- By Geeta Pandey
- BBC News, Delhi
4 hours ago
Image source: Gunjan Tiwari
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Gunjan Tiwari says she will not marry for dowry
Dowry has been illegal in India since 1961, but the bride’s family is still expected to give cash, clothing and jewelry to the groom’s family.
Now a 27-year-old teacher in downtown Bhopal has started a petition calling on the police to deploy officers at wedding venues and conduct raids to put an end to this “social evil”.
Gunjan Tiwari (not her real name) tells the BBC her petition is based on her own experience of dozens of men being turned down over dowries.
The latest incident happened in February, when her father invited a young man and his family to his home in hopes of finding them a partner.
After her parents exchanged pleasantries with the guests, Gunjan walked into the living room carrying a tray of mugs of steaming hot tea and snacks for the guests.
She describes the moment as “disturbing”.
“Everyone’s staring at you, they’re all eyeing you,” she told me over the phone from home.
It has been carefully planned when and how Gunjan will perform in front of the guests. Her mother chose a green outfit because she thought her daughter looked particularly pretty in it. She also advised Gunjan not to laugh as it would draw attention to her uneven teeth.
It’s an exercise Gunjan is all too familiar with – he’s performed it six times in as many years. The questions they asked her were also familiar – about her education and work and whether she could cook.
Before entering the room, she had overheard her parents asking the future groom’s father how much dowry he expected. “We had heard they wanted Rs 5-6 million ($61,000-$73,000; £48,100-57,000). When my dad asked him, he joked, ‘If your daughter is beautiful, we’ll give you a discount,'” she says.
As the conversation continued, Gunjan said she assumed no discount would be given – visitors asked her about her uneven teeth and the birthmark on her forehead.
Image source: Getty Images
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Although dowry has been illegal in India since 1961, it continues to thrive
When Gunjan had a few minutes after tea to talk privately with the groom-to-be, she told him she wasn’t marrying for the dowry.
“He agreed that it was a social evil,” she told me, adding that it made her think he was different from the others she’d met.
But the Tiwaris soon learned that Gunjan had been rejected.
“My mother blamed it on my anti-dowry attitude. She was angry with me and didn’t speak to me for more than two weeks,” she says.
Gunjan says her father has contacted “families with 100 to 150 eligible bachelors” over the past six years and met more than two dozen of them. Gunjan himself was introduced to six of them. Almost all failed because of the dowry, she says.
“I lost all my confidence from those rejections,” says Gunjan, who has a master’s degree in math and takes online classes.
“Thinking rationally, I know it’s not me that’s missing something, it’s the people who want a dowry that are the problem. But I often feel like I’ve become a burden to my parents.”
Although dowries – both giving and receiving – have been illegal for more than 60 years, a recent study found they are included in 90% of Indian marriages. Payments totaled a quarter of a trillion dollars between 1950 and 1999.
Parents of girls have been known to take out huge loans or even sell their land and house to meet dowry demands, and even that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a happy life for a bride.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 35,493 brides were killed in India between 2017 and 2022 — an average of 20 women a day — for not bringing in enough dowries.
Activists say dowry is also one of the reasons for gender inequality in India. The United Nations estimates that nearly 400,000 female fetuses are aborted each year using prenatal sex screening tests because families fear daughters will cost them dowries.
In her petition to Bhopal Police Chief Harinarayan Chari Mishra, Gunjan says the only solution is to search wedding venues and arrest those caught giving or receiving the dowry. The “fear of punishment” will help “put an end to this cruel practice,” she adds. Last week she met Mr. Mishra to ask him for help in her struggle.
Image source: Gunjan Tiwari
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Gunjan recently met with Bhopal Police Commissioner Harinarayan Chari Mishra to gain support for her fight against the dowry
“Dowry is a social evil and we are committed to ending it. I have instructed all police stations to provide appropriate assistance to any woman who approaches them,” Mr Mishra told me.
But, he says, “the police have limitations, they can’t be everywhere and we need to raise awareness and change the mindset.”
Women’s rights activist Kavita Srivastava says the police can certainly help, but the dowry issue is a complex issue.
“India is not a police state, but there is a dowry ban law and we need better enforcement of the law.”
Dowries, she says, are often not a one-off payment for grooms’ greedy families, who keep asking for more even after marriage because “it’s easy money, a get-rich-quick tool.”
Ms. Srivastava cites examples of women facing lifelong domestic violence and even being thrown out of their marital homes for failing to comply with their recurring demands.
The scourge of dowries, she says, can only be combated if young men and women take a stand and refuse to give or accept dowries.
Gunjan says she’d like to get married because “life is long and I can’t spend it alone,” but she’s sure she won’t pay a dowry.
But as time ticks, her family grows desperate to find a partner for her.
“Among my relatives in my ancestral village in Etawah district, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, a 25-year-old is considered an old woman in the marriage market.”
So her father regularly scours the marriage columns of the newspapers and keeps an eye out on relatives to keep his eyes and ears open and let him know if they spot a suitable partner. He has joined a WhatsApp group with more than 2,000 members of his caste, where families like theirs share their children’s resumes.
“Most want a lavish wedding that would cost Rs 5 million or more. My father can only afford half of that,” she says, adding that her insistence on marrying without a dowry made her parents’ lives more difficult.
“My father says it’s only been six years since he started looking for a groom for me. Without a dowry, he says, he won’t be able to find a partner for me even if he’s been looking for 60 years.”
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