This is so sad. Such barbaric customs
And she is truly beautiful. Very sad.
Not sad, brilliant, hopeful and inspiring 
Perhaps the start of a change that will help put an end to “kitchen accidents” and slowly even a change in the status of women in India. If dowery truely dies out then that is one leg knocked out from under the idea that baby girls are less worth, and a turnaround in the horrendous trends associated with that belief.
I have a few indian friends and dowry’s are explained from this perspective (barring the horrendous trends).
Husbands are expected to care for their wives in a way that ensures the woman will not have to work outside the home (and in some cases a servant (maid) is expected to be retained) so the dowry is really just supposed to supplement what the woman would have made at a paying job.
Interestingly, I’ve seen articles in several newspapers and news magazines suggesting that the dowry system is steadily dying in India for an unexpected reason: a severe shortage of women!
India has not engaged in population control measures as severe as China’s, but for decades now, abortion for sex selection has been common in India. As a result, in many parts of India, there are FAR more single, marriage-age men than women.
This is having unforeseen consequences. For one thing, men who wants brides (or a family trying to find a bride for their son) can no longer turn up their noses at women from the “wrong” caste. At this point, many would be delighted to find a decent woman of ANY caste.
And, whereas in the past, a girl had to provide a dowry, in many parts of India, the WOMEN now have most of the power. They can hold out for the most promising/prosperous suitor, who will not be in a position to demand a dowry (he should count his lucky stars that he’s found a bride at all!).
Now, I’ve never been to India, and can’t vouch for the accuracy of such reports. But IF they’re true… it will be interesting (and not necessarily pleasant) to see what becomes of India AND China, once it becomes apparent that they have tens of millions of young unemployed/underemployed males who have no hope at all of ever finding women.
HA! Good for her!
I read about her from another article. It seems her in-laws demanded another $25,000 rupees at the reception. This in addition to color televisions, etc.
The bride put her foot down, and called the cops. Good for her!
What is a “kitchen accident”?
Well, yes. But sad that it happens and so many women have been killed over it. I just hope the practice will end soon.
Snoooooopy -
A “kitchen accident” is when a new bride, one who usually brought an “insufficient” dowry to the wedding, is burned to death “accidentally” while working in the kitchen.
“Kitchen accident” is the Indian equivelant of “walking into a door”. It is a phrase often used to explain what has happened to women who have been set on fire by her in-laws. I don’t know if the same term is used by the women whose husbands, parents, inlaws, whatever pour acid on them.
Kitchen accidents are those little accidents that happen to women who don’t meet the demands for dowry.
kitchen accident
They even have polyandry in one area of India due to a dearth of females.
Is this polyandry where there’s one woman and several men, or like a group of men and women (with fewer women than men)?
It’s like polygamy - only one woman having several husbands.
It’s also in Tibetan culture, but amost exclusively just with brothers, ie two brothers share a wife.
Personally, I find this utterly riotous.
After decades of gender selective abortion both communist China and India are now arriving at the logical extension of their misogynistic cultures.
In the PRC, marriageable women are so scarce that poor peasant girls from the outer territories have their choice of men to pick from. We’re talking about women who, a few decades ago, once faced a spinster life because of their lowly economic status.
I can feel little if any sympathy for a culture that has so severely repressed women to the point where the normal birthrate imbalance that naturally favors women has been intentionally upset in favor of men. Let us hope that this will help to undermine one of the Subcontinent’s most revolting of all traditions.
Soon, we should begin to see a de-stigmatization of the Harijan or Bhangis caste (otherwise known as the Untouchables). There have already been measures taken to assure proper representation of this caste in government. Perhaps with inter-caste marriages there will begin a gradual erosion of this disgusting policy as well.
Again, I have absolutely zero sympathy for whatever difficulties this final upshot of centuries of female repression brings. More power for women should quickly set things on a proper track for these cultures to join the twenty-first century.
I, too, hope that the gender imbalances in India and China (and wherever else this is happening due to gender selecting abortion) will result in women becoming more valued and precious due to their scarcity. It wouldn’t surprise me at all, however, for these mysogynist countries to find a way to make the women pay for the messed-up priorities of the country they live in. You don’t undo the work of systematically dehumanizing women in one generation.
I’ve read newspaper articles that say some desperate Chinese men have resorted to kidnapping women from North Korea. I don’t know how much credence to give to these stories, however. It’s ironic to see both of these countries belatedly waking up to the fact that women are necessary.
featherlou: It wouldn’t surprise me at all, however, for these mysogynist countries to find a way to make the women pay for the messed-up priorities of the country they live in. You don’t undo the work of systematically dehumanizing women in one generation.
Just a second, folks. While I’m saying nothing in favor of the dowry system (much less bride burning), I think there are a lot of uninformed generalizations being tossed around here. Did you know that
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women make up about 10% of the members of the Indian Parliament (female membership in the U.S. Congress is only about 14%)?
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the percentage of female students in Indian higher education is consistently increasing (currently at about 38%)?
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the percentage of women murdered by spouses or in-laws in India is about the same as the percentage of women murdered by their partners or ex-partners in the US?
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that the Indian Constitution explicitly specifies equal rights for women and men (a provision that was recently rejected in the US as an amendment to our own Constitution)?
I’ve lived in India (and will return to live there for another year this fall), and before I went I too used to think that India must be a horribly and pervasively misogynistic culture. I found out that I was wrong. There are long-standing traditions of respect and deference to the authority of women in Indian culture, as well as the long-standing traditions of their subjugation.
I don’t approve of dowry exactions or sex-selective abortions, but let’s face it, they exist not because Indians in general hate or despise women, but because of traditional practice. Sons have always been preferred because in Hindu religion, there are important rituals that only sons have traditionally been allowed to perform. Dowry is in fact illegal, but it persists because it’s an ingrained custom (although it has become less common among educated upper classes). Dowry murder is indeed an appalling crime, but it’s no more common than wife murder in the US.
India is indeed in many ways a more sexist culture than the US, and I often find that burdensome, and certainly I welcome the changes that are taking place to make it more equal. But it sounds as though some of you have a sort of exaggerated cartoon impression of India as a land where women are little better than domestic slaves to be murdered at will for their dowries. Let’s not get so carried away with our feminism that we forget about fighting ignorance.
Zenster: Soon, we should begin to see a de-stigmatization of the Harijan or Bhangis caste (otherwise known as the Untouchables). […] Perhaps with inter-caste marriages there will begin a gradual erosion of this disgusting policy as well.
The modern term for this group is “Dalits”. Their status is indeed largely wretched, but you’re wrong in thinking that inter-caste marriage and de-stigmatization for Dalits hasn’t even begun yet. In fact, quite a few Dalits who have had the advantages of government-guaranteed higher education and the consequent boost in socioeconomic status do marry members of caste groups, a traditionally forbidden form of mixing.
And again, remember that even in our boasted free society, it’s still very common for people to be shocked by inter-racial relationships or marriages. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the flaws and injustices in Indian society, but we shouldn’t omit to take a good hard look in the mirror too.
Thanks, Kimstu for refuting the ignorant statements about India made on this board. I shoud also add that India has had a woman prime-minister, so to blanketly cast India as some mysoginistic hell-hole is a gross mischaracterization.
As to the Dalits, it is sad the economic and social abuse they have suffered for centuries. However, the following is true:
- They are guaranteed equal rights under the Indian consitution.
- India has set up numerous afirmitave-action type programs in an effort to redress historical discrimination issues. And these are strict quotas that are enforced even on private schools and industries. This is the kind of stuff that makes people scream reverse-discrimination in the US.
While I cannot justify the historical treatment of women or Dalits, for people on this board to act as if India has not made great strides since independence is ignorant and uninformed.
FWIW, there are hardly any comments in this thread that egregiously vilify Indian culture. Zenster may have gone a bit overboard and Kimstu responsed to him, but, by and large, the points he made are very relevant and important.
I saw some of the responses at www.fark.com and nearly got a heart attack reading the massive quantities of ignorant comments. It is almost as if many Americans view the world as paradise (US and some parts of Europe) vs. hell (the rest).