Dowry Death in India

The women revolted against the idea of being treated as objects to be married off as early as possible with a dowry. They did not favour the idea of being displayed in the marriage market and evaluated according to the dowry, as personal qualities are then disregarded. One advantage of dowry is that it facilitates the marriage of some girls who could not get married otherwise. The Government of India has not yet formulated definite ideas on how to deal with this social practice. The most dramatic form that violence against women has taken is what the Indian media labeled "bride-burning" until in 1978 or so, feminists cut out the alliterative fuzz by redesignating it quite baldly as "dowry murder." During the 1980s, Urban North India has seen a growing number of murders of married women, variously called dowry murders or bride burnings. Today, the dowry system is seen as the prime motive for two other crimes akin to infanticide widely prevalent in the subcontinent. The cause of bride-burnings or dowry death in India was, indeed, dowry and indubitably a cultural problem