- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE South Indian state of Kerala has launched a crackdown on the payment of dowry in the wake of deaths of four young married woman that highlighted domestic abuse connected to the custom which has remained in practice despite being banned 60 years ago.
State chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said he announced the crackdown “in light of the recent horrifying incidents of domestic abuse” and that the state has “decided to take more stringent measures to create a fair society”. He said a fair society is that which treats women and men as equals.
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“As a society, we need to reform the prevailing marriage system. Marriage must not be a pompous show of the family’s social status and wealth. Parents have to realise that the barbaric dowry system degrades our daughters as commodities. We must treat them better, as human beings,” Vijayan, who leads India’s only communist-ruled state, said in a tweet.
Focus also on revising school text books
The Kerala government has even focused on revising school text books to encourage a culture of gender equality. In another tweet, Vijayan said, “To inculcate a culture of gender equality, Kerala’s school text books will be revised and audited to sieve out words and phrases disparaging women. Steps will be taken to turn our schools and colleges into spaces that embrace the idea of gender equality and equal rights.”
He also urged the guardian community to inculcate progressive attitudes in their children that women are not inferior to men.
The chief minister said a round-the-clock helpline had been set up for women facing abuse from their husbands and in-laws linked to dowry.
The traditional practice saw parents handing over gold jewellery when their daughters get married but with the passage of time, dowries have come to include a range of costly “gifts” for the groom’s family, which has often left adverse financial consequences for families and also encouraged abuse of married women.
Outrage across Kerala, one of India’s most progressive states
The recent deaths of four women have triggered an outrage across Kerala, which has a high female literacy rate and is considered one of India’s most progressive states.
Recently, Vismaya Nair, an Ayurveda medicine student in her early 20s, had sent medicines and photographs to her cousin about her husband’s abuse, apparently motivated by a vehicle which was given as part of dowry, according to local media reports. Police were yet to confirm whether Nair was murdered or committed suicide and are probing a dowry harassment complaint that the ill-fated woman’s family filed against her in-laws.
In another case, a young married woman’s burnt body was found while two other new brides were found hanging at their homes. Their families also brought charges of harassment linked to dowry payments.
Kerala witnessed 66 dowry-related deaths, including suicides, between 2016 and 2020 and over 15,000 cases of “cruelty by husband and relatives” during the same period, Reuters reported.
It also cited police sources to say that in the last four months, Kerala’s domestic conflict resolution centres have got more than 6,000 calls from women in distress. “There are about 7.5 million households in Kerala and despite various initiatives we know not all women are coming forward to complain against dowry,” P Vijayan, an inspector general of police from Kerala, said.
