India banned dowries decades ago. So why are they causing women's deaths? | DW News

[00:00:00]The death of model and actress Twisha Sharma has forced India to confront a conversation it has long avoided.

[00:00:07]Dowries have been illegal in India since 1961. But the tradition quietly persists and many brides continue to face harassment, pressure, and even death when their husbands families are unsatisfied. As calls grow for the government to take action, grassroots advocacy and support groups are working to fight dowry abuse.

[00:00:31]My husband grabbed me by my neck, pulled me into the room, locked the door, and beat me badly.

[00:00:38]Many times I thought I should just end my life. My in-laws would ask me to leave. My parents asked me to adjust. I had no option and no place to go.

[00:00:50]She is 24. We are calling her Kiti, which is not her real name, because she is still in fear for her life. Over four years of marriage, she was mentally pressured, beaten, and sexually assaulted by her husband. All of it over dowry.

[00:01:09]My parents gave them a car, cash, furniture. When I get married, they'd say they wanted a bigger car.

[00:01:16]Dowry in simple terms refers to gifts that the bride's family is expected to give the groom's family at the time of the wedding and often beyond. Depending on the social and economic standing of the families, it can range from cash and appliances to gold, cars, and even property. Originally, it was intended to secure the bride's future. Over time, it has turned into a social obligation and in many cases coercion.

[00:01:45]Priti ran away from her husband's family and found shelter at Shakti Shali, an NGO that supports survivors of gender and sexual violence. At the time, she could not see the pattern, a common issue for many women who come here seeking help.

[00:02:01]Even if the harassment is because of the dowi, the beatings are for dowi, the abuse is for dowi. They would come and talk about the abuse that is happening but the core of the reason why this is happening. A very few survivors would able to decode it and say you know I was harassed and abused because of this. It is that normalized.

[00:02:22]Shakti was started in 1987 by two women whose daughters were burnt to death over dowy demands. Today the organization handles nearly a thousand cases a year.

[00:02:33]Even though the practice has been banned in India since 1961, activists say it continues to be rampant. In the '90s um the anti-owi laws were reformed. But even then even the legal systems that are in place I think deep down it is the mentality deep down it is the social norm to ask for dowi to ask for things from a woman's family as per the official data in 2024 every 90 minutes a woman died either by suicide or was killed due to insufficient dowry and dowry harassment.

[00:03:13]The scale of the problem became impossible to ignore earlier this year when one case reached the national headlines. Tisha Sharma, former model and actor, was found dead in her marital home. Her family alleges she was harassed and killed over dowry demands.

[00:03:29]Her mother-in-law and husband who claim innocence are in judicial custody.

[00:03:35]The case is under investigation. This is a classic example.

[00:03:38]>> Tusha was very brave, very bold, very vocal. If this could can happen to her, it can happen to anyone now. I'm convinced. Thousands have taken to social media to demand justice for her.

[00:03:56]>> To make sure the momentum doesn't fade, some are taking these conversations where they matter most, into homes and neighborhoods. In this temple courtyard, women are being guided to recognize abuse, question it, and challenge it.

[00:04:10]The focus goes beyond the law towards the inequality inside their own homes.

[00:04:19]Women feel scared to step out and complain as they think they have nowhere to go. After that, we have turned this silence into culture. We have to break this silence. When it comes to the rights of a woman, she doesn't just have to fight a man. She has to fight the entire society.

[00:04:38]>> That's exactly what Kiti is trying to do.

[00:04:43]If this practice ends, daughters will not be treated as burden. They will be treated equal to boys.

[00:04:51]I want to be independent now. I have suffered a lot. I want to live alone.

[00:04:58]lift the way I want.

[00:05:02]>> Well, we're joined now by Kiti Capila, a senior lecturer in anthropology and law at King's College London. Kiti is also an author of a study on dowry murders in India. Thank you so much for joining us on DW News. I want to start with uh Twisha's death because it's put dowry violence back in the headlines.

[00:05:24]from your research, why do incidents like this still happen despite decades of laws banning diaries?

[00:05:34]So like any um phenomenon it's a bit complicated but uh also quite straightforward in the sense that diary is intimately linked to the practice of arranged marriages and in in India and arranged marriages are you know [clears throat] closely tied to the cast system. So because of cast and because of the centrality of marriage in an Indian person's life um it's unlikely that diary is going to go away in a hurry.

[00:06:09]>> Now you've said that diary deaths don't provoke the public outrage that they once did. Um what's changed then in Indian society that that has for that change that's made these killings essentially easier to ignore.

[00:06:28]I think when the protests happened which was sometimes in the late from the mid to late 70s to the 80s um that was also the you know um there was a moment of transition of diary from what used to be a gift um you know and it worked on the logic of a gift to a transitioning into the logic of capital i.e. it became a commodity. Men became, you know, grooms became a commodity that commanded uh began to command a certain price. So actually uh what my research uh found or I found in my research that actually the protest in the 70s ' 80s was not so much about diary per se or the institution of diary but about its transition from the gift the complex of gift and uh and that um that gift exchange to actually something which is about commodities and prices and and about escalation of the scale of dowry. And so they've they've they they've whittleled because you protest only about things you do not agree with. And I think people I think there's widescale acceptance on the logic of dowry both amongst men and women.

[00:07:48]>> [snorts] >> So I think that acceptance has grown um even in terms of you know moving away from gift to cap you know to the to a more capitalist uh ideology but um and therefore I think protests have just kind of uh kind of gone away but al the the second reason which is a slightly more silent reason is the nature of killing has um has changed. So many more women uh now or at least a number of women now don't get killed by their in-laws uh in spirious kitchen accidents uh but rather end up taking their own lives. So uh and it's very difficult to establish how many of you know uh how many suicides by young women uh in India are down to diary but because these figures are not collected in these in in this way but it would not be a surprise to see that many diary deaths have now morphed into diaries related suicides.

[00:08:52]So that's another reason where why protests no longer take place.

[00:08:56]>> All right. Well, you know, how has it changed then from from sort of a traditional custom into what you've described as sort of an economic demand then placed on on a bride's family?

[00:09:08]>> How has how did it change?

[00:09:10]>> Yeah. How has it changed? I mean, it it's sort of it was a traditional custom and now it's sort of moved into this other realm, right?

[00:09:18]>> Yes. Yes, I mean it it's remains understood as a traditional um custom and that's why it still has a legitimacy or at least an acceptance by now increasingly both women and men. Uh and um it's um it's just gone um so as I explained in my in my research that up until the 19 you know 50s60s I mean it it functioned the way it did but something that was um um that was actually aimed at bringing about a change of the hold of the cast system in in India. uh which was uh the two laws aimed at reforming and restructuring uh kinship relations because the architect of the Indian constitution firmly believed that the way to get rid of the cast system is to actually start um with the you know the figure of the woman but also the figure of the woman in the family in in Hinduism. So the Hindu Hindu marriage act and Hindu succession act were introduced in the you know the mid50s with a view to bringing about equality at the house at the level of the family i.e. women getting equal rights as men. And um uh and so it one of the things that was introduced by the Hindu marriage act was the institution of divorce which kind of cailed um it does many good things but it also curtailed the time frame and the time temporal logic of the family um obligations you know that were kind of observed during make arranging marriages from gen intergenerational obligations to very finite time obligations. ations because prior to that Hindu marriage act Hindu marriages could not be dissolved i.e they were permanent and um uh and so the obligations went from you know generation to generation and women daughters are considered polluting and are therefore men's families who accept the bride actually command um now command a price earlier they to be given gifts to take that that kind of pollution from them so um the the the this kind of temporal and other kind of gifts logics were completely completely uprooted and appended by by the the marriage act which has had unforeseen consequences. This is not my this would absolutely not be what the constitution um architects would have had in their mind. But it's it just shows you the the deep hold of not just the cast system but the cast ideology which uh supports this logic. So are you saying essentially that in order for um the for things to really change, deeper structural issues really need to be addressed um in order to see um a a significant um uh drop in the number of um deaths related to to diaries. Right.

[00:12:35]>> I I Yes, I fully agree with what you've just um summarized. I think they do they would um they need to the change needs to come at a structural level not at the you know at the um at the cosmetic level and but that change is going to be very difficult to come about and I think that needs to we need to kind of revisit um how to kind how to loosen the grip of uh of cast ideology in Indian society. It's it's it's you know it's a highly political issue but it's also quite a deeply entrenched um um belief structure.

[00:13:17]>> Ky just one more question. Are you hopeful that change can come about soon.

[00:13:23]>> I am um I would like to remain hopeful.

[00:13:26]I really hope this um this this this at least a killing stop if nothing else.

[00:13:35]And I hope the the scale of diary becomes um becomes less I mean less necessary because there's an equally good provision in in the law now for women to access their ancestral property parental property as be made equal heirs to uh uh to their parental property. So to to kind of I know lots of people now argue that actually diary or women especially but not just women that diary is a form of inheritance that they take from their their um parental family or you have a very good law to guarantee that which is in the succession act. And so I really hope it's that kind of uh that kind of a provision that is guaranteed by the law is enacted upon and um you by by by men and women alike as opposed to this very penicious um practice.

[00:14:36]>> Criti, we're going to leave it there, but really great to um to get um your expertise um on the show today. am Criti Capila, a senior lecturer in anthropology and law at King's College in London and Criti is also the author of a study on dairy murders in India.

[00:14:52]Thank you so much.

[00:14:53]>> Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.