Dowry and related evils

A REPORT in an Indian newspaper (November 21) spoke of Daljit Kaur, who jumped to her death from the top floor of a house in Delhi, because her in-laws had been harassing her unceasingly about the inadequacy of the dowry she had brought upon her marriage to their son.

I have since found that she was simply one of the thousands of young brides who are killed, or driven to suicide, in South Asia for the same reason each year. A common way of getting rid of a dowry-deficient daughter-in-law is to burn her alive and call it an accident. Here is a typical incident.

Charanpreet Kaur grew up in a middle class neighbourhood in Delhi. Her father tutored primary school kids, and her mother taught in a government primary school. As Charanpreet passed high school and turned 19, some family friends suggested a suitable “match” in the person of Satwant Singh, who made ten thousand rupees per month as a software engineer. The parents on both sides met in the local gurdwara and made a deal. A few months later, Charanpreet and Satwant Singh were married. The dowry and the wedding dinner for 250 guests cost the girl’s parents Rs. 413,000 (in my reckoning a huge amount for a family of school teachers).

A month later Satwant Singh asked Charanpreet to bring a hundred thousand rupees from her parents for him to set up his own business. They borrowed the money from relatives and gave it to him. A few weeks later, he and his parents made additional demands, which her parents were not able to meet. They then subjected her to physical and mental torture for several months.

On the morning of August 19, 2005 Satwant Singh, his father and mother, and a sister-in-law ganged up on Charanpreet, and forced her into a bathroom. Her husband covered her mouth with his hand, her father-in-law poured kerosene on her head and clothes, set her on fire and left. Moments later, screaming, her entire body on fire, Charanpreet ran downstairs to the ground floor, fell and fainted. Her husband and father-in-law, fully expecting her to remain unconscious and die fairly quickly, took her to a hospital. She regained consciousness and, before dying, gave her statement to the police and a magistrate whom the hospital authorities had summoned.

Now some refreshing news. Nisha Sharma, a computer science student in Deli, was to wed a school teacher on May 11, 2003. The dowry her parents were to provide had already been settled, and it included jewellery, clothes, furniture, a television set, a refrigerator, and an automobile. (This despite the fact that dowry in India is illegal, something of which we will say more shortly.) Minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the groom demanded an additional Rs. 1.2 million rupees as a condition for the marriage to take place. Upon hearing this, Nisha cancelled the wedding, called the police and got the groom arrested. Her courage and defiance, applauded all over the country, made her a celebrity overnight. In the following months a couple of other girls followed her example. But dowry remains a deeply entrenched, and even growing, appendage to the institution of marriage.

Dowry in the ancient world related to the woman’s chance to inherit from her father. In ancient Greece, for instance, she did not inherit. Her father arranged her marriage and provided a dowry as her share of his property. But he could recall his daughter, and the dowry he had given her, to his home any time he wanted.

It seems that the woman in ancient India also did not inherit, but she did receive a dowry (streedhan) upon her marriage. Initially, and for several hundred years, the custom was limited to the Hindu upper castes (Brahmins and Kashatriyas). Gradually, the merchant and farming castes also adopted it. It used to be confined, for the most part, to the Hindi belt: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan. But during the last 100 years, and more particularly since independence, it has spread to all parts of the country and to all classes, except perhaps the menial castes and hill tribes in the northeast.

Dowry is often condemned from the public platform. Mahatma Gandhi once called it a disgrace for the young man who accepted it and dishonouring of the woman whose family had to provide it. More recently (May 2005) the Indian Supreme Court criticized the government for not doing enough to stop the evil. It called upon the government to ask all of its male employees to disclose whether, and how much, they had received in dowry upon getting married, Writing in an Indian newspaper (October 23, 2005) Mr Pritam Pal, a judge of the Punjab-Haryana High Court, has referred to it as a cancerous evil, a social scourge attributable, among other things, to the undermining of woman by the religious orthodoxy, and to ever-increasing materialism and greed.

Barring cases in which parents give their daughter gifts as a gesture of their love for her, dowry in effect means that the groom’s family are putting him up for sale, as it were. They make demands, receive bids, and go with the highest bidder. They are charging a fee for taking the girl in, and giving her room and board. They will want as large a dowry as possible at the time of their son’s wedding, and in addition they will want it as a stream that flows into their home for many years to come.

The practice is abominable, for it reduces the prospective bride to the level of a commodity and thus humiliates her. It oppresses her parents, for in many cases it is hard for them to meet the groom’s demands. Their only alternative, as they see it, is to keep their girl at home, which too is burdensome unless she can be economically independent. Additionally, if she is still single when she has gone past her early twenties, neighbours and relatives will begin to wonder (aloud) if her “character” is still unblemished. Considering all of this, her parents will end up borrowing money to provide the required dowry and spend the rest of their lives paying back the loan.

Needless to say, many families are much too good-hearted to hassle a daughter-in-law even if her dowry does not quite meet their expectations. But some, admittedly a small minority, will hound and torment her, and eventually kill her or drive her to suicide. The numbers are not all that large.

In 1997, Mr Shayamala Cowsik, an Indian diplomat in Washington, spoke of 4,000 cases of bride-burning each year in his country; Ms Carol Bellamy, Unicef executive director, placed the number of dowry-related deaths at 5,000. Other estimates range between 7,000 and 15,000. But it has also been noted that reported deaths make only about 20 per cent of the actual number. Most of the killings are done in middle and upper class homes. On average three young brides reportedly get killed every day in the relatively prosperous town of Bangalore, where dowry and associated cruelties were almost unknown 50 years ago.

Even if the incidence of dowry deaths is modest, the custom is despicable, because it causes a great deal of anguish to countless young women and their parents.

The prospect of having to provide dowry makes the birth of girls unwelcome. In 2002 the number of girls in Delhi had fallen to 865 for every 1,000 boys; in richer neighbourhoods it had dropped to less than 800. New medical technology (ultrasound) can now identify the sex of the foetus in the mother’s womb. Even though illegal, many labs do perform this test and a clinic next door will abort the foetus.

Many middle and upper class families are going in for the abortion of female foetuses. The law in India allows abortion (but not the sex-selective kind), to be performed by authorized physicians in designated clinics. But a great many of them are performed outside the law (reportedly about five million each year).

The dowry-related tragedy is widespread enough for the Indian parliament to have passed a law (1961, amended in 1986), that forbids the taking and giving of dowry. The police are required to presume criminal involvement on the part of the husband and/or his family in case a young woman dies of causes other than natural within seven years of her marriage. But it has been exceedingly difficult to enforce the law. Since far too many people (including those in high places) follow the custom, the police are reluctant to investigate and prosecute violators, witnesses to testify, and judges to convict.

I have written the above with reference to India because the material I have found addresses the practice as it exists there. But we may assume that it is just as prevalent in Pakistan. Little is said of it, possibly because the conscience of the community here is not seized of the issue as much as it is in India. It may, however, be noted that in Pakistan a law passed in 1976, and another in 2000, sought to limit wedding-related expenses to Rs 50,000.

In March 2004, the Jamaat-i-Islami in Pakistan sponsored a “mass wedding” in Nowshera (NWFP) in which 201 couples, presumably belonging to lower class families, were married without the parents having to provide dowry or entertainment. The party paid for the meal and provided gifts to each couple. It is greatly to be commended for this wonderful initiative. One may suggest also that social reform would suit the party much better than politics could.

Nevertheless, the practice goes on unabated. In both India and Pakistan it has become increasingly connected with greed and, where it is given voluntarily, with issues of image and status. The way to curb it has to be the same as that of discouraging other expressions of greed and urges to ostentatious spending. What is that way? You tell me!

The writer is professor emeritis of political science at the university of Massacrusets at Amherst, US Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Sardars and the nationalists

THE grievance of Sindh and Balochistan against Punjab and the army (both are viewed as one and the same) for their stranglehold on political power and natural resources is as old as Pakistan itself. The discontent, never far from the surface, at intervals erupts into a loud protest emanating from Sindh and a low-level insurgency in Balochistan as is the case now.

The grievance is nurtured and expression given to it by the sardars, or tribal chieftains in Balochistan, and in Sindh by the youth, writers and lawyers. Mumtaz Bhutto, perhaps, is the only sardar among them. Quite understandably, then, the thrust of the struggle in Balochistan is on political power but on economic rights in Sindh.

In Balochistan, the most influential among the sardars and their tribes (Marri, Bugti, Mengal and Achakzai Pathan) have little say in the administration of the province. The governor doesn’t belong to the province (in the other three provinces they do) and the chief minister, too, belongs to a subsidiary tribe. In Sindh, the primary concern is about the lands being grabbed and industry and business being dominated by people who are not sons of the soil or even permanent inhabitants of the province.

The causes of discontentment and its intensity may vary but, assuredly, they reinforce the cultural and lingual affinities that already exist between the people of the two provinces. Only their leaders, because of their diverse backgrounds, interests and aims have not been able to harness it to their common advantage.

In dealing with the occasional outbursts of violence or sabotage in Balochistan, the federal authority, or the Punjabi-army juggernaut as the sardars and nationalists call it, has to rely entirely on the paramilitary forces or on the military itself. The elements opposed to the sardars are too weak to rally round and help the government and the clerics wield no influence on the fiercely secular tribes. Such has been the strategy in the past and it is no different this time round. In fact, the reliance on the use of force is increasing as the authority of the political agent and his levies is on the wane.

The sardars may have been sidelined politically but their hold on the tribes remains intact. They may not be doing much for the welfare of their isolated, primitive folks but government officials do even less while extorting more. That is why the sardars last and rule. The brief army forays or long-lasting garrisons, thus, have not made much of a dent in the tribal structure nor impaired the authority of the sardar, although when the troops camp in his area he himself might be camping in Karachi or in London.

In Sindh, on the other hand, hardly ever is the use of force necessary to deal with nationalists whose protest seldom goes beyond fiery rhetoric. They do not have the leisure, money or armed retinues of the Baloch sardars. Most among them are always able to reconcile their nationalist fervour with a role in the government. They might be ardent nationalists but suffer no qualms of conscience when working as ministers in a highly centralized system.

If insurgency in Balochistan is a recurring phenomenon which can be easily quelled and if Sindhi nationalists are generally peaceable in pursuing their agenda, why put this issue under the spotlight now? There have been some recent developments which should induce Punjab, the army and indeed all mainstream forces of the country to sit up and take notice.

After a long and frustrating effort, Mumtaz Bhutto seems to be succeeding in bringing Sindh’s well-known nationalist thinkers, and rabble-rousers on to one platform under the name of the Sindh Qaumi Ittehad. The sardars and other nationalists of Balochistan, too, are engaged in a similar enterprise. The nationalists of the two provinces plan to forge a united front. Time and emerging issues are on their side.

The nationalists should not be treated as mavericks or secessionists but as exponents of regional identity, rights and powers. Their demand for a confederation or restricting the centre to three or four subjects may be on the extreme but in the present situation the provincial governments are no more than field offices of the federal authority and that is also wholly untenable.

The situation calls for a compromise. But a stray remark recently made by the president that opposing the army amounts to opposing democracy is an invitation to confrontation. No less confrontational is a statement by Makhdum Amin Fahim that if the Kalabagh dam is built the smaller provinces would secede from the federation.

When a cool-headed and committed Pakistani like Makhdum Amin Fahim is driven to talk of secession, Punjab and the army should not remain indifferent. He may be reacting to frequent and insulting insinuations made by some ministers against those who oppose the dam but his statement mirrors the dissatisfaction of the intelligentsia and also of the common people with the legal and administrative position of Sindh in the present federal arrangement. The provincial leaders, indeed, feel insulted when Information Minister Sheikh Rashid challenges them (the source of his confidence should be in no doubt) that “we” will build not one but three dams on the Indus. And another minister, Sher Afgan, tells them that it is not the people but the big landlords of Sindh who are against the dam because the surplus water flowing down the Indus irrigates their illegally occupied (kutcha) lands in the riverine tract. Both ministers seem to be unaware of the depth of public feeling against the dam or are insensitive to it. If they are not perturbed by what Makhdum Amin Fahim says they should ask Illahi Buksh Soomro or any other Sindhi considered more moderate than him that they may know of.

Similar ministerial disdain marks the attitude of the federation when Balochistan asks for greater say in control over its natural gas and coastal waters. It hardly has any other resource. Defiance is in the blood and in the bones of the Baloch and nationhood is still a dream with them but the battle hardened sardars are getting weary. One of them, Ataullah Mengal, said in private the other day that they do not want to leave the federation but are being pushed out of it.

The president and his men might still insist that reason is on their side. But has reason alone ever held a country together? We ourselves reasoned with the Bengalis for 24 years but never spared a moment for their sentiments.

A wired Christmas

SHOPKEEPERS dreaming of a wired Christmas are seeing those dreams fulfilled with a vengeance. Online shopping in Britain has become so successful that supermarkets are unable to satisfy demand in the run-up to next weekend.

According to the Financial Times, Sainsbury planned 30 per cent more delivery “slots” this year only to find 75 per cent of them taken in the first week. Ocado, Waitrose on wheels, had to turn away 10,000 customers last week and says it could have more than tripled online sales had it had the delivery capacity. There is something appropriately ironic about the progress of internet shopping being stymied by bottlenecks in the old economy - but it does not explain why, suddenly, there has been a step change in the attraction of online ordering.

The IMRG e-retail sale index reports that online sales in November reached 2.25 billion pounds, 50 per cent above last year or an average of 94 pounds for each of Britain’s 24 million internet shoppers.

Online shopping has been available for more than five years but now appears to be at a tipping point.

The main engine of change is likely to be the country’s rapid embrace of high speed broadband internet access. This makes net shopping faster and also more consumer-friendly. The latest figures (for September) show that 57.4 per cent of all internet connections are broadband (rather than dial-up) compared with only 37 per cent a year earlier.

The more people have a favourable experience of online shopping — as opposed to the disasters that characterized its inception — the more they will return regularly and tell their friends - so progress be speeded by word-of-mouth.

Delivery is more reliable today than it was in the early days and payment is much simpler as users of Apple’s iTunes music download operation, Amazon or PayPal banking will confirm.

The rise of online shopping looks unstoppable, especially for the many products, from books to computers, with known specifications and which come with guarantees so that seeing before purchase matters less. Big traditional stores, notably in London, say that congestion charges and tougher anti-car laws are driving consumers to stay home too.

The big stores, though, are fighting back with websites of their own and pledges to match online prices. But it is not all good news for consumers. A faulty camera purchased at a rock-bottom price from an overseas website cannot easily be changed.

Internet transactions are vulnerable to online scams. But electronic shopping has come of age. These days Santa is flying by copper wire — not just coming down the chimney.

—The Guardian, London