It appears that a number of acid attacks against women are motivated by dowry demands, such as in this example.
In my mind, a dowry is something that’s settled before the marriage ceremony. Man (and/or his family) agrees to marry Woman on condition of a dowry of, say, $1000. Do these attacks then occur when Man/his family decide they want more money later? Or are dowries paid in installments and these attacks happen when Woman’s family gets in arrears on the note?
I’m not sure you’re going to find much logic or structure when it comes to domestic abuse, which is essentially all this is.
I didn’t read the entire page, but this quote caught my attention “it is typically the culmination of a series of prior domestic abuses by the husband’s family.”
From here.
Both that page and this one mentioned that suicide (by the bride) is fairly common as they see it as their only way to stop the abuse.
That seems to be more the case. I only skimmed those pages, but it seems like it’s set up as a contract before the marriage and if they can’t agree or don’t pay, the marriage is called off.
However, it seems in India, the groom, or groom’s family can/will randomly demand more money under the thread of violence or death of the bride. IOW, they’re holding her hostage.
“In some cases, dowry is used as a threat or hostage type situation, in order to extract more property from the bride’s family”
I’m not seeing anything explicitly stating why this happens though. I’m left with similar questions as you. That is, are the terms of the dowry being changed after the marriage? Is the bride (or bride’s family) not making good on what they agreed to? I’m thinking it’s a combination of the two. Plus, if you have it in you to throw acid on someone’s face or set them on fire, there may very well not be a whole lot of logic behind your actions.
There are too many examples to list here, and far too depressing to even want too.
From some of the articles I read over the years, the issue is rarely that the bride’s family cannot/does not pay, it is that for whatever reason, the husband/husband’s family decide that the initial dowry was insufficient or insulting. I read one a few years back that the dowry included a new car for the husband, but he was unhappy getting a high end domestic car rather than a Mercedes Benz or something similar.
The final attacks, be it burnings, acid or the like, are generally the conclusion of a long trend of physical and/or emotional violence directed at the woman in an effort to get emotional or financial satisfaction. As well as the other, sadly common option, of forcing the woman to the point of suicide, which leaves the groom free to pursue another spouse and dowry while keeping anything they’ve already received. And the stresses of COVID have made this worse of course.
While the dowry system is illegal in India, it is a commonly ignored law, and enforcement has always been . . . slack? as well as a major uphill battle for the woman’s family to get suicides and suspicious deaths even considered as dowry murders. The current traditionalist passions running through India (and for that matter, across much of the world) is probably making things worse rather than better as well.
From what I’ve read in the news (because of the large number of immigrants from south Asia in Canada, it is newsworthy) this seems to be the inherent greed of some people and a form of domestic abuse. It often is not the husband, but the rest of the family, since families tend to live together in India. The husband or in-laws start griping about how the initial dowry was not enough, that the bride’s family should pay more, etc. etc. I assume this is also exacerbated if the bride is from a richer but lower caste/class family - “my son could have done better”. Eventually, if they don’t get their way, or if the gravy train stops, someone will attack the bride on the theory that the husband can remarry and receive another dowry. Along with acid attacks the common description of attacks was “bride burning”.
No ethnicity or nationality has a monopoly on greed.
Just to add - sometimes the dowry takes the form of things like domestic appliances, or in the extreme, the example mentioned above of a car - not just cash. The bride is bullied - or their family - to cough up more. Most often these assaults take the form of throwing oil on the wife and setting her on fire. If the result is a dead wife (or too terrified to testify), it is then characterized as an accident while cooking. Often, the authorities are reluctant to prosecute. The injured wife may not testify because then she will likely have to go home to her family, will have difficulty remarrying in a society which values being married, and if badly scarred will have even more difficulty remarrying.
One news item when this first became prominent in the news was that the government there was making a special effort to prosecute these crimes. However, there are usually no outside witnesses so it could be difficult.
I believe this article reflects the circumstances I remember reading, if not this exact one, it seems sadly likely it was similar. It gives a bit more information on the existing dowry laws and the major (!) loopholes included.