Social Reform Leaders OR Socially Engineered Products themselves?

[Guest]

Now coming to dowry in India, it is ALL around and not just in Bimaru states. Go south, like in AP, and dowry is in much larger proportions... And by the way Dowry itself is not a social evil, the demand of dowry is.

ok i have to concede that i was not aware that dowry was popular in victorian england.

and even if it was common, i want evidence that dowry was the "evil' it is today. i mean i want evidence to show that the wife was killed by the inlaws since her dad failed to pay dowry and that sort of thing (the sort of thing that makes dowry a "social evil" and brings it to the news. i am well aware that every year millions of marriages involve dowry. as long as the bride's family pays up, all goes smoth. the wife beating/killing/divorce etc happens only when with "defaulter" parents).

i am forced to disagree about dowry occuring all over india. south certainly doesn't throw up cases of wife beatings and rapings cos of "dowry default". the "pratha" or tradition of dowry may be there though - where the bride's family is expected to give something. but not the hard and fast that is there say in bihar, nor the "rates". in interior bihar, the parents of a graduate son wont agree to marriage unless the bride's parents cough up about 2 lacs. going rate for IAS officers and engineers are about 5 lacs. dowry deaths occur in the so called "hindi belt" for the large part.


but yes dowry itself isnt so evil per se' (though it is narrow minded in the extreme to expect the family - with whom you are going to be related from now on through marriage - to earn their keep as your relative by paying their way in.). very feudal, mediaval and almost tribal.


bombay as dowry was known to me, but that was done more to make alliances/make peace than any other reason. We have tourist bus diplomacy these days between india and pakistan. this "dowry gift" of the islands of bombay was another kind of political/diplomatic move.

PS : you know beef eating is common in india ....cos the vedics used to eat beef !!
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Totally missed the point... or was it humour?
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no humour.

i meant that, just like the fact that beef eating was popular in vedic days dont prove that they were popular in india say in the 1900's, the fact that dowry was popular in homeric, roman or Charlemagne's time dont prove that they were very common in Victorean england.


besides i am still looking for evidence of "the evil side" of dowry (wife beating in case of default etc) in 19th century england.


Also the biggest question that pops up is that if it was no common in victorean england and the english stoked the dowry fire (dowry was common in india at least since muslim days, if not even earlier, .ie. from hindu times), then how come bengal neither had a trend of demanding dowry, let alone the "evil side" of it.