Dowry laws: supreme court’s intervention is timely
C Aryama sundaram Senior Advocate, Supreme Court judgment reserved
The rampant misuse of anti-dowry laws has reached alarming levels. What was intended and ought to have been a most beneficial legislation, aimed at putting an end to this long-prevailing custom, has become a tool of extortion and blackmail. The bridal purse being a weighty consideration in contracting a marriage is internationally of ancient vintage. But its fallout in the modern day is of growing concern.Rather than being a purse that a bride brings to her husband and marital home, which was to thereafter be her protector and shelter, the practice developed into a pernicious one and became a Damocles sword hanging over her and her parents’ heads. Constant demands, as a condition for the continuance of the marriage and the bride’s safety, became common. The State introduced severe punishments against its misuse.
But was this a case of treating the symptom and not the disease? A custom so deeply engraved in the social fibre required more than the threat of punishment. The practice continued. Families that had followed this system continued to do so in a more covert manner. A woman whose parents had given a dowry for her marriage now demanded the same from the family of their daughter-in-law to be. The girl, who was beaten for bringing insufficient dowry, beat her brother’s new bride for the same. The practice prevailed and only in a few extreme cases did the law help the violated woman or her family.
Unfortunately, what did grow was the realisation that such stringent laws were a useful tool in the hands of a woman/her family against the husband and in-laws, should the marriage break up against her will. In a modern society with changing social mores, the institution of marriage ceased being treated as a permanent union, but as one that could be broken for any number of reasons. Unfortunately again, unlike the laws of many other societies—which provide for a fair division of assets in the event of such break-up—the Indian scenario saw the homemaker (usually the woman) left penurious and wholly dependent on her parental home’s bounty. And an opportunity presented itself!
The deserted wife and her offended parents—who had spent much of their life savings for a short-lived wedding—filled with anger and remorse, found in the stringent anti-dowry laws an avenue to wreak their vengeance. So started a fashion to use the threat of punishment associated with dowry demands, including immediate incarceration as a means of retribution and monetary gain. An increasing number of cases of this nature began to surface. Justice may be blind, but courts are not! And this unhappy extortionist trend began to be noticed, although the clear legislation in this regard tied the court’s hands. Until finally, the Supreme Court said: “Enough is enough!”
To curb this new menace, the court has now decreed that dowry complaints cannot be dealt with in an automatic, laconic manner by immediately proceeding against the accused (including their arrest) without first conducting a suitable enquiry into the bonafides, substance of such complaint, and considering the explanation of those accused. The court noticed that in such dowry cases, it has become routine to implicate not just the husband but his parents, siblings, his sister’s family and even grandparents. Cases are reported where persons accused of violent acts as a means of dowry extraction have later been discovered not to have even been in the same city—the discovery made after the hapless person has spent a substantial time in a prison cell!
Women’s organisations have risen in protest against this order of the Supreme Court. The reaction has become almost sexist. That an important protection for women in a man’s world has been taken away! But let us pause for a moment. If one looks at the dowry cases filed over the past several years, the accused are an equal number of women as men. While a bride or her mother may feel that requiring a litmus test before accepting their complaint may be an assault on woman’s rights, the mother or sister-in-law may heave a sigh of relief at this protection against their persecution.
It is also telling that most dowry cases filed are among the urban middle-class. The rural women and those of the lower economic strata are rarely the complainants. There the menace of dowry continues—as it will—the protection laws not within their grasp or even their consciousness! Leaving one with the overwhelming doubt as to whether this is not an area where education is the answer and the threat of punishment an impotent and often misused onlooker!
aryama_sundaram@hotmail.com