Our society is a male dominated. Female have been relegated to a next position of marginal importance in the family. She has been reduced to a thing, not a person.
The recent spate in the cases of girl burning exposes the society and cultural system. The torture of married women and cases of married women burning is rampant in lower middle class urban families.
The birth of a girl child is still considered to be a problem on the guardian. Giving a girl in marriage has never been an easy task. It is a very difficult practice to give a big dowry to the bridegroom and his parents, so that they may give a respectable position to the married girl in the family.
Beauty, good figure, good manners and good education can be important factor, but a good dowry is better on all these considerations. Though, in the present time throughout the world women are marching forward in all fields of life, but the evil of dowry system practice continue.
The greedy bridegroom's families put their demanded amount of dowry before fixing the date of marriage. Open materialism and consumerism have only waited the appetite of dowry seeker. The dowry amount depends upon the economic status of the respective bridegroom's family. Demand of car, motorcycle, costly furniture, ornaments is growing day by day in the marriage market. But the family of bridegrooms remain unsatisfied. The situation of burning bride is not rare in India. It is a common practice at all.
A marriage tradition which dates back centuries. It is bad custom, but it is followed by every cast, every category in each part of India. The dowry prohibition Act passed in 1961. It prohibits the request, payment or acceptance of dowry, where it is defined as a gift demanded or given as a precondition for a marriage.
It is a sad experience for many that the demands of dowry are extended for the bride's parents even after the marriage of their daughter. She is sent to her parental home to bring more cash, ornaments etc. as dowry. If she returns without that thing, the cruel treatment or torture Waits for her. When more pressure is put on the bride's parents, their dear daughter has no other option, but to commit suicide to evade more insult and torture at the hands of the members of her husband's family.
In the beginning, dowry was considered as a gift for the bridegroom from the bride's family, but now people have started talking it as a compulsion. Even the bride's family that cannot afford it, but they will have to pay.
There are cases of a number of suicides by girls, whose parents are not in a position to afford a dowry. Poor parents borrow huge sums of money at high rate of interest to provide dowry. It is another problem for the bride's family, and they become poor and poor due to debt.
Giving dowry is not a problem for the rich. In order to enhance their false social prestige, they give maximum dowry. The poor try to imitate the rich, and the process of dowry ruins them. This inhuman practice must be put to an end. Law cannot produce any desirable results.
The Anti-dowry Act 1976 must be effective for eradicating this social stigma. The dowry seeker should be socially boycotted. This social evil needs treatment at the social level.
To combat this evil, young boys and girls should come ahead and resolve not to give consent to such marriage.
Marriage should be performed in the presence of some legal authority and the services of government employees demanding dowry should be terminated.
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