Bride Burning, Murders and Dowry Pressure in India

In certain communities in South Asia, the low status of girls has to be compensated for by the payment of a dowry by the parents of the girl to the husband at the time of marriage. This has resulted in a number of dowry crimes, including mental and physical torture, starvation, rape, and even the burning alive of women by their husbands and/or in-laws in cases where dowry payments are not met.

In honor killings, most of the women are killed on the basis of an illicit relationship as specified by their partner or family. Sometimes the killings are carried out for ridiculously pathetic reasons such as failing to serve a meal on time can be seen as a stain on family honor and can lead to woman’s death. In modern time, where the world is revolving around technological advances and the independence of women and gender equality, honor killings have exceeded and are more rampant. While India is indeed a prominent exception to Islam 's near domination on contemporary honor killing cases in the world, Hindu honor killings in India are of different form and command from those of Islamic honor killings. Though no less gruesome, the honor killings in India are mostly confined to the northern states of India. Besides, as Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom state these killings are “perpetuated by sociocultural factors largely specific to India.” As mentioned earlier, in India, honor killing cases are not just limited to women, but they are also extended to men. However, in Pakistan and other Islamic countries, majority of honor killing cases are usually related to female victims, there are hardly any cases of male victims. In India, some of the major motives behind these atrocities are caste-specific motives such as “immoral character” and non-caste-specific illicit relationships. In Pakistan and other Islamic countries, caste purity is not a concern, the motivation behind

"Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbors’ garden.” That quote from a Hindu proverb.is referring to is how in some cultures when a daughter is old enough to be married, she leaves that family and joins her husbands'. So, raising a daughter in those cultures is seen as helping another family. Unlike females when a son is born he will stay and take care of the parents as they age. This son preference can lead to some countries committing gendercide. The act of gendercide is the mass killing of people because of their sex. Gendercide is a horrid trend that is due to the son preferences of many countries. Parents in Countries such as china and India have been killing there daughters. In India 25 percent of girls die before they can reach puberty. Also, 200 million women are missing because of being killed at a young age. There are many cultural causes of gendercide. The first is that boy babies are valued far more then female babies. Male children can carry on the family name, take care the parents when they get old and are less "expensive" to raise. In India there is a dowry system where in order for a woman to be married, the bride’s family must give gifts of money, land, livestock or other expensive items. This can put I strain on poorer families who cannot afford to pay a dowry or richer families who do not want to spend that type of money. So , when they have a girl child they either get an abortion or kill the child to save money. There was a Indian mother that

Established with Adam and Eve, still surviving, marriage is the oldest institution known. Often the climax of most romantic movies and stories, whether it may be ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Dil Wale Dulhaniya Ley Jaein Gey’, marriage has a universal appeal. It continues to be the most intimate social network, providing the strongest and most frequent opportunity for social and emotional support. Though, over the years, marriage appears to be tarnished with high divorce rates, discontentment and infidelity, it is still a principal source of happiness in the lives of respective partners. Although marriage is perceived as a deeply flawed institution serving more the needs of the society than those of the individuals, nevertheless, marriage is

Rajeev Narang, in telling the oral love story of how he met his wife, implicitly explains the culture of India in the mid-20th century and even delves deeper into the subcultures of the region and their impact on love and marriage. Indian culture, even more so decades ago, was known for its system of arranged marriages that primarily focused on the compatibility between families and little on the love between two potential partners. In their journal article, “Gender Scripts and Age at Marriage in India,” authors Sonalde Desai and Lester Andrist discuss the marriage system in India in terms of the gender roles that men and women play, the impact of family intervention, and how age and economic factors impact marriage decisions. Specifically, when mentioning the influence of family, they state, “It is particularly crucial to look beyond individual decisions to focus on what the marriage of a son or daughter represents for the parents. Marriage systems… have been dominated by the influence of the corporate family” (668).

People often said that daughters were “someone else’s treasure” and that the sooner you parted ways with them the “better off” everyone was (Sheth 9). As a result of this male dominated mindset and society, women were caught in a cycle of misery and restraint that was seemed impossible to abandon (Indian Women). Unfortunately, it gave rise to some of the most evil practices in the Indian culture, such as Sati, child marriage and the limitations on female education.

Parent understand that their girls are a burden and their sons are a gift, and this is what their sons and daughters grow up believing. The dowry placed on girls plays greatly into the sex-selected abortion rate in India. Boys are plainly and simply a better financial investment. Boys will not cost the parents money for marriage, in fact, with a marriage, they are guaranteed to make the parents money. Parents forced with the decision to have a girl and deal with the financial consequences, or abort and hope and pray for better luck in the gender of their child next time around. Quite often they chose the

The size of a woman’s foot was often used by a man and his parents to decide if a woman was attractive or marriage worthy. Small feet were seen as a valued trait because it demonstrated that a woman could be subjected to physical suffering. This physical suffering proved that a woman was capable of obeying her husband. (Hong, F., 1997) Foot binding was also attractive to prospective husbands and in-laws because it demonstrated that a woman’s family was wealthy enough to practice foot binding and keep their daughters from working in the field.

In the article "Gendercide" (2010), the author focuses on the alarming rate at which parents are aborting or killing baby girls in the attempt to have a baby boy. Practically world wide, there is a preference for sons. One country highly affected by this ideology is China. With the one-child limit in China, the desire for males rather than females is heightened. Although, it is not just this rule that contributes to the demand for baby boys. Many countries prefer a son because of old traditions. In many areas of the world, when a daughter married, she left her family and no one was left to take care of the parents when they aged. Having a son also used to be notably beneficial economically for a family. In most cases, many traditions that favored

It is regrettable that female infanticide and foeticide are rapidly decreasing the female population throughout India. The main factors that is responsible for the increase in the incidence of female infanticide and foeticide is the low status of women, son preference, and the practice of dowry across all casts groups.

In the United States we condemn those acts and even cry out for justice for these women. This is a culture and society unlike our own. Women here in the United States are free from dowries and the traditions which make them property of their husbands, however, acts of violence stands as a reminder to women of their low worth in society. The "dowry deaths" in India are undercounted, largely because the husband and his family frequently try to disguise the murder as a suicide or an accident. A frequent scam is to set the wife alight with kerosene, and then claim she died in a kitchen accident. In 1987 the police officially recorded 1,786 dowry deaths in all of India, but women’s action groups estimates that 1,000 women burned alive in Gujurat state alone (Jaggar & Rothenberg, 1993).

In order to understand divorce, it is important that we begin by defining what marriage is since divorce wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the step of marriage. According to our book, Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach (12th edition), it defines marriage as: “A group’s approved mating arrangements, usually marked by a ritual of some sort (the wedding) to indicate the couple’s new public status” (Henslin, 452). The mere indication that a marriage is consummated depending on the custom of some cultures and societies is interesting since it is what is done in all cultures and societies in their own way so that it is accepted in the eye of the public. An interesting fact during my research that I found is that no matter where in the world it occurs, it is done differently. And usually consists of one bride and one groom, but not always effectuated by sexual relationship as some of the examples of different cultures and societies named in our sociology

In American culture, marriages are optically discerned as very unpropitious. This is because we have grown up with the cognizance that when it comes time to espouse, we will have culled our spouse of our own free will. This way, the match will be a love match instead of being coerced into a marriage. Adolescent men and women grow up in India with a totally opposite view of marriage (Jain 7, 2017). It is taught, that when it comes time to marry, their parents will be the ones to find a suitable spouse. For over 1,000 years, Indian’s have perpetrated this tradition and have kept very rudimental credence’s and values when it comes to culling the spouse. As of 2016, over 90% of Indian marriages were arranged (Toledo 2017). Surprisingly, the divorce rate is lower in India than in the United States. Although arranged marriages are very prevalent in India, they are not always desired. Being coerced into a marriage can prove to be very stressful and awkward as shown by Nnaemka in the story “Marriage is a Private Affair” by Chinua Achebe.

In Hinduism, marriage is a connection between two souls. Also, they think that the gender of a person is not fixed. For example, the male might become the female in his next life. It is also possible for the couple to become separated temporarily for one or two lifetimes. However, since their souls are linked, they will be reunited.

The initial major cause of divorce in arranged marriages is forced marriage. When both sides get married unwillingly, a lifelong struggle will begin to adapt with the undesired reality. The Saudi Gazette newspaper stated that a lot of women are still forced into their marriages by their families (“Saudi Arabia Forced and Arranged Marriages”, 2003). Especially in Saudi Arabia, marriage is viewed through a