Dowry Harassment

Lessons From The Law

One more sphere in which law had to combat with tradition and assert the policy of gender justice is with regard to the problem of dowry. Dowry is popularly understood as goods that the wife brings to her husband in marriage. Dowry is prejudicial to human rights of women because it is socially conceptualised as compensation for the low value of woman for getting the company of high valued man; because she cannot sever relations easily once hefty payment is made by her parents; and because non-payment of the promised ones or of new demands lead to violence and even murder.

In view of the spread of the evil of dowry all over India, Parliament felt it as expedient to enact a central law under the Concurrent List subject to State Amendments with the approval by the President. In framing of the Bill, States were also consulted. Joint Committee of Parliament discussed the subject in detail. It also referred to the ever increasing and disturbing proportion of the evil of dowry and grossly insensitive attitude of the youth that contributed to its perpetuation. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while piloting the Bill on 6 May 1961 observed, “Legislation cannot by itself normally solve deep rooted social problems. One has to approach them in other way too, but legislation is necessary and essential, so that it may give that push and have that educative factor as well as the legal sanctions behind it which help public opinion to be given a certain shape. The law emerged as a result was the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. The trend of legal development in the area can be traced as below.

First, the definition of the term “dowry” as it originally stood had severe defect in that only the property or valuable security given or taken in consideration of marriage formed dowry, as a result of which payments in case of non-occurrence of marriage did not amount to dowry, and fell outside the scope of the law. To plug this loophole an amendment was brought in 1984 based on