Invincible India

Marriage Dowries
Brooke, James. “Dowry Too High. Lose Bride and Go to Jail..” The New York Times May 17, 2006:

Marrying with money
Aggressive grooms
Rupees demanded under the marriage tent
Reports of abuse
Infinite tradition
Always a burden for the bride’s family
Giving money away with no profit of their own
Expected with marriage

Demanding grooms, that no women can oppose
Obligatory
Woman’s nightmare
Rescuing needed ASAP
Ironic, marrying with money not with your partner
Easy money for the men,
Seding grooms to prison, the women will try to fight back

The article that I looked at was about women’s rights and marriage dowries that were pressured on women when getting married. I think that it is very unfair for the women who have to pay just to get married to the one they love and unfair that the men use marriage as a way to make money, and you know, marriage is supposed to be a girl’s happiest day of her life. The dowries and marriages based on money break that happy dream and turn it into a nightmare. The tradition exists in many countries, but in my opinion I think that India has the worst stories. Because in many cultures that had dowries, they got rid of it, or the women pay only a small amount, just as a celebratory allowance for their new lives. In India, the money they have to spend is not an amount of an allowance, and they pay to the groom’s family and not to their new lives. The men in India who use the women to make money should be arrested, and to prevent dowries from being a huge problem, I think that schools should educate the children about dowries and discourage it. Also, so that changes occur instantly, the government should set a maximum amount of money that a dowry can be so that the groom’s family does not ask for impossible amounts.
1. Why was the dowry tradition created?
2. How have the women of India tolerated this issue until a few decades ago?
3. What is the government doing to get rid of the dowry?

Haruka Fukukawa

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Social Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.