Dowry Crimes

Dowry Crimes Culture is the enduring behavior ideas attitudes and tradition shared by a large group of people transmitted from one generation to the next. India is one of those countries that has strong influences on cultures. The custom of Dowry long entrenched in India’s male dominant. Society has attained alarming proportions during the last few decades. There is hardly a day when the cries of Dowry victim echoes throughout the town. Brides are still being harassed physically and mentally for bringing sufficient Dowry. Violent crimes against women have ensured that they minimally participate in the economic social arena. It is not a secret that throughout the history women suffered an unprivileged social status. Many people are confused as to what Dowry is, where Dowry crimes occur, and why they occur. Dowry are the deaths of young women who are murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by husbands and in-laws in an effort to extort an increase Dowry. Dowry deaths are reported in various countries. Most Dowry deaths occur when the young woman are unable to bear the harassment and torture commits suicide. Most of these suicides are by hanging or by fire. Something the woman are killed setting themselves on fire which is know as “bride burning”. Bride burning is a form of domestic Violence practiced in parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries located on or around the Indian subcontinent. . In bride-burning cases it is alleged that a man, or his family, douses his wife with kerosene , gasoline, or other flammable liquid, and sets the woman alight, leading to death by fire.

The Indian national crime bureau reports that there were about “6787 dowry death cases registered in India in 2005. Incidents of dowry deaths during the year 2005 (6,787) have increased significantly by 46.0 percent over 1995 level (4,648). However, the increase was marginal (0.1%) over an average of 2000-2004 and there was a decline by 3.4 percent (7,026) compared to year 2005 (Dowry 1).” Dowry crime has only been around for 60 years. It was only in the middle 1970s that the women’s movement and other human right groups exposed the spitefulness of the system in India, when it was realized that there were an increased number of accidental kitchen deaths of young married woman. The first reports to the police were often registered as suicides or accidents. The available statistics of Dowry deaths are chilling and disturbing. Initially women’s group protested individual cases of Dowry deaths. A national campaign focused on humiliating and socially boycotting the families in these cases. The campaign also demanded that the mysterious deaths be presumed to be murders until further investigation or proved otherwise by the police. The demand for special cells of women police officers to head investigations of Dowry murders led to an amendment of the outdated Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, which was later further amended so that all street hand gifts had to be registered in the wife’s name at the time of the marriage. Unfortunately in India basic attitudes to female life have remained unchanged, and the Dowry is seen as a bribe to the son-in-law to keep there daughter. Who after a certain age is totally unwanted in her parental home. Families often know that they are virtually signing a death warrant when they give there daughter away in marriage. The parents really don’t care they just want to get rid of there daughter. Even if they know what is going on they are still willing to take that chance because after a certain age she is not welcomed in the home. Unless there is a strong awareness in the minds of the people, unless the entire society believes that dowry is an evil, unless the entire society objects to the demand for dowry, unless every mother-in-law thinks that at one time she too was a daughter-in-law, unless every mother thinks that the treatment which she gives to her daughter-in-law can also be received by her own daughter, the evils of dowry will remain in society. The Law definitely helps to prevent the evil of dowry but to make the Law effective and fruitful, people should follow the Law and see that dowry demands are not made and dowry deaths do not occur. A word of advice: One should not treat Marriage as a lottery. After all "The Love of money is the root of all evil".Dowry death is considered one of the many categories of violence against women in south Asia. More than 5,000 Dowry deaths occur every year in India. More than a dozen women die each day in kitchen fires, which are designed to pass off as accidents because parents-in laws are dissatisfied with their Dowries. Only a few of the stories are brought to justice. With all of these deaths that is a lot of deaths to be happening in a short period of time. The women are just starting to live there lives. Then boom there life is taken from them just because there parent-in laws are dissatisfied with the Dowry they have received. That is a pretty stupid reason to kill someone because you are not happy with the gift they have received. The reason why Dowry crimes occur is not because of the mismatch between gifts demanded by in-laws and presents received, but because young married women customarily have no political significance in their new families. The continuous demand for Dowry is but one of the ways in which the deficient political status is exploited. I have come to the firm conclusion that the terms 'dowry death' and 'dowry violence' are misleading. They contribute towards making domestic violence in India appear as a unique, exotic phenomenon by giving the impression that Indian men are the only ones in the world to use violence based on astute and rational calculations. By this logic, it would appear that men in all other parts of the world are truly stupid because they beat and kill their wives without any benefit accruing to them, whereas Indian men attack their spouses in the expectation of extorting financial rewards from their in-laws.
Domestic violence is about using brute force to establish power relations in the family whereby women are taught and conditioned to accept a subservient status. Domestic violence is a way of trying to get women to believe that they can only live at men's mercy. It is often committed by men with low self-esteem who destroy a woman's sense of self worth because they feel inadequate to cope with a woman who thinks and acts as a free human being with a mind of her own. Like rape, wife battering points to the common predicament of women across nations, castes, classes, religions and regions. Who would have ever thought that you would have to be worried about your sole mate? How can you go through life having to worry about if your spouse is going to kill you? When you get married jus make sure its meant to because if not it could end up costing you your life.