Imperial origins of dowry (Book Review)
by SRIMATI BASU
The Kathmandu Post 26 April 2003

Imperial origins of dowry ---The word "dowry" is almost synonymous
with Indian women's oppression under patriarchal systems.



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
labour 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
criminalising 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, labour 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 (4%) are associated with dowry systems, 226 with
bridewealth (grooms' families making payments to brides' families),
and 63 with brideservice (grooms contributing labour 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 labour 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-
centred 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 also 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 emphasises 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. [Until recently,
only men inherited in Nepal and without dowry women got nothing -
GS].

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 monetisation of the economy and to postcolonial
globalisation. 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 penalised 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 organisations have insisted that dowry is 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 organisations
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
organised a national workshop to further study the phenomenon and
revitalise 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
problematising the practice itself - not just its excesses - as part
of confronting systems of patriarchal domination.

(Srimati Basu teaches Anthropology, Women's Studies and Asian Studies
at DePauw University, USA)