For Bride, Dowry Is Deal Breaker

Defiant Indian Women Increasingly Fighting In-Laws' Demands

March 27, 2005 - (Washington Post) She wore a sari of red silk. He wore a maroon business suit and a gold-and-white turban. In front of several hundred guests, they garlanded each other with roses and marigolds, then sealed their union by circling a fire of mango-tree wood seven times as a Hindu priest chanted prayers. All agreed it was a splendid wedding.

But almost as soon as the flames subsided, the marriage between Keshav Sharma and his bride, Pooja Pathak, collapsed in ugly recriminations.

Even though the Pathaks had provided a substantial dowry -- including a motorcycle and about $700 in rupees -- it wasn't enough for the groom or his father, Amar Sharma, who declared barely two hours after the ceremony last month that they would not accept the young woman into their home unless she also came with a new color television and video player, according to witnesses and police.

For Pooja, if not for her parents, the demand was a deal breaker.

"If your father told you to eat cow dung, would you eat cow dung?" she screamed at the mortified groom before telling him to get lost. Father and son were subsequently charged with violating India's anti-dowry law.

Such acts of defiance are rare in India, where dowry-giving and its grim corollary -- the killing of young brides whose families fail to cough up the requisite loot -- remain deeply entrenched. But they are becoming more frequent. Pooja's case was the latest in a series of well-publicized incidents in which brides have balked at dowry demands, suggesting that some young women are losing patience with the age-old Hindu tradition.

The most famous such episode occurred in 2003, when Nisha Sharma, a 21-year-old computer student in New Delhi, summoned police to her wedding after the groom's family made a last-minute demand for $25,000 in rupees, on top of the car and appliances they had already been promised. Sharma's bold move earned her worldwide attention and praise -- among other things, it inspired a television ad for a popular beauty product -- and others soon followed her example.

"There are young, educated women who are standing up, and they want other people to know what they are doing," said Brinda Karat, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association. "Each case which happens like this and gets public attention does have an impact."

Although dowry has been illegal in India since 1961, the fight to eradicate the practice has been uphill. Notwithstanding the publicity generated by Sharma's case and others like it, police are reluctant to bring dowry charges, and convictions are exceedingly rare, according to Karat and other experts (Sharma's case is still in the courts). Every year, about 6,000 women are killed -- often doused with kerosene and set on fire in staged kitchen "accidents" -- or harassed into suicide by husbands and in-laws angered by unmet dowry demands, according to government data.

A 2002 survey by the women's association found that the traditionally upper-caste institution of dowry was becoming more prevalent in India and was spreading "across regions, castes and communities," said Karat, who attributes the trend to rising consumerism within the middle class. The survey was based on interviews with 10,000 people in 18 of India's 28 states.

Except for its denouement, Pooja's ordeal appears to have followed a familiar pattern.

Tiny and fine-boned, Pooja, who is finishing her last year of high school, looks younger than her 18 years. She is the oldest of three children and a native of Sayin, a farming village of about 200 families just outside the Hindu holy city of Varanasi -- also known as Banaras -- about 360 miles southeast of New Delhi, the capital. Her father, Omkar Pathak, owns a small shop selling betel nut, a mild stimulant.

Like most Indian parents, Pathak and his wife, Renu, considered it their duty to find a spouse for their child. Last summer, after canvassing friends and relatives, they found a promising candidate in Keshav Sharma, a political science student at Hindu University, where his father works as a gardener.

The families arranged a meeting at a temple, where Pooja and her future husband were permitted to speak privately for about three minutes. "I thought, 'He's a very good person,' " recalled Pooja, who would not see Keshav again until their wedding seven months later. Moreover, she added, "He was okay to look at."

Dowry figured prominently in the negotiations between the two families, according to Omkar Pathak. At first, he said, the Sharmas asked for about $1,200 in rupees as well as a Honda motorcycle, watch, gold ring, color television and video player. The families eventually settled on the lesser sum of about $700 and a cheaper brand of motorcycle and agreed that the color television and video player could wait until a few months after the wedding, Pathak said.

"The father of a daughter is a helpless creature," he explained. "Even if the father does not believe in dowry, he has to bow down, because he has to think of his daughter's happiness."

On the night of the wedding ceremony, things seemed to go well. Colored lights glowed above the dirt yard outside the Pathak family's modest home, and a band greeted the arrival of the groom's procession. Later, about 500 guests dined on lentil stew and tamarind chutney as a loudspeaker blared Bollywood songs. Some guests lingered for the fire ritual, which lasted until about 4 a.m., when the bride retired to her home and the groom and his family left for a nearby community hall.

Two hours later, Keshav and his father returned to collect Pooja and her belongings, which she had packed into four suitcases in preparation for the move to the Sharmas' home on the other side of the city. The bride's parents fed their new son-in-law a ritual breakfast of yogurt and jaggery, a confection made from molasses. But the mood quickly soured, Renu Pathak said, when the elder Sharma and his son made clear that they expected a television and video player on the spot.

The bride's parents tried to be conciliatory, they and witnesses said. Clasping their hands in the Hindu gesture of submission, they pleaded that they had given more than they could afford and promised to provide the additional items as soon as they could.

But the Sharmas would not be placated. "The son said, 'We haven't asked for anything big,' " recalled Aparna Dwivedi, who runs a nonprofit social welfare group that employs Pooja as a volunteer and had stopped by the village that morning to wish her well. "The boy's father was standing there and using a lot of foul, abusive language."

When the bride's father sought to underscore his desperation by kneeling to touch the elder Sharma's feet, he was kicked, according to a police report.

Pooja, who had been listening from the rooftop, said she finally decided to take matters into her own hands. Still wearing her wedding sari, she stormed downstairs to confront her new husband, who tried to blame his father for the standoff.

But Pooja was having none of it. "You just get out of here," she said she declared, threatening to hit Keshav with her shoes. "I was very angry," she recalled. "We had given so much, and yet their mouths were still open."

Pooja's anger had a galvanizing effect on her parents. Egged on by relatives, they decided that if their daughter and her dowry were not good enough for the Sharmas, then the two men might as well "enjoy the breeze in jail," as Pooja's mother put it. Omkar Pathak fetched the police, who arrested the Sharmas and held them for seven nights, after which they were released on bail.

In a recent interview, Keshav, 22, asserted that the bride's parents had given the motorcycle and cash on their own initiative, not as a condition of marriage, and denied that he or his father had insisted on the additional goods. He said he was still mystified as to the cause of the blowup. "We don't know what happened," he said. "My father is not the type who would demand."

Police officer V.K. Singh said several independent witnesses had corroborated the Pathaks' account. The elder Sharma, he added, acknowledged making the last-minute dowry demand when Singh spoke to him on the night he was taken into custody.

Despite the criminal charges hanging over the family, Keshav and his mother said they remained hopeful that Pooja would still agree to move in with them. That seems unlikely. For her gumption in standing up to the family, she has been feted by women's groups, honored by a state university and offered free training at a computer institute.

Besides, said Pooja, "I don't want to get married now. I want to finish my studies."

Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3944-2005Mar26_2.html