A bright young woman, an IIM doctorate and university professor, was told by a 40-year-old prospective groom that her monthly income of ₹95,000 was “too little”. His mother told her parents that they were a “status family” that expected them to share the costs of a grand wedding with their 200 guests in a seven-star Delhi hotel. When accosted, the groom feigned ignorance about the conversation.
The troubled woman spoke with a counsellor who advised her, “Never marry someone who asks you for money; their demands never end.” She was 37, and being a highly educated and confident woman, she rejected him.
Boys’ parents cleverly cite status as the reason for extracting money from young women’s parents. The groom’s parents are not alone in this deal. The girl’s parents directly ask the groom’s parents, “What’s your demand?” The latter quantify it and the former set out to fulfil it. Rationalising their actions, they say, “If we want our daughter married well, we have to pay the price.”
There is a fancy price tag on male IIT and IIM graduates, IAS officers, doctors, and IT professionals. The groom’s parents say they have spent lakhs on their education. Interestingly, the parents of girls educated in similar institutions are also compelled to give a dowry.
In Vedic times, girls had inheritance rights but no dowry. Chroniclers such has Arrian and Megasthenes had written in their book on Alexander the Great that there was no dowry. Rather, men paid a bride price which left some of them unmarried. The epics reflect the later overturning of a girl’s social position and the privileging of patriarchy.
When I turned 19 in 1968, my aunt from the north told my mother, “A dowry is no longer saris, gold and utensils for the girl to use after marriage. The groom’s family expects the bride’s parents to gift them a fully furnished house.” “What happens if they can’t,” asked my stunned mother.
“Then, she can’t get married, or has to marry a widower or a divorcee,” replied my aunt.
In 2021, the BBC reported a study on Indian villages stating that the age-old tradition had continued with a remarkable rise in the amount paid between 1957 and 1975, but now it seems to have come down. This is not true.
What has changed is the manner in which the dowry is taken. The groom’s family, fearing anti-dowry laws enacted in 1956, insists on getting the cash and other considerations before the wedding. Even my house help tells me she will have to raise a loan to give the girl’s prospective groom a tola or two of gold and cash they ask for during the engagement.
In 1948, when my parents got married, my grandfather took no dowry. He believed in a simple wedding so that the girl’s parents were not burdened. He came with his sons and their wives at 8 in the morning and left soon after the wedding. My uncle’s wife drove the couple to Jalandhar where my father worked in a bank. There were no decorations on the car nor on the bungalow in which my mother went to live. Instead, she was welcomed by her beaming eldest sister-in-law who had raised my motherless father since age three.
The next day, my father told my mother, “That cupboard has clothes for you.” My mother found many beautiful saris with matching blouses, purses and a dozen pairs of sandals waiting for her. Intrigued, she asked, “With so many clothes here, why didn’t you bring even one sari along?” He answered, “Father said the girl’s going to wear them here; why carry them to Delhi and back?” Their family shunned show.
My father’s was a “status family”. My grandfather and my uncles held top government positions. Yet none of them had taken a penny for their sons or grandsons’ weddings. This is what status families do.
Those who want a grand wedding should spend on it. One does not have to be wealthy to marry without a dowry. It is a mindset. Those who demand a price are exploiters, not worth a glance.
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