The taking and giving of dowries is banned. Yet an average of 20 women die every day of dowry-related violence.
Sixty years ago, India banned the giving and taking of dowries. Yet the practice continues to date, with deaths due to dowry demands showing no signs of abating. An average of 20 women die every day from dowry-related violence in the country, according to official statistics.
In a recent incident in Greater Noida in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a 28-year-old woman, Nikki Bhati, was burnt alive in front of her little son. The child subsequently recounted to neighbors that his father doused his mother with a flammable substance, hit her, and set her on fire.
A video of Nikki’s husband burning her, which was recorded by Nikki’s sister, Kanchan, who is also married into the same family, has gone viral.
Nikki was being subjected to domestic violence for close to a decade. Her husband, Vipin Bhati, and his family made endless demands for dowry, including cash, a car, and other valuables, all of which were met by her parents. Their latest demand was for 360,000 rupees (approximately $41,120) in cash, which Nikki’s family could not fulfill.
Nikki died on the way to the hospital. Her husband and in-laws have been booked on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy, and voluntarily causing hurt.
The horrifying video of Nikki engulfed in flames has reignited a much-needed discussion on the larger issue of dowry. Although the practice is banned, society still does not see it as a crime or stigmatize it. Rather, it is couched in the garb of “traditional custom” to pander to the demands of India’s patriarchal society.
Dowry-related violence and torture by family members is a socially taboo subject. Consider this: when Nikki complained to her parents about being physically assaulted by her husband, they did not approach the police. Instead, the family preferred to “settle” it before a traditional khap panchayat —a group of clan or community elders. The khap had allegedly intervened in April and made “peace” between both sides to protect the “family honor.”
Dowry, in its simplest terms, can be defined as money, property, or valuable security given by the bride’s family to the groom before or at the time of marriage or even after it. In modern parlance, these exchanges are conveniently referred to as “gifts,” totally ignoring the fact that the dowry is given under compulsion and in the absence of which there will be no marriage transacted.
The Dowry Prohibition Act was enacted in 1961. It banned this regressive tradition and made the taking and giving of dowry a punishable offense. On paper, there are stringent laws to tackle domestic violence and dowry torture. Section 498 A of the Indian Penal Code, now codified as Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita, makes cruelty by a husband or his relatives a punishable offense, with a three-year imprisonment and a fine.
Yet these laws have not been sufficient deterrents, due to the normalization of dowry giving as “gifts” to the groom’s family. As per the data from the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there were 6,450 dowry deaths in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022, nearly 35,000 women lost their lives due to dowry-linked violence, with Uttar Pradesh, where Nikki was killed, accounting for the highest number (2,138) of dowry deaths, followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
A dowry death, which is classified as an offense under 304B of the IPC, now Section 80 of the BNS, is punishable with a minimum seven-year imprisonment, if the death due to dowry harassment occurs within seven years of her marriage.
Violence within the bounds of marriage is largely viewed as a “personal matter” between the couple, and the woman is expected by her own family, including her parents, to adjust to the realities of the marital home, which is now her only home. One might argue that Nikki’s parents were equally culpable for her death, especially since her father Bhikari Singh Payla told news reporters that “We have to live by social norms,” as a rationale for giving a hefty dowry. He admitted to sending Nikki back to her abusive in-laws time and again since the “samaaj” (community) had given them assurances.
Not surprisingly, Vipin is unrepentant and shows no remorse. In a now viral video, Vipin claimed, “I haven’t killed her. She died on her own. Husband and wife often have fights, it is very common…” He tried to escape soon after the incident but was ultimately nabbed by the police and remanded to judicial custody, along with his parents and brother.
So endemic is violence within marital homes in Indian society that new angles are emerging daily in the Nikki murder case, albeit trying to shift the focus away from dowry torture as the cause of death to other peripheral reasons. The latest reports have cited how Vipin opposed Nikki’s plans to reopen her beauty parlor with her sister, Kanchan. He also objected to her making video reels on Instagram with her sister to promote her beauty business. When she allegedly refused to comply, he brutally assaulted her. The sisters’ Insta handle had 54,500 followers. Violence over dowry was at the heart of this crime, and social media reels, etc., were irritants, which served to fuel Vipin’s anger further.
In recent years, men’s rights activists have been vocal on social media, and have sought to hijack the narrative on dowry death incidents to give it a different angle. Once such narrative that is being spread in the media is that Nikki had told hospital personnel that she was burnt in a gas cylinder explosion. Anyone familiar with dowry-related violence knows well that women victims are socially conditioned to shield their perpetrators and make such claims.
Men’s rights activists often allege there is widespread “misuse” of section 498A of the IPC by women to settle scores with their in-laws. However, barring a few stray incidents, it is women who are at the receiving end of such horrific violence.
Education and professional qualifications are not barriers against dowry harassment. Speaking to the Deccan Herald newspaper, former professor of Madras Institute of Development Studies S. Anandhi said, “The shift towards women earning and managing wealth …. increases the pressure to conform to material expectations within a marriage.” Such women might look financially independent, but they suffer dowry harassment in silence.
A day after Nikki’s death, another gruesome incident shocked the nation. Sanju Bishnoi, a school teacher in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, set herself on fire along with her 3-year-old daughter. She left a suicide note stating that her husband and in-laws were harassing her for dowry. Both mother and daughter died of burns and were cremated together.
It is an open secret that in the “marriage market,” there is a “dowry rate card” for grooms, according to their professional degrees, with those in the civil services and doctors commanding a dowry of around $10 million, and engineers and management professionals from top schools getting half that amount.
In these circumstances, dowry giving and receiving are still not perceived as a social evil, even if it could culminate in the woman ending up dead.
Dowry deaths are not isolated issues. They have larger societal and systemic implications for gender justice and gender parity. As long as parents view their daughters as “burdens” who can be gotten rid of through early marriage to a “well-settled family,” such deaths will remain a daily occurrence.
Daughters in India’s intensely patriarchal society are not given the autonomy or the agency to be empowered or to take their own independent decisions.
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Sixty years ago, India banned the giving and taking of dowries. Yet the practice continues to date, with deaths due to dowry demands showing no signs of abating. An average of 20 women die every day from dowry-related violence in the country, according to official statistics.
In a recent incident in Greater Noida in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a 28-year-old woman, Nikki Bhati, was burnt alive in front of her little son. The child subsequently recounted to neighbors that his father doused his mother with a flammable substance, hit her, and set her on fire.
A video of Nikki’s husband burning her, which was recorded by Nikki’s sister, Kanchan, who is also married into the same family, has gone viral.
Nikki was being subjected to domestic violence for close to a decade. Her husband, Vipin Bhati, and his family made endless demands for dowry, including cash, a car, and other valuables, all of which were met by her parents. Their latest demand was for 360,000 rupees (approximately $41,120) in cash, which Nikki’s family could not fulfill.
Nikki died on the way to the hospital. Her husband and in-laws have been booked on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy, and voluntarily causing hurt.
The horrifying video of Nikki engulfed in flames has reignited a much-needed discussion on the larger issue of dowry. Although the practice is banned, society still does not see it as a crime or stigmatize it. Rather, it is couched in the garb of “traditional custom” to pander to the demands of India’s patriarchal society.
Dowry-related violence and torture by family members is a socially taboo subject. Consider this: when Nikki complained to her parents about being physically assaulted by her husband, they did not approach the police. Instead, the family preferred to “settle” it before a traditional khap panchayat —a group of clan or community elders. The khap had allegedly intervened in April and made “peace” between both sides to protect the “family honor.”
Dowry, in its simplest terms, can be defined as money, property, or valuable security given by the bride’s family to the groom before or at the time of marriage or even after it. In modern parlance, these exchanges are conveniently referred to as “gifts,” totally ignoring the fact that the dowry is given under compulsion and in the absence of which there will be no marriage transacted.
The Dowry Prohibition Act was enacted in 1961. It banned this regressive tradition and made the taking and giving of dowry a punishable offense. On paper, there are stringent laws to tackle domestic violence and dowry torture. Section 498 A of the Indian Penal Code, now codified as Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita, makes cruelty by a husband or his relatives a punishable offense, with a three-year imprisonment and a fine.
Yet these laws have not been sufficient deterrents, due to the normalization of dowry giving as “gifts” to the groom’s family. As per the data from the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there were 6,450 dowry deaths in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022, nearly 35,000 women lost their lives due to dowry-linked violence, with Uttar Pradesh, where Nikki was killed, accounting for the highest number (2,138) of dowry deaths, followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
A dowry death, which is classified as an offense under 304B of the IPC, now Section 80 of the BNS, is punishable with a minimum seven-year imprisonment, if the death due to dowry harassment occurs within seven years of her marriage.
Violence within the bounds of marriage is largely viewed as a “personal matter” between the couple, and the woman is expected by her own family, including her parents, to adjust to the realities of the marital home, which is now her only home. One might argue that Nikki’s parents were equally culpable for her death, especially since her father Bhikari Singh Payla told news reporters that “We have to live by social norms,” as a rationale for giving a hefty dowry. He admitted to sending Nikki back to her abusive in-laws time and again since the “samaaj” (community) had given them assurances.
Not surprisingly, Vipin is unrepentant and shows no remorse. In a now viral video, Vipin claimed, “I haven’t killed her. She died on her own. Husband and wife often have fights, it is very common…” He tried to escape soon after the incident but was ultimately nabbed by the police and remanded to judicial custody, along with his parents and brother.
So endemic is violence within marital homes in Indian society that new angles are emerging daily in the Nikki murder case, albeit trying to shift the focus away from dowry torture as the cause of death to other peripheral reasons. The latest reports have cited how Vipin opposed Nikki’s plans to reopen her beauty parlor with her sister, Kanchan. He also objected to her making video reels on Instagram with her sister to promote her beauty business. When she allegedly refused to comply, he brutally assaulted her. The sisters’ Insta handle had 54,500 followers. Violence over dowry was at the heart of this crime, and social media reels, etc., were irritants, which served to fuel Vipin’s anger further.
In recent years, men’s rights activists have been vocal on social media, and have sought to hijack the narrative on dowry death incidents to give it a different angle. Once such narrative that is being spread in the media is that Nikki had told hospital personnel that she was burnt in a gas cylinder explosion. Anyone familiar with dowry-related violence knows well that women victims are socially conditioned to shield their perpetrators and make such claims.
Men’s rights activists often allege there is widespread “misuse” of section 498A of the IPC by women to settle scores with their in-laws. However, barring a few stray incidents, it is women who are at the receiving end of such horrific violence.
Education and professional qualifications are not barriers against dowry harassment. Speaking to the Deccan Herald newspaper, former professor of Madras Institute of Development Studies S. Anandhi said, “The shift towards women earning and managing wealth …. increases the pressure to conform to material expectations within a marriage.” Such women might look financially independent, but they suffer dowry harassment in silence.
A day after Nikki’s death, another gruesome incident shocked the nation. Sanju Bishnoi, a school teacher in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, set herself on fire along with her 3-year-old daughter. She left a suicide note stating that her husband and in-laws were harassing her for dowry. Both mother and daughter died of burns and were cremated together.
It is an open secret that in the “marriage market,” there is a “dowry rate card” for grooms, according to their professional degrees, with those in the civil services and doctors commanding a dowry of around $10 million, and engineers and management professionals from top schools getting half that amount.
In these circumstances, dowry giving and receiving are still not perceived as a social evil, even if it could culminate in the woman ending up dead.
Dowry deaths are not isolated issues. They have larger societal and systemic implications for gender justice and gender parity. As long as parents view their daughters as “burdens” who can be gotten rid of through early marriage to a “well-settled family,” such deaths will remain a daily occurrence.
Daughters in India’s intensely patriarchal society are not given the autonomy or the agency to be empowered or to take their own independent decisions.
Dowry-related Violence Continues to Claim the Lives of India’s Daughters
The taking and giving of dowries is banned. Yet an average of 20 women die every day of dowry-related violence.
thediplomat.com
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