Abstract
In India, the custom of dowry [payment of cash /gifts from the bride family to the bridegroom's family at marriage] not only encouraged parents to be sex selective and abort female embryos [causing skewed sex ratio] and greedy husbands and in-laws to torture and burn brides if their demands were not satiated, it also lowered women status/equality drastically. As a political positive corrective and feminist intervention the government not only banned dowry, it also introduced section 498-A in the Indian Penal Code - a non -bailable, non-compoundable and cognizable offence, against husband or relative, on cruelty to a married woman. But the law is dysfunctional due to lack of awareness, illiteracy, socio-cultural factors & joint family system. Sometimes all the adults of the family are put in jail along with infants, just on complaint, without investigations with school going children left alone to fend for themselves. On the basis of data of four districts of Bundelkhand in India where more than 40% of women jail inmates are under trials for s498A, the paper questions the criminology and impact of reforms/laws alone to curtail gender-based violence, when the basic values within the family, community and state remain patriarchal and against women.
Highlights
In India, the custom of dowry [payment of cash /gifts from the bride family to the bridegroom's family at marriage] encouraged parents to be sex selective and abort female embryos [causing skewed sex ratio] and greedy husbands and in-laws to torture and burn brides if their demands were not satiated, it lowered women status/equality drastically
Feminism has its roots as a political intervention into patriarchy
At the national level as shown in a report by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB)there has been a considerable rise in the reported cases of bride burning in India
Summary
In India, initially dowry was a means of providing support to the newlywed girl by her parents especially as child marriage was the norm. V.Geetha explains, “ clearly this does not explain or help the truly confused to make sense of the vicious and deeply felt jealousy and anxiety contained in the mother-in-law’s attitude towards her young bride. Afraid of losing her place in her son’s life, helpless before the curious and happy sexuality of the young woman, determined to put to use a power that has eluded her when she was young, the mother-in-law is not merely a victim of a system, and one of its constituent elements.” [2]. SHS Web of Conferences throw stove kerosene on the women and they would die with 90%or more burns
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