ABSTRACT
Dowry murders in India frequently have been explained through appeals to broad assumptions about Indian women and fire, and the assertion that the burning of women is sanctioned by some kind of Indian cultural or religious tradition (Bumiller, 1990, pp 44-45). The act is cast as a cultural practice, and in turn represents the entire culture as barbaric and uncivilised in its treatment of women. Yet, as Uma Narayan explains, dowry murders are thoroughly modern in their origin (Narayan, 1997, p 85). Dowry was a practice that took place in some communities, such as Punjab, and itself was an economic transaction rather than something cultural which was sequestered in the home or private sphere (Oldenburg, 2002, pp 19-39). It has been characterised at times as a gift, at times as compensation (to the groom’s family for taking on the responsibility of providing for a wife), and at times as pre-mortem inheritance, reflecting a daughter’s rights to a share in the family property (Narayan, 1997, p 109). However, these explanations do not account for the expectations that the groom’s family has some share in the dowry. Narayan explains that this part of the phenomenon is connected to the setting up of a market economy in India since the 1970s and the growth of a consumer-oriented culture. In some communities, this phenomenon has produced a practice known as dowry bargaining, where the groom’s family has come to expect certain consumer items at the time of (and indeed for many years after) his marriage (Narayan, 1997, p 111). This expectation is compounded by demands on families to provide large dowries for their own daughters. If a woman and her parents are unable to meet these demands, which can at times take the form of threats, intimidation and even violence, then the woman is deemed expendable. As Narayan points out, there is a failure to understand that dowry violence is a part of domestic violence and that dowry murders are the most extreme form of violence that a situation of domestic violence can take in India (where the method of killing
more often than not is by fire). There is also an extraordinary lack of common sense displayed by some writers who attempt to understand violence against women through a cultural spectrum. For example, there is, in the literature, a curious connection made between violence and Hindu women’s relationship to fire. Narayan clarifies that fire has the forensic advantage of simply getting rid of any evidence in a society where guns are not as easily available as in the US. According this mode of murder some kind of spiritual significance misses the most simple, practical explanations that are available. Narayan discusses the conflation between Sita, sati and dowry, and how this misrepresentation of ‘Hindu culture’ has created an exotic representation (Narayan, 1997, p 102). As Narayan has indicated, the cultural explanations offered both by Western and Indian scholars are of little value. She states:
The gratuitous connection between culture and violence is almost invariably brought up in relation to the third world (Jethmalani, 1995). In particular, culture is frequently invoked to explain the kind of violence experienced by women in the third world, though it is not invoked in a similar way when discussing violence against women in various Western contexts.
