Thursday, April 06, 2006

“From appreciation to a demand – The move from Streedhan to Dahej”

Introduction:
Colonialism is such a phenomena that it often ends in the misuse of certain symbols. One example of this statement would be the use of dowry before, during and after the period of British colonialisation in India. The culture of dowry giving is spreading even to communities, which had no such tradition a generation or two ago. This despite the fact that in the last two decades the anti dowry laws have been made very stringent and draconian. Many interpret the failure of these laws to lessen dowry giving as a sign of their poor implementation. However, these laws have so many inherent flaws that their honest implementation is well nigh impossible. In fact, these laws have created more problems than they have solved. You cannot combat a 'crime' which is as ill defined as the anti dowry laws of India.
This essay aims to examine using dowry as a symbol, the way that the British colonial rulers in India changed the way that certain traditional Indian symbols were seen and used. Also this essay hopes to examine how the current post-colonial mindset has again given these symbols a new face; thus causing these symbols to evolve and re-evolve, creating a very ‘gendered’ history. This can be examined in the sense of the “white man” attempting to protect the “brown woman”, thus causing the “brown man” to grow more fixated with the symbols that the British were fighting against and emphasizing their importance even more.
As per the Dowry Prohibition Act (originally passed in 1961 and amended twice in the 1980s), dowry is defined as 'any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly by one party to a marriage to the other party to the marriage or by the parents of either party to a marriage or by any other person, to either party to the marriage or to any other person at or before [or any other time after the marriage] in connection with the marriage of the said parties' .
Madhu Kishwar commented most aptly that “It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent. ” Through such comments, we can see how many undesirable faces of history have become attributed to women. Instead, an examination of colonial policies that were implemented by the British in India would be able to provide a more comprehensive reason for the dowry system and its exorbitant growth.


Colonial rule and Dowry:
Dowry requirements are merely another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by constantly citing of 'dowry abolition' as the most effective method to attain women's empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.
There is little mention of exorbitant dowries causing the ruin of families in the literature of pre-British India. Ruin due to exorbitant dowry payments became a major theme in nineteenth century literature because this period witnessed an unprecedented erosion of women's economic importance and inheritance rights due to the manner in which the colonial rulers carried out land settlement operations in India. In conformity with Victorian norms that were the norm in England, land entitlements were given to the male heads of the family, bypassing Indian customary laws that allowed various categories of entitlements to women; including the concept of Stridhana, where the bride takes land and money with her, in her name, to her marital family. This “bride wealth” is then inherited in a matrilineal line. This concentrated property in the hands of men in an unprecedented way and paved the way for the eventual complete disinheritance of women. In addition, the enormous land revenue demands imposed by the British drained large amounts of the economic surplus from the rural economy. It made the peasants extremely cash poor. The destruction of traditional crafts pushed large sections of impoverished artisan groups to fall back on their small landholdings and the consequent increasing pressure on land made land ownership bestow special power and status; which naturally men exploited from each other whenever possible, especially through marital alliances.
To again quote Madhu Kishwar, “Thus, our modem inheritance laws have increasingly moved in favour of men and against the interests of women. All those communities that practiced matrilineal inheritance, such as the Nairs in Kerala, have also been forced through legislation to move towards patrilineal inheritance. Systems that provided reasonable or adequate protection of women's economic rights have been steamrollered out of existence. ”

How dowry engendered colonial society:
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to dowry were all attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the problem and justify colonial paternalist domination.
Even female infanticide can be linked back to colonial policies instead of being seen as a high-caste Hindu problem. The growing preference for sons had a far greater correlation with colonial land and revenue policies and suppression of modern industry than with any cultural male-preference. A very strong correlation can be seen with the colonial construction of males as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the military. The simple fact the colonial rule completely sidelined Hindu women from the workforce served to reduce their importance and thus increased the perception that females were a burden. The colonial situation and even the present scenario in India bear little resemblance to pre-colonial traditions where men often worked alongside women in fields. So dowry by the 1850's went from being a way of showing the appreciation a family had for their daughter to becoming a demand. As the colonial economy was commoditized, women were as well, through the dowry demand. Systems of reciprocity, the fact that villages would come together to give a woman gifts, gave way to contractual systems leading to chronic indebtedness; and thus women were left without legal entitlements.
In opposition to the reigning mindset of the time that the private sphere was a realm of freedom and traditional practices, the British administration in India saw the private sphere in the colony instead as a space of "barbarism" that required change and ‘civilizing’. This produced the structure of the "scandal" as the mode through which the private sphere was made available to public scrutiny. Through law, patriarchy was imposed upon the private sphere. So criminalizing cultural or traditional practices was the way the colonial state was able to get out of its own proclaimed stance of non-interference.
The banning of dowry, child-marriages and sati however, served to do little else than intensify these practices as they came to be seen as ‘rebellion’ against the colonial powers. Dowry gradually became more and more exorbitant and in a vicious cycle, the more the grew, the more the colonial rulers and missionaries tried to stamp it out, serving only to again intensify it. In this war of culture and civilizations, women were increasingly disenfranchised and discriminated against; becoming mere chattels.
Dowry became such an issue at the time that even non-Hindus, for whom dowry was not part of tradition, came to take it as part of their belief system. It can be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry daughters to families of higher status and to the "sanskritisation" of India where communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices. The latter is clearly apparent in the adoption of the dowry system by Indian Christians and Muslims. For the Muslims, the concept of dowry was nonexistent, the groom instead paying the bride’s family a “bride price”. The adoption of a “Hindu” dowry culture has helped the other religious groups stand on a common ground with the Hindus and perhaps try to create a common “Indian” culture. The British also often favoured the Hindus in India, perhaps contributing to the ‘sanskritisation’ of India.

Conclusion:
Putting landed property exclusively in male hands, and holding the latter responsible for the payment of revenue had the effect of making the Indian male the dominant legal subject. The British further made the peasants pay revenue twice a year on a fixed date. Inability to pay would result in the land being auctioned off by the government. As a result, peasant were forced, during a bad year, to use their land as collateral to borrow from the moneylender, in order to pay taxes. The British resolve to rationalize and modernize the revenue was particularly hard on women. From being co-partners in pre-colonial landholding arrangement, they found themselves denied all access to economic resources, turning them into dependents. In the event they faced marital problems, they were left with no legal entitlements whatsoever.
The contemporary phenomenon of Indian dowry can be explained not in terms of scriptural and cultural concepts but more as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to the colonial monetization of the economy and then again to postcolonial globalization. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female feticide may be traced back in India to colonial policies. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women will tolerate abuse within marriage. In fact in the current situation, as Madhu Kishwar studied, it may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages because they know they will receive little else from their parents .
Traditional forms of social life were changed due to modern conceptions of agency, consent, and individuality. Dowry, which was once a practice that enabled women, has now been transformed into one that oppresses them.

Bibliography:
Basu, Srimati. She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety, 2001
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs159.htm (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Caleekal, Anuppa. Dowry Death: Its gruesome reality and future interface in a digital cultural revolution. 1997
http://www.digitalism.org/ (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Kishwar, Madhu. Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Kishwar, Madhu Purnima. Destined to fail in Manushi, Issue 148
(published July 2005 in India Together)



Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Interview in Times of India, Mumbai as appeared on 31/1/03.
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_essay_page.asp?cat_name=why&cid=1030&sid=168 (Accessed 26th March, 2006)

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime; Oxford University Press, 2003

THE DOWRY PROHIBITION ACT, 1961, (No. 28 of 1961)
http://socialwelfare.delhigovt.nic.in/dowryact.htm (Accessed on 28th March, 2006)