Daughter’s Rights in Her Parental Family
This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-78, Sep-Oct 1993)
The practice of dowry has drawn a great deal of criticism in the last century or so among the socially influential urban educated middle classes in India, and has come to be identified as one of the key aspects of Indian women’s oppression. The opponents of dowrybase their critique on the fact that the pressure of providing dowry for daughters makes daughters appear burdensome, and therefore unwanted. Dowry is condemned for being an economic burden on parents. Yet dowry opponents seldom base their criticism on sensible economic calculations. That is why this article focuses on such calculations. It ignores the no less important cultural and social dimensions of dowry. Some of these other issues have been covered in my earlier articles.
This is not intended as a comprehensive analysis of the role of dowry in Indian marriages. I have
deliberately limited my analysis of dowry payments to those of urban middle and upper class families, who are also among the most articulate critics of the institution of dowry. They continue to decry it as a social evil even though they have emerged as the trendsetters in escalating the scale of dowry…