In our male dominated society, Women have been relegated to a secondary place of marginal importance in the family. She has seen as a thing nowadays, not as a human being.They are expected to stay quiet and has to tolerate everything.The spate in the cases of bride burning exposes the hollowness of our social and cultural system.
The torture of married women and cases of bride burning in lower middle class urban families.The birth of a female child is still considered to be a burden on the parents. Giving a young girl in marriage has never been an easy thing. It is a very long practice to give a hefty dowry to the bridegroom and his parents so that they may give a respectable place to the bride in the family.Families in village didn’t want girls to study or grab knowledge.
Beauty, good features, cultures and qualification may be important but a fat dowry overweighs all these considerations. Even in the modern world where women are marching ahead in all walks of life, the evil practice of the dowry system continues.The greedy in-laws settle the amount of dowry before fixing the date of marriage. Materialism and consumerism have only weighted the appetite of the dowry seekers. The dowry amount depends upon them social and economic status of the prospective bridegrooms. Demand for cars, motor-bike, music system, LCD, costly furniture and utensils is growing in the marriage market. But still the greed of dowry seekers remains unsatisfied. Bride burning is not a rare phenomenon in India.
The Anti-Dowry Act, 1976 must be given more teeth for eradicating this social stigma. The dowry seekers should be socially boycotted and must be given exemplary punishment. The public and voluntary organizations should come forward to root out this evil practice from our society.This is still seen in families that the women from poor family who didn’t provided with dowry gets tortured and this should not be acceptable.People who saw this happening needs to help the women by informing women safety numbers and police station so they can provide the girl with proper safety and the one who pratices this gets their punishment for tutoring the women and asking her for dowry.
