Define dowry and discuss the rationale behind the practice and how it encourages female infanticide in South Asia?

Answer 1

The dowry is the daughter's inheritance paid as a gift for the bride on her wedding day and she has no further stake in the family estate (which is usually divided up between her brothers). However, this practice has been corrupted over the decades to be interpreted as a gift to the potential bridegroom and his family. Furthermore, not only is it meant to be a gift but this fact has also become a demand from the bridegroom's family prior to the agreement of the marriage. As families get more greedy and place a price on the head of the groom depending on his status, education and anything else they can think of, it places a huge burden on the girl's family to ensure that they are able to pay this price in order for her to marry into a suitable family. The imperitive is on the girl's family to start saving as soon as she is born so they are able to offer a good sum when the time comes for her to marry. If she has brothers, then they will be expected to contribute towards these savings.

Dowry was abolished long ago and the inheritance rules were changed and backdated to 1958 so that both sons and daughters have an equal stake in the family estate, but this has been difficult to implement as it is the sons who invariable stay in the family home to look after their parents and so it is impractical to sell the family home so that the daughters can have their share. Nor is it easy to get a mortgage on the home. So the practice has largely been unaffected by these new laws.

As this practice may prove too burdensome for some families or families where they already have only daughters or too many daughters, then they might consider measures which we would find unthinkable, such as female infanticide or now, with the availability of ultra-sound, aborting female fetuses.