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arranged marriage
February 2008 
The Daughters of India
Posted on Nov 8th, 2007
by 
Barbara Raisbeck
Barbara Raisbeck
The inspiration to write a book on the issue of femicide in India came to me when my former fiancé (a Kashmiri Indian) was forced by his parents to break off our engagement. I knew that our story was not unique; while in India I met several others who told me they were forbidden to marry the person they were in love with. In my quest to understand this phenomenon, I began to research arranged marriage.
Opening the door to that investigation unleashed an ugly world of stories. Dowry death, bride burning, female foeticide and infanticide, a genocide of the Indian female population. One article after another of disturbing accounts: parents who kill their daughters - in utero or shortly after birth - to avoid the dreaded dowry, brides set on fire for not bringing in adequate or additional dowry, some of them harassed to the point of taking their own lives.
A week after my relationship ended, I made a commitment to continue my research and write a book about my findings. I spent the next 9-10 months reading everything that I could find in preparation to return to India to gather stories. Once there, I spoke with experts working in the field, with strangers in the street, talked to friends about their experiences, and interviewed a few who were willing to share their story. I will be returning to India in January to further my research and to collect more stories.
Opening the door to that investigation unleashed an ugly world of stories. Dowry death, bride burning, female foeticide and infanticide, a genocide of the Indian female population. One article after another of disturbing accounts: parents who kill their daughters - in utero or shortly after birth - to avoid the dreaded dowry, brides set on fire for not bringing in adequate or additional dowry, some of them harassed to the point of taking their own lives.
A week after my relationship ended, I made a commitment to continue my research and write a book about my findings. I spent the next 9-10 months reading everything that I could find in preparation to return to India to gather stories. Once there, I spoke with experts working in the field, with strangers in the street, talked to friends about their experiences, and interviewed a few who were willing to share their story. I will be returning to India in January to further my research and to collect more stories.
Access: PublicTagged with: arranged marriage, bride burning, dowry, female foeticide, female infanticide, genocide, india
I can imagine that this will be a very, very powerfull book.
Good luck with your research & happy writing.
This is a book the world needs.
Richard. :-)
I praise for your efforts to research over conditions of women in india. but social evils which prevailed over whole india, ten decades back have been improved a lot by now.
far-flung, remote villages in Himalayas, North-eastern india, central india are still in grip of social evils and nuisance, malish people of society.
Of nothing but lack of literacy in such areas, which in turn lead them to unemployed, so under-nourished families developed, who are just load for society because they are workless, illiterate, malnutritious. therefore it is just viscous circle under which illiterate communities are constantly attacked by many factors such as nuisances of society, brain-washing by rigid religious leaders, greedy people, social customs, few unrational rituals.
I sincerely applaud and acknowledge your step to let know world that India is still in dark.
best wishes
all the best
Namaste
richard - thank you! i hope that i am able to write something that can help raise awareness. thanks for your kind words!
in peace,
barbara
owais - the “social evils” of india have not improved; they have worsened. nor are the issues that i am speaking out about confined to the villages or the impoverished. in fact, the problem is especially prevalent in the educated and upper class who lust after material goods and status.
thanks for reading the blogs; feel free to continue reading them for more information on your concerns.
namaste!
barbara
Barbara : You hint at perhaps the greatest obstacle here and that is the ever increasing divide between rich and poor. As India develops, it's obvious that the gap will become huge and with the socioeconomic gap, there's a gap in the human heart that just seems almost too big to face. But I hope that as some become so detached, others feel compelled to walk away from their material comforts and challenge the status quo.
Peace and happiness to you Barbara,
Richard.
Hello Richard –
you’ve hit the nail on the head. The divide between those who have too much and those who do not have even the basic necessities is growing, and fueling hard feelings. when we realize what it is that truly matters - love and compassion - this will cease to be a problem. i’ll keep working towards and dreaming of that.
in love and light!
barbara
Hello Barbara
I really praise you with esteem that you have love for India and its people. I do agree with you that women conditions are bad but this is just because of viscous circle we suffering. but if you think Indian society is deficit of love and compassion then you are wrong. we respect women. we marry with one girl and lives with her throughout our life. we respect her ethical values and care for her personal feelings.
Rich getting richer, and the poor beget children which condemns them to remain poor and fuelling India's Population Explosion higher every day. but this gap between rich and poor is increasing higher not because of compassion and love but because of corrupt bureacrats, politicians, governments at state-level, central-level and village-level.
You must know this thing that many reform packages and schemese pertaining to improve their basic needs, establishment of schools, hospitals introduced by law-making body inorder to improve living systems of people in Jammu & Kashmir. but these schemes and plans has not yet initiated although Reserve Bank of India has released whole funds but still not in process.
If your really want to write about India so please write for corruption in India. these social evils dowry system, polygamy, casteism, sati are no more prevalent and still happening in some very backward and far-flung areas of India. women's literacy rate has rise from 2% in 1949 to 65% in 2001. Atrocities on women are prevalent in Indian society but in backward and poor villages i.e North-east at extreme areas, south indian coastal communities, northern-most inhabitants mainly jammu & kashmir, some parts of west india, Bihar and Jharkhand ( states in central east india ). i do not see reasonable to blame social evils as a result of love and compassion. we truly love eachother and live in harmony. even we help poors and needy people. Infact i do not belong to rich family, medium family according to india and poor to usa standard. but truly i do not find and realised loveless feelings at all untill now.
I am sad that you could get married by your indian fiance but they saying that it is in our culture that one cannot marry with whom he is in love. well i am muslim and guess that your fiance was muslim too. but being a muslim it is not in our culture. maybe families are too rigid and brain-washed by hardliners and fundamentalists. I wish you may get a compassionate, caring and good-human being as ur husband by the grace of god.
WISH YOU HAPPY LIFE AND HEALTHY LIFE
BYE AND PEACE ON YA
BEST WISHES
once again thanks that you think for India's problems
Owais
The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, not only in India, but throughout the world. This is going to be a major problem in the coming decades, for all countries, India is no exception. The greed for material wealth and the shallow feelings of accomplishment that come with it, drives people to do really crazy things.
I wouldn't say its only bad that is happening. More and more women have started working, girls consistently score better grades than boys in school and college, more women are entering politics. Women are earning more than ever and are becoming independent. More laws are being passed, protecting women from dowry and other such horrible practices.
Interestingly, the bad is becoming worse and the good is becoming better.
owais - thank you for further commenting. your input is appreciated. i do not think that india is devoid of love and compassion; i have many loving friends in india, and i know many indians who have devoted their lives to better social conditions. in my comment to talon on “love and compassion”, that was intended to include the whole world, since as Vijay has pointed out in his comment, the gap is widening throughout the world. If we would put people (and other living beings) before profits, things would shift. that's what i mean by the power of more love, more compassion.
i also do not intend to suggest that the problems that i am writing about exist in all of India; that would be false.
In your comment you say “dowry system, polygamy, casteism, sati are no more prevalent”, but in my research and in those who i am working with in india, those who have committed to help end the problems, they all see that these things are growing more serious. it is true, as you say, that there are programs in places to help with the betterment of women in india. it will take time for the changes to occur, but with all of us caring and helping, it will happen.
You are right Vijay - the widening gap is happening throughout the world, and will be the cause of much strife and struggle in the near future. We usually have to struggle and suffer before we are able to make changes towards a healthier, more positive future.
I am happy that there are a growing number of programs in place for indian women; this is a step towards their liberation.
what follows is an excerpt from an article on indiatogether.org, by Kalpana Sharma, independent journalist, columnist and media consultant. Her article was written in Mar. '06. i think that things have changed with re to what she says about there being lack of news on dowry-related incidences, since i read about it in the news on a daily basis. - - -
Why dowry will not die
Given the lack of any news about dowry deaths, dowry violence or dowry demands — barring the occasional story of a brave girl who refused to give in — one would have thought that the problem had disappeared.
Taking new forms
We know for a fact that it has not. Far from it. In fact, it has become far more entrenched and taken new forms. The trouble with Mr. Patil's plan is that he is still working on the premise that all dowry giving and taking is done through the more obvious forms of “gifts” — jewellery, clothes, furniture, white goods, vehicles and homes. So, he proposes that alongside the compulsory registration of marriages, all gifts given to the bride should also be registered at the local police station. He believes that local committees headed by women sarpanches or women heading self-help groups in villages will act as “watchdogs” and ensure that the police is alert and does register such gifts.
Even if this works in some rural areas, the majority of dowry-related cases occur in middle class areas of our big and small cities. Even in the late 1970s, when the first instances of women being tortured and killed for dowry came to light, the problem was located in the middle class in north India. The economy then was far more restricted, bank finance for consumables was not available and the only way you could own something was if you had the ready money to pay for it. For families with boys, the best route to obtaining such capital goods was to demand a large dowry.
Since then, a great deal has changed in India. With the growth in the consumer economy, easy finance allows even salaried individuals to own things their parents could never have dreamed of possessing. At the same time, dowry demands have not diminished. The phenomenon has spread far beyond north India and has infected practically all communities.
For the full story:
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/mar/ksh-marriage.htmI am sorry Barbara about your negative experience and wish you all the best in your work.
I think the great problems facing the world today war, poverty, famine, environmental degradation is due to rise of ego-image consciousness in the age of scientific and spiritual materialism worldwide. Genuine respect, representation and equality of women in our society and institutions is still something women aspire for even here in US and other Western societies. Personally i am interested in seeing not just bringing balanced perspective and awareness (first step) but how we as compassionate human beings can bring deeper understaning, healing and create steps to improve the situation everywhere by open non-threatening communication.
The world as a whole needs to embrace feminine values of care, compassion, wisdom, deep listening, partnership, shared leadership, community involvement in social action and such.
Peace
Mita
Hello Susmita - thanks for your caring message. I agree about the 'ego-image consciousness' as a part of the problem. Thanks for the link to your blog. It looks very interesting; i've bookmarked it and will look at it more as time allows.
blessings!barbara