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The
Imperial Origins of Dowry
 The
word "dowry" is almost synonymous with Indian women's oppression under
patriarchal systems. It has been a short cut for indicating low status for
women, the argument being that the callous and mundane efficiency of
"dowry deaths" indicates the low value of women's labor and the high cost
of their marriages, making women a liability for their natal families and
a source of lucre for their marital families.
There is ample evidence that the phenomenon of dowry is expanding,
spreading to communities where it had never existed, and that the value of
dowries is rising to untenable limits; there are horrific reports of
fathers selling kidneys to cover dowry payments, or collective suicides in
families with multiple daughters. The Indian government's Department of
Women and Child Development reported 6,006 dowry deaths for 1997.
The common conclusion has been to condemn exorbitant dowries. Scholars and
activists have been pointing out, however, that criminalizing the giving
and taking of dowry and applying social pressure to ban dowry in marriages
are partial and inadequate solutions. Rather, the problem of dowry must be
considered alongside questions of property, labor and the fundamental
nature of marriage.
Dowry, or some form of marriage payment, is hardly unique to India. Of the
563 societies listed in George P Murdock's Atlas of World Cultures, 24
(four per cent) are associated with dowry systems, 226 with bride wealth
(grooms' families making payments to brides' families), and 63 with bride
service (grooms contributing labor to brides' families in lieu of money).
Anthropologists have suggested that marriage payments are one of the ways
in which cultures expand social relations between communities by
exchanging gifts. Other explanations are that marriage payments help
secure labor rights, or that they provide occasions for display of social
status. Jack Goody claimed that European dowries were a way for families
to pass on pre-mortem inheritance to their daughters.
Similarly, Veena Talwar Oldenburg has claimed in her book, 'Dowry Murder:
The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime' - released last month at the
Asia Society, New York - that in Punjab, dowry was a form of 'streedhan'
(women's wealth). Dowry was put together by the bride's female relatives,
partly from their own jewellery but partly from setting aside household
resources. Land was attached to households and neither men nor women were
sole legal owners of pieces of property. This benefited women because it
gave them a fund of their own. But this practice changed as colonial
policies were put into place.
Oldenburg contends that dowry among Punjabis had commonly functioned as a
property fund for women, "one of the few indigenous, woman-centered
institutions in an overwhelmingly patriarchal and agrarian society", put
together by women over numerous years, and paid for through a complex
system of community reciprocity.
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to
Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to
control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to
dowry were all 'scapegoating' attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the
problem and justified colonial paternalist domination.
Oldenburg not only refutes the evidence that infanticide was a high-caste
Hindu problem and that dowry was suddenly extortionate, but turns the
culpability back upon the colonial State. She argues that the growing
impoverishment had a far greater correlation with colonial land and
revenue policies and suppression of modern industry. And increasing
son-preference correlated highly with the colonial construction of males
as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the
military.
A professor of history at Baruch College (City University of New York),
Oldenburg emphasizes that the present scenario bears little resemblance to
pre-colonial traditions. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected
in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female
feticide may be traced back in Punjab to colonial policies.
Research (including my own in 'She Comes to Take her Rights: Indian Women,
Property and Propriety') has indicated that dowry cannot be treated as
equivalent to women's inheritance. Unlike the European case, neither is it
equal to the share of wealth that would go to sons, and nor are daughters
given property in cases where no dowry has been given.
Arguments that daughters are cut off from their natal families after
marriage, that dowry "pays off" their share of property, and that sons
look after parents in old age are used to deny women shares of natal
inheritance. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on
marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women
will tolerate abuse within marriage.
It may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages
because they know they will receive little else from their parents, as
activist Madhu Kishwar has famously contended. But dowry often is not a
fund that is for their own use or control, and does not have the benefits
of an inheritance portion.
As noted anthropologist M N Srinivas declared, the contemporary phenomenon
of Indian dowry may be explained not in terms of scriptural concepts but
as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to colonial
monetization of the economy and to postcolonial globalization. It can also
be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry
daughters to families of higher status and to "sanskritisation" where
communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices.
Legal drives to ban the practice of dowry in India have met with little
success. The Dowry Prohibition (Amendment) Act (1984, 1986) makes the
giving and taking of dowry "as a condition of marriage" punishable by law,
while excluding "voluntary gifts" - a combination of provisions which
makes for toothless sanctions. Not only may gifts easily be claimed as
voluntary or be deliberately distanced from the wedding ceremony, but
because dowry-givers are penalized as well as dowry-takers, even those
coerced into payment are unlikely to file claims.
Dowry practices are thus legally prosecuted largely in conjunction with
suicides or murders connected to dowry demands or in conjunction with
domestic violence or property recovery cases often filed in conjunction
with divorces. Legal directives are blatantly ignored in the focus on
wealth and status accumulation, and the urgency of having daughters
married at all cost.
The Indian women's movement has advocated for change on a broader level:
Women's organizations have insisted that dowry be viewed not as an
isolated phenomenon but in the context of broader gender subordination and
the effects of capitalist processes. The focus has been on simultaneously
protesting dowry and strengthening claims for parental inheritance. They
also campaigned for fundamental social changes in attitudes towards
daughters, and for altering the status of marriage as women's inevitable
fate and sole source of security.
The zenith of the anti-dowry movement was in the 1970s and 1980s. The
movement appeared to lose steam in the 1990s as women's organizations
dealt with a spate of other issues, but problems related to dowry
continued to multiply.
In September 2002, the All-India Democratic Women's Association organized
a national workshop to further study the phenomenon and revitalize the
movement. While moving a resolution to start a national campaign against
dowry, it was reiterated that dowry is fundamentally related to structural
inequalities in Indian society.
This new resolution is a reminder that dowry is not an inevitable
component of culture, and that the focus of reform ought to be on
problematizing the practice itself - not just its excesses - as part of
confronting systems of patriarchal domination.
– Srimati Basu
April 26, 2003
Srimati Basu teaches
Anthropology, Women's Studies & Asian Studies at DePauw University, USA
References:
'Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime' by Veena Talwar
Oldenburg; Oxford University Press, 2003; 261 pages; $30.
'She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety' by
Srimati Basu; Kali for Women, 2001; 305 pages; Rs 350.
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
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