Dowry murders

Question 1

What are dowry murders/bride burning?

Answer 1

• wife being burned alive and dying
• often happens in the kitchen using cooking oil
• often not by husband but by other family member
• husband usually has an alibi
• burning –> hard to trace forensically –> easy to cover up as accident

Question 2

How have these murders been portrayed in international media?

Answer 2

• women’s organizations raising awareness –> media coverage beginning in 1980s
• main argument of the press: dowry as essential part of Hindu culture –> result: women are burned alive
• often framed as spectacle of “the orient”
• framed as something unique to India
• as something that relates to Hindu religion –> caste system portrayed as key to understanding the murders
  –> disconnected from the global problem of femicides

Question 3

What is an important difference between Sati and dowry murder?

Answer 3

• Sati: suicide/ voluntary act (still more complicated than that; social and economic pressure)
• Bride burning: murder; the burning has nothing to do with rituals or mystical reasons but has forensic reasons (media coverage portrayed that differently)

Question 4

How did the British interpret the historical context of female infanticides?

Answer 4

• as preemptive dowry murders; interpretation relied on their ideas about Hinduism and Hindu culture; used this framing to legitimize their “civilizing” mission
• female infanticides also happened in cases of people not following the practice of dowry (e.g. Muslims)

Question 5

What was the dowry in pre-colonial and early colonial India?

Answer 5

• Women marry outside their natal villages
• Their rights in their natal home lapse when leaving
• Alliances within households seldom along gender lines
• Women in competition with each other (e.g. mother-in-law vs daughter-in-law)
• Dowry is a material resource over which women have had at least partial control
• Dowry purely voluntary
• Clothes, household furnishings, and jewelry were productive assests in terms of status
• Jewelry served as collateral for loans
• Cows, buffaloes, goats, etc… income generating assets
• Cash and land only became important role when land became marketable commodity

Question 6

How did the meaning and function of dowry change under colonial rule?

Answer 6

• from safety net and asset for women to “groom price” payd for the privilege of marrying a man
• key element: women’s relation to land! (couldn’t own land under British rule)
• well paid jobs in the army and in imperial bureaucracy only for men
  –> enhanced worth of sons –> preference for sons

Question 7

What was the Rytowari land reform?

Answer 7

• under British rule
• creation of male individual property rights
• male individuals solely responsible for taxes
• fixes amount and inelastic payment dates
• putting land property in male hands exclusively
  –> Indian male became the dominant legal subject