One woman dies in India every hour in a dowry-related case. A shift in attitudes towards lavish marriages is urgently due
Light wallas holds portable chandeliers for an Indian wedding procession. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
But the "happily ever after" myth that permeates Indian weddings was powerfully dispelled by other studio guests who gave accounts of their horrific post-marriage lives. One said she was harassed by her husband and in-laws and ultimately was left to languish in the US until a women's group rescued her. The audience heard that another woman was tortured in her marital home and ended up killing herself.
India's obsession with excessive weddings trumps even its obsessions with Bollywood and cricket. The culture is held up as a lodestar of bringing families together and of realising a couple's dreams, in the groom's grand arrival on a bedecked horse and the bride's finery that she has watched her heroines wear in Bollywood films. Fireworks, live bands and sumptuous spreads are also pretty much standard for Indian weddings.
But behind the happy images of the big fat Indian weddings getting progressively bigger and fatter lurks the unpalatable truth of dowry deaths. The statistics are shocking. One woman in India dies every hour in a dowry-related case. Dowry is a social evil in which the families of Indian grooms can make endless demands of the bride's family. In extreme cases, the newly wed bride can be murdered by her in-laws or driven to commit suicide.
The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, amended in 1984 and 1986, made dowry a recognisable and non-bailable offence. But despite being illegal (except in north-east India, where dowry does not exist), dowry is becoming more rampant and entrenched. In 2010, 8,391 dowry deaths were reported. According to government figures, Delhi alone records a few hundred dowry deaths each year. But women's rights groups estimate deaths in the capital at 900 per year. Moreover, there has been a phenomenal increase in such deaths since the 1990s when they numbered at around 300 per year. India's economic liberalisation in the 1990s has seen a proportionate rise in levels of greed, and a bride is perceived by her in-laws as a potential cash cow.
Appallingly, the effects of the dowry culture can be traced even to the womb. It is the primary cause of female foeticide and bears a direct correlation with female infanticide as poorer parents avoid the lifelong liability of saving up for a daughter's marriage. This has led to a distorted sex ratio of 933 girls per 1,000 boys in India.
The bane of dowry is not confined to any one section of Indian society. For the rich, together with the most opulent weddings, the dowry given is a status symbol that cements their power and prestige. For the poorer sections of society it is conflated with a basic sense of honour. The pressure of this expense on the bride's family is borne out in the statistic that 80% of bank loans in India are taken to meet marriage costs and dowry demands. Investigations into the recent spate of suicides by farmers in Vidarbha in the state of Maharashtra found a clear link to the farmers failing to repay loans that they used for the marriage of their daughters instead of the betterment of their farms.
A shift in India's attitude towards weddings is urgently due. Bluntly put, dowry equates to a family paying a man to take their daughter's hand in marriage. And the man, with his family, works to extract the maximum price for "taking" the woman, in ways that can scar lives and damage the institution of marriage. A practice that conflates its women with gold, silver and furniture is absolutely reprehensible. Simply having anti-dowry laws has proved hugely inadequate – urgent emphasis needs to be put on enforcement.
As a society India must unequivocally come together to reject this practice. The rejection has to be tripartite, involving rectitude by the giving party, the receivers and the wedding guests who in their very indulgence of the lavish festivities encourage the practice. Ending this practice could see couples channel their funds to educate their daughters well instead of saving money for their marriages. The days of dowry-drenched big fat Indian weddings must be numbered – or Indian society's claim to be progressive is disingenuous.