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From: raghu@rlgvax.UUCP (Raghu Raghunathan)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Morley Safer on Burning Brides
Message-ID: <236@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Nov-84 14:12:06 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.236
Posted: Mon Nov 12 14:12:06 1984
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> 
>                Dowrys are illegal in India. So is Murder. Nonetheless,
>                in New Delhi alone, a woman is burned to death every
>                twelve hours for failure of her family to make ongoing
>                "dowry" payments. There are groups working to stop the
>                practice, but it is deeply ingrained. Such deaths are
>                reported as accidental (the stove exploded).
> 
	I saw the 60 minutes report too. And as an Indian who has witnessed
	such horrors at close hand (a young women in the village I come from
	in India was dumped into the village well and died of injuries - and
	the local police justified the atrocity on the grounds that the wife
	broke her part of the contract (payment of dowries) and therefore had
	to suffer the consequences), I must shamefully admit that the report
	was largely accurate. My sister in India runs a "help-center" (to
	use a euphemism) in Bombay for such wives, and I constantly hear
	horror stories about bride-burning and other forms of torture.

	Please be informed however that torture on account or dowry is not
	as widespread as 60 minutes would have us believe. It probably
	affects not more than 1% of all the marriages, and the number of
	deaths resulting from it are much less (maybe 1 in 10000). Even so,
	in a large country like India, the numbers are significant.

>                The pattern is that a marriage is arranged. Continual
>                and increasing payments from the bride's family are
>                extorted until there is no more to be had. Then the
>                bride is burned to death and the husband is free to
>                remarry.

	True. Basically (in the illiterate societies) a women is looked on
	as a liability to be got rid of at any expense (within reason) and
	men as assets who will generate income by accepting these liabilities.
	Note that the in-laws who abet in abusing their daughter-in-law
	have daughters of their own who they expect to be abused
	in a similar way. So, in a way, they use their sons as weapons to
	avenge the abuse suffered by their daughters.

>           (Morlay Safer) begins by
>           contrasting the fight against this practice with the fight
>           here for the ERA -- implying that American women's problems
>           are small by comparison.

	In don't mean to belittle American Women's problems, but I have
	to agree that they pale into insignificance compared with the
	inhuman treatment suffered by women elsewhere (like in India).
	How many american girls (at ages 10 -20) have to worry about
	being tortured by their future husbands under the very nose of
	the law? How many american girls are constantly reminded by their
	parents that they are a financial burden? How many girls in
	america have to suffer through silent humiliation as their parents
	go "shopping" in the marriage markets to find the cheapest price
	they can get rid of their daughters for?

>           Is Morley Safer's smug chauvinism
>           justified, or are there horrors in America as bad as those
>           in India?

	I don't think Morley Safer was being smug at all about American
	women, he was just being realistic in his comparisons.
	
	I can go on for pages on this subject of dowry but I am too sick
	of the subject to argue without getting emotional. When I was in
	India this past May, a woman friend of the family took me aside
	and asked me what price would my parents ask for me when I
	married. I was so disgusted that I haven't spoken to her since.

						Raghu Raghunathan.