players, microwaves, cars, motorbikes, linen enough to cover every bed for the next generation, crockery, cutlery and what not. Not to mention the 100 dresses that is the standard now with a ton of gold. And I forgot to mention the gifts that need to be given to the groom’s parents, sisters and brothers. Dowry needs to go and it needs to go from the educated and well off families who are not giving dowries but actually competing in society to make sure no one gives better dowry than them. It has become a status symbol but their little game is ruining the lives of the poorer girls. In the process they are setting a craze that is stirring up hell for the middle class and poorer families who are unable to give so much to their daughters. They are relegated to the fate of watching their daughters get old because they don’t have the money for the dowry to satiate the needs of the grooms who get greedier and greedier by watching this ostentatious display of dowry trends set by the better off in society.
Ironically dowry seems to be a highly stable sociological trend in a country where only 56 percent of the people have access to safe drinking water and only 24 percent has satisfactory sanitation. 91 out of 1000 babies die before their first birthday and doctors and health services are available for only 53 percent of the population. So one might think that the citizenry would have other things on its mind rather than dowry? Hardly so. The leader of the CDHP, Community Health and Development program remarked, ‘We would be lecturing them about the use of oral rehyderation solution for infant diarrhea, when they were worried to death about a husband who was becoming addicted to drugs or how to raise dowries for their daughters’. So what is the solution? Though at this point where the menace has permeated into the very fabric of society it could be anyone’s guess but still the first steps need to come from the upper classes that have been at the forefront setting new and mightier traditions in giving and taking dowries.
I personally don’t think any amount of programs or education will do any good in putting a quietus to dowry unless each person stats assessing the situation for what it is and starts making attempts at the personal level to uproot the menace. Society is not the responsibility of one or two people, human rights lawyers and educators. It is the responsibility of every person who constitutes the society. Unless everyone starts making an effort to recognize the social ills that are eroding basic human values at the roots, little can be done. The question is, are we strong enough to meet the challenge??
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Thank you for a well written and honest depiction. Maybe we need to create a movement where we allow our children (the couple) to reach an honest understanding of whether or not a dowry will help or hinder their future relationship. If we have better communication and togetherness from the bride & groom, where both parties, especially the parents, become informal with each other, the dowry amount & number of gifts will be less important than the focal point – the newly married couple!
Through better family connection where the bride and groom are allowed to lead their own wedding instead of being ordered to passively do as they are told. Just look at the bride…they are always expected to keep their heads down and stay quiet. Once we as a society allow the bride to enjoy their special day we can lower the expectations of a dowry.
Yasmin
due to dowry families may suffer financial hardships due to the expensive nature of dowries . they may not be able to afford dowries ,therefore prohibiting their children from marriages ,causing girls to occasionally commit suicide in order to rid their fathers of financial burdens
I think this article is based on truth. it is a menace in pakistan and india. But we should give some dowry because it is a sunat of Hazrat muhammad (P.B.U.H).He give her daughter a little dowry not alot if he want to give dowry we know there iss no thing which iss not in access to him.So i think we give our doughter and sister dowry with in a limits. (this is my oppinion your opinion should unmatched with my opinion ). thanks
Great article and I am happy to see it addressed. What are the odds that anything will be done to stop the demands for the Menacing Dowry?? As we are seeing a dramatic decrease in cousingenious arranged (forced) marriages in lieu of personal choice and a dramatic increase in divorces from arranged marriages, the menacing dowry will be the next primitive culture behavior to end. It’s a slow process and we can still expect the villagers to follow suit at a slower pace. The more worldy knowledgable pakistani people (primarily men sent abroad) become the more obvious it becomes to them that these old time cultural practices are not only unnecessary but they are wrong. At this point, those continuing are only doing so out of respect for their pressuring parents but we can be sure that for the children being born today and tomorrow that their parents will not put such pressure and demands on them. Ah, yes, times are a changing.
The Dowry is such a show of disrespect for women and exhibits how truly unvalued as human beings that they are. What family in their right mind would think so little of their daughter’s value that they would pay for someone to take her. Why the need to buy a husband for your daughter??? What an insult to women that her husband is only her husband because his family was paid enough in “STUD” fees!! Indeed, she will bear him children, raise and care for those children, she will cook and clean for him, and make herself readily available to meet his needs while suppressing her own needs…in her lifetime she will pay more than enough for her upkeep. If anything a man should pay a dowry to marry a pious, beautiful, chaste wife (as they are becoming more and more rare even in the villages)…but lets not forget she is nothing more than property, right?
As is the perception of Pakistani men living here in the USA, finding a wife in Pakistan is easy because everyone is begging for someone to marry their daughter…Highest bidder gets the husband and hopefully has paid enough to him and his family that she will not be mistreated. Dowry is big business for the men and their families so naturally they don’t want it to end…unless they happen to be a family with a lot of daughters. Paying a large dowry for a man/husband does not insure that he will be a good husband or father…as he can do with his property as he choices. No wonder the births of daughters are so undesired…as her birth represents immediate long term debt to her father and brothers.
To give a wisest suggestion to Pakistan society, people should give high education whether rich or poor parents to their daughters so that the groom family should be less dominate while pressurizing on the bride families. The bride parents should be given very strict suggestion that it is needless to give dowry by their own wish and will because things don