By Sujatha Balasubramanian, The Sunday Observer, Oct 9 1983

During the last decade, every morning the newspapers have carried a gruesome report of at least one dowry death in the country. Columns after columns are published in the media about this great social evil. Women’s organizations make a great hue and cry. Films like Meera Dewan’s ‘Gift of Love’ are produced, full of realistic horror and screened for a select few. Official circles speak of new legislations to abolish dowry. Eminent jurists offer punitive measures for the dowry-takers. In a recent case, the husband and mother-in-law of the victim were awarded the highest penalty. There is talk of imposing a ban on the marriage of the husband of the victim for at least five years after the wife’s death.

Amidst all this passionate reaction to the trauma of the death of a young woman at the hands of her husband and in-laws, one feels that a basic fact lies buried under a lot of debris. Every measure that has been so far envisaged is to educate a girl’s in-laws about the evil they are perpetrating by demanding dowry and at a later stage for ill-treating and putting to death an innocent young woman for not getting them more money or other valuables. The emphasis has been on legislation as a punishment after the event, either of the act of taking the dowry or physical hurt to the victim. Those who commit this horrible crime are supposed to be weaned away from their tendencies by the deterrent sentences which are likely to be imposed on them.

Is it not more logical to try and prevent the crime before it has a chance to be committed? Is it not easier to remove the conditions that have to exist for the inhuman act to come into being? Where does one start to unravel this tangled web? Behind the scenes of high drama of a dowry death there are three protagonists – a young married woman, the husband and a group of hostile in-laws. The interaction between these three results in the tragedy, the victimization of a defenseless young woman. The key word here is defenseless. A victim is so designated because she is unable to counteract the violence against her.

The main purpose of any kind of social change would be, one supposes, to educate the victim to be no longer a target of inhumanity, no more defenseless, and therefore a prey to any kind of sadistic tendencies. Here, one is not talking of the physical defense of one’s person, for most violent acts have a beginning in the debasing in the mind of the victim. A young girl is taught by her parents that under all circumstances, her only place is in her husband’s home. This is primarily where one needs a sea-change in the attitude of both the parents of the girl and society as a whole. To relegate a girl to a position where she feels that in spite of the cruelty practiced on her, she has nowhere to go and no place in life is the ultimate inhumanity imposed by society.

A change is required to begin with in instilling a sense of the dignity of a human being in all young people. The parents of a girl appear to have the moral responsibility of ensuring that she is psychologically independent of the support of others before setting her forth in the world. Even the birds make certain that their young ones have wings strong enough to fly and that they have the ability to find their own food before weaning them away from the nest. Sending a sheltered young girl to her husband’s house already shackled by a sense of utter dependence on him has probably been the cause of so much demoralization. Economic viability can play some part in ameliorating this condition. To know that she is not going to starve on the streets if there is no support from the spouse can act as a great vitalizer to a woman. Social organization can promote this idea of self-sufficiency and technical education for women with a view to their being able to support themselves if and when needed.

But strangely enough, quite a number if the reported dowry deaths are from the middle classes and some of the women involved have had a high degree of basic education. So obviously it is not entirely economic dependence as much as a kind of indoctrination from early childhood that perpetuates this anomalous condition. The best way to unravel this tangle could be to start with the right end. First the girl and her parents. To equip a girl to face the world on her own, if and when necessary, ought to be the responsibility of every parent. They have to learn to bring up their daughters not to be second-class human beings, not to submit tamely to the erosion of their self-respect. Once the newly married young girl refuses to be manipulated, she can no longer be used as a pawn in the games played by the dowry-seeking in-laws. Most countries in the world have a teenage population of young girls well able to fend for themselves and it follows that the problem of dowry or death by harassment are almost unheard of there.

A minimum standard of education, any kind of skill or trade and more important, joy in the independence and dignity of earning ones living is what every parent can offer their child before marriage. Naturally, this does not preclude the girl from settling down to a well-adjusted and happily normal married life. But the psychological advantage to a young woman can be incalculable and one presumes can mitigate the terrible complexes generated by avaricious and sadistic husbands and in-laws.

And now to the critical factor that could be instrumental in saving lives. The immediate problem that confronts a woman when she is threatened with bodily injury is “Where do I go from here? What do I do next?” Since it appears so obvious that the parents have been able to offer neither a refuge nor constructive advice, it would seem that the responsibility now rests with the many social welfare organizations in the country to provide both. A young woman who needs to get out of a hostile environment in a hurry must have a place to go at a moment’s notice. Could it not be possible to publicize widely, the addresses and telephone numbers of voluntary women’s groups which can offer shelter for a short while during the traumatic period? The next step of guiding the ill-equipped to the means of making some kind of living is again of vital importance. It appears that these ought to occupy the attention of our dedicated women’s institutions more than the mere carrying of banners or the shouting of anti-dowry slogans. The decade of women is not yet over. Can we in India bring about a major social reform by the sheer weight of public awareness and not by ubiquitous legal countermeasures?

A dowry death is the murder of a woman in her in-laws’ home in the first years of marriage for her failure to bring sufficient dowry to her husband’s family. At the time of this article’s publishing, at least 550 Indian women were victims of “dowry deaths” in 1984, despite a ban on the payment of dowries and government calls for severe police action against the practice. In 2020, a total of 6,966 cases of dowry deaths were reported. Studies reveal that out of total number of cases registered, 93 per cent of the accused were charge sheeted but only one third resulted in conviction.