Dowry and silence

Dowry is one of those things people in South Asia still defend with a straight face, and honestly, that has always confused me. Travel outside this region and the idea sounds absurd to most people. A man gets married, yet the woman's family is expected to furnish his house, buy his car, hand over cash, jewellery, appliances, sometimes even property. And somehow this is still called culture.

The reality behind it is uglier than the wedding photographs we post online. The lights, the music, the smiling relatives, none of that shows the pressure happening quietly in the background. A father borrowing money he cannot repay. A mother selling jewellery she spent decades saving. Brothers putting their own lives on hold because a sister's marriage has become a financial project instead of a relationship.

India's 2024 figures recorded 5,737 dowry deaths. Sit with that number for a moment. Roughly sixteen women dying every single day because somebody decided marriage was not enough without payment attached to it. More than 120,000 cases of cruelty by husbands or relatives were also reported that year. Pakistan's numbers are harder to track properly, which honestly says a lot by itself, but human rights groups still report thousands of women facing domestic abuse tied to financial demands and family pressure every year.

And the thing is, it rarely starts with open cruelty. It begins politely. "We are not asking for anything, only what you wish to give." Most South Asians have heard that sentence. Then later comes another conversation. The furniture is not good enough. The gold is less than expected. A car would help. Cash would solve a problem. The requests never really end because greed rarely ends politely.

I remember hearing about a girl in Lahore whose father sold part of his agricultural land just to keep peace in her marriage. A year later the demands started again. Another family in Delhi gave furniture, cash and jewellery during the wedding, yet their daughter still returned home bruised because the groom's family wanted more money for a business investment. These stories are everywhere. People whisper them over tea, then move on as if this is normal life.

Sometimes I think we ask the wrong question. We keep asking whether women are victims of dowry. Maybe we should also ask how many otherwise decent people quietly become part of the crime. Because dowry survives through silence. Through relatives who say, "adjust a little". Through parents terrified of divorce. Through neighbours who hear screaming and decide it is a private matter.

Personally, I firmly believe that if a man cannot support his own wife and children, he has no business calling himself a husband or a father. Marriage is supposed to be partnership, not sponsored living. A woman should enter a home with dignity, not as a delivery package carrying appliances and cash to prove her worth.

The saddest part is what this does to girls before they even marry. Families save for weddings instead of education. Some girls leave school early because parents are already panicking about future marriage expenses. Unicef has repeatedly linked child marriage in South Asia with harmful practices tied to dowry pressure. So, the damage begins long before the wedding day arrives.

Laws exist in both India and Pakistan, but laws mean little when society keeps protecting the behaviour behind closed doors. Real change will begin the day families stop negotiating with dowry demands and start refusing them completely. Until then, we will keep pretending tradition matters more than human dignity. We must ask ourselves why there is no such tradition of dowry in the rest of the world except South Asia.