Rabindranath Tagore portrayed the condition of dowry in 18th century in Bangla literature in his works such as Aparichita, Dena-Pawna. After more than 100 years despite all the laws introduced to restraint dowry, we are still struggling to eradicate this problem from our culture.
Dowry began as a financial assistance for the girl in her in-laws house because most of the women weren’t allowed outside the four walls for work. They were engaged in unpaid labor controlled by the men of the family; in pottery, poultry and agriculture. Sometimes, Kulin Brahmans would marry as many wives they wished, take honorarium and move from one wife’s home to another’s home. Mostly the illiterate part of the society is involved in the tradition of dowry. They think it a part of their culture and duty towards their daughters.
But, it is unfortunate that with the increase of literacy rate, increase in dowry is also visible. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India (1928) ‘Any young man who makes dowry a condition of marriage discredits his education and his country and dishonors womankind.’ Many educated families are often seen to force the bride’s family for dowry. A give-and-take tradition followed by these families as a form of social recognition, even though they know that dowry is illegal.
At present, women constitute 28.5% of the workforce in all sectors1. Though the female employment rate went up in the last decade, women still have limited choices, control and decision-making power over their employment, finances and economic assets2. So, women’s participation in work doesn’t necessarily give her immunity from falling victim of dowry. Majority of men think that they have full rights over the income of their wives. Appropriation of wives’ income or attempt to appropriate wives’ income should be considered as dowry3. In 2018, the Dowry Prohibition Act, 2018 was passed bringing changes in the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1980. According to Section 3 & 4 of the Act, anyone involved in giving/taking or demanding dowry shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than one year but which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to fifty thousand taka.
According to the Prevention of Women and Child Repression Act 2000, the punishment of anyone causing death the conviction of death and for attempting to cause death life-term imprisonment and for both there shall be fined. However, there’s no provision for ban on advertisement like India’s Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.
According to the India’s Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, Section 4(a), “If any person- offers, through any advertisement in any newspaper, periodical, journal or through any other media any share in his property or of any money or both as a share in any business or other interest as consideration for the marriage of his son or daughter or any other relative, (b) prints or publishes or circulates any advertisement referred to Cl. (a), he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months, but which may extend to five years , or with fine which may extend to fifteen thousand rupees.
Though there is provision for rigorous punishment for dowry related crimes, the scenario is different in reality, where implementation of laws can rarely be seen. The reasons can be:
- People have received dowry as a tradition. None wants to file a case for going against local custom which has been perceived as a norm for centuries.
- Women are still supposed to put family over everything anytime. After marriage, it is supposed that the husband’s family becomes her family. So, suing her family feels wrong to them.
- These are rooted in Indian culture and include arranged marriages, the subordinate status of women, parents’ fears that, no one will marry their daughter without dowry and the centrality of the institution of marriage, which makes it difficult for parents to even contemplate their daughters remaining single4.
- There’s also fear of losing the lawsuit and being framed for filing a false complaint. Section 6 of the Act discusses the punishment for false claims which is about 5 years in prison with fine which may extend to fifty thousand taka.
- Sometimes there are incidents of psychological abuse by the perpetrators. There’s no provision for punishment of psychological or mental harm. So, she can’t file for psychological abuse when there’s no such law protecting her.
Women’s rights groups blame shoddy police investigations, and out-of-court settlements7. Often, the woman’s family are reluctant to take on the burden (and expense) of a case that might go on for 10 years because of the 3.6 million of all kinds clogging the legal system.
According to the analyzed data available on 421 murder cases filed with five tribunals in Dhaka under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act over a period of 15 years, as many as 84% of these cases were murders over dowry. About 22% of cases that dealt with murder for dowry ran in the court for 10 to 14 years. In only 4% of the dowry cases, the accused were punished. In December of 2016, at the national judicial conference, a judge in his keynote paper said cases filed under the Prevention of Women and Child Repression Act 2000, 80% of them are related to dowry.
The majority of these cases are filed on charges of beating and injury for dowry. But in most of the cases, the matter of dowry was not proved. Fahmida Akhtar, a lawyer, said according to her experience over a decade, women tortured in their in-laws’ home, filed charges of being beaten for dowry, as there are no legal options. “The torture may be true, but when it is not proved, it is referred to as a false case.”6
The vulnerability of women in Bangladesh and their inability to access justice is directly associated to their socio-economic status. There’s no alternative to educating people of every class to concede the devastating effects of dowry in our society. Plus necessary amendments such as punishment for psychological abuse and restraint out of the courtroom dissolution should be introduced to make the anti-dowry laws more effective.
Writer:
Tasnimul Jannat Chowdhury, student of LL.B. (Hons) 2nd Year, University of Chittagong.
Endnote:
- Women’s Participation in the Job Market, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), The Daily Star, published on March 8, 2019, https://www.thedailystar.net/supplements/womens-participation-in-the-job-market-1545181/ .
- World Bank Press Release 2019,https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press/-release/2019/04/28/bangladesh-more-and-better-jobs-for-women-needed-for-faster-growth/ .
- Chowdhury F. D., Dowry, Women and Law in Bangladesh, International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, Vol. 24. Issue 2, pp. 198-221, 2010.
- Amrit Dhillon, Death by Dowry, claimed by bereaved family in India, The Guardian, published on July 18, 2018.
- Asaduzzaman and Golam Mortuza, Justice lost in loopholes of the law, Prothom Alo, published on May 22, 2018.
- The Diagram of data used in the article to represent the bar chart has been taken from a report of Ain-O-Shalish Kendro titled Category Archives: Dowry Related Violence, retrieved from https://www.askbd.org/category-archives-dowry-related-violence/ .