EPISODE 3: DOWRY - Discussion (Page 7) - Page 6

Originally posted by: iolahardy

Episode 3 (The Big Fat Indian Wedding)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqlzA8MwZBg

The episode started off with the young people from the audience sharing their marriage dreams. While some wanted to marry YashRaj style, someone else wanted to marry the royal way! Aaamir rightly said as once Shobha De had, that marriage is India's passion!

Komal (Delhi)

• Till the invitations were sent out no demands were made. However once the society knew that Komal's marriage would be taking place, the demands started
• On the day of marriage, while the bride waited for her groom, the groom demanded he wont come till his father gets a gold chain...which he got!
• Soon Komal's husband was to leave for the US. He took money from her parents for buying tickets to the US. Later Komal came to know that the company had already paid for the tickets
• Her husband asked her to ask her father to sign over their Delhi home to him. This was the first time Komal refused
  
• Her husband abandoned her in the US. He left her with no money, no food, no water. She was left to die alone in the US.
  
• Her husband earned $65,000 annually!
• Till date this man has cost Komal 40 lakh in cash & 60 lakh in gold
• Finally her parents have realized 'Daamad ko paalna nahi chahiye!'

Nishana (Madurai)

• A lecturer in Madurai who was pursuing her PhD studies
• 70 tola gold & 1 lakh cash were given during marriage to the groom
• After marriage the greed did not cease. He used to verbally abuse her,calling her ugly, fat, etc
• Nishana was asked to do a plastic surgery
  
• When she could no longer take these abuses, she committed suicide

Paramjeet Kaur Moom (Karimpur, Punjab)

• The groom took a total of 15 lakhs from the bride under the pretext of wanting to go to Australia for further studies
• When he left for Australia, he had promised Paramjeet, that he would call her there after 15 days...but unfortunately the call never came
• Paramjeet was beaten up on a daily basis & treated more like a maid than a daughter - in - law
• 3 years later they threw her out & his uncle has asked the Panchayat to grant his nephew a divorce that to via the internet as his nephew wishes to marry a foreigner!

Ruby Devi & Santosh Kumar (Bihar):

• A very unique marriage/ love story😆
• Santosh was kidnapped by the girl's side so that they did not have to pay any dowry😆
• But today, he loves his wife & is happy with her😳
• All is well that ends well then😉
• This type of a marriage is called 'pakadwa byaah'

Rani Tripathi (Mumbai):

• This girl was daring enough to perform a sting operation on people who were demanding dowry from her
• She married on the same day on which her marriage was fixed but with a different groom...a groom who wasnt interested in dowry

LIKES:

• Tanzeem Khuddam E Millat movement started by Mausim Ummedi
• No band, no baaja, no baarat, no dahej👏
• Parneet Singh's attempts to get justice for women who are left behind in India when their husband's flee from the country
• In the north east there is no dowry. In Assam & Sikkim, all things that the bride wears is given by the grooms family

DISLIKES:

• Honestly did not like the 'netaji' bhashan which aamir gave at the end
• The reference to Maulana Azad too was so not needed🥱

Food for thought:

• From where do the girls parents get the money needed to pay as dowry? 15 lakhs, 40 lakhs😲 & they werent the ones who had taken out loans😲 they take loans on heavy interests, that is why ppl suicide
• If they spend so much money for one daughter, what about the other kids? How do they live by spending so much money? And then, how much is their actual income😲 generally, more girls leads to female foeticide. and they live horribly

Do you feel marriages in our country have turned into a trade? Y/ N

sms your replies to 5782711.The money collected will be given to 'Unique Home for Girls'

Originally posted by: tanyadas13

Thanks for the update:

So sad that it happens!

Although, someone i knew (groom's side) didnt demand for dowry AT ALL. but the bride put a false claim for it. the groom was ultimately proved to be innocent.

its so sad that the families that need protection dont know, and other manupilate it for themselves.

Originally posted by: NazneenTonse

Oh dear. I'm a crippled-for-life pill-popper, am I? Although I'm quite horrified that you would interpret my clip on Satyamev Jayate this way, let me use this opportunity to guide you to my blogs where people can get more information on the Child Sexual Abuse issue:

THE ASKIOS BLOG - http://askios2012.blogspot.com and http://askios2010.blogspot.com (resources for survivors)

ASKIOS NEWS - http://askios-news.blogspot.in (news reports from the Indian media that relate to the CSA issue)

ASKIOS CHILDREN - http://askios-children.blogspot.com (information for parents on child protection)

ASKIOS DIRECTORY - http://askios-directory.blogspot.com (contact information for organisations in India and abroad that work on the CSA issue)

Originally posted by: shridevigaddam

Tanyadas,

@bold. exactly! the vice-versa happened to us. Bride's family started harassing us from the time of engagement. Going back on all their promises one by one...creating situations so that we lose our cool, temper...acting all innocent, but actions were something else, harassing us mentally and one fine day bride goes to her family in the name of festival event and there files a case against us for dowry harassament.

While watching the show I could not sympathize much with the bride side because, my family had been victimized by the bride's family. My father was unable to stand it all, my brother became a disturbed and angry emotional person and my mother was the only one running around between lawyers and managing the events for us. My younger sister left her job to come back to India and help my mother. After two years, as we couldn't further stand going around the courts, the lawyers fees, the bribes, with my brother and me employed, working in seperate cities from the one where the court proceedings were going on, the travel and all we decided for an out of court settlement to speeden a result for the court ruling. Instead of the mental harassment and torture and avoiding further pain to all of us, we had to pay off money to the bride after a negotiation. The initial price of clean chit was 18 lakhs which had to be bargained and brought down to 9 lakhs. My brother lost his entire savings. And my dad had lost his retirement benefits in the name of all lawyer and other expenses.

Those were difficult times for us.

@REST

• I agree that dowry problem exists and the first culprit who encourages this is GIRLS PARENTS themselves. I have always been against dowry, but I myself have not been able to fight with my mother in not giving dowry for her myself. For her it is more of a tradition to be followed, a status and what she can give for her daughter and how well she can take care of her future life. What she did not understand is she was promoting greed through her gifting. Now she has learned the hard way and now actually believes that weddings have to be simple, without any pomp, band, baaja and NO GIVE and TAKE. My dad though seemed anti-dowry when we were young, but when he actually started searching for grooms, he felt how difficult it was to fight the system. Not giving dowry meant keeping your unmarried at home.
• Where the dowry harassment cases are slapped against groom's families, I believe even the groom's families should start protecting themselves through agreements signed in front of all, if they have not taken any dowry.
• The women are protected by Sec 498A and husband and his family can be incriminated as non-bailable offence and onus to prove falling on the defendent himself rather than the one who charged the case. Nothing like this protects the groom and his family.
• The biggest culprit is the importance everyone attaches to the marriage ceremony, the status etc rather giving importance to the boy and girl and their married life. I am totally with the scrapping of Band Baaja Baarat. Its just awful waste of money for one single day of your life. When the same marriage breaks, it cuts you up in ways which are difficult to get healed in long long times to come.

@shruti

Where do people get so much money...its debt incurred. and cashing on life long savings, family's gold (mother's stree dhan) and real estate assets. India is still a rich country. Unlike US, Indian family house-holds do a lot of saving. While American banking and economic policies are focussed on us to spend, Indian policies were always focussed on saving. Now all that is changing in India too with foriegn bank policies invading the homeland !

• Of course the 40 lakhs case, the girl's family clearly did the mistake. they thought of family status more than doing the right thing for their daughter. and the groom's family cashed in on this weakness.
• Paramjeet's 15 lakhs case...they did not show her parents..what they were thinking shelving out so much money...what could be the reason ?
• Nishala's case...it was a case of countering sadism. they should have supported their daughter early on.
• I can sympathize with only Paramjeet Kaur as she and her parents were clearly cheated. There is nothing like a cheater written on anyone's forehead.
• But when torture starts like in case of Koman and Nishala, the parents instead of supporting daughters and guiding her in proper direction, they entrapped her more towards near death and actual death.
• One of my cousin and her parents were being demanded for more money post marriage and that too after they had consummated and living happily for a month or two. As the demands started becoming insane, her parents decided to bring her back from her in-laws house. The girl was adament as she was being fooled by her husband with all showering of love (emotional black-mail). My mausa-mausi could read what was going on..they kept patience and their only plan/worry was how to get their girl out of the house unharmed. This is actually the challenge, the hard reality...of how one escapes the house, when you know that clearly everything is wrong...this was not shown in today's show...of women and parents who fight this torture, how equally it is dangerous and winning is for them. What plans they make to get the girl...it is no less than a filmy action scene when the actual rescue operation happens.

Pakrua (Pakdua) Vivah

• This is a strange but reactionary custom out of dowry practice that emerged in Bihar.
• While Santosh accepted his wife, on TV over Colors channel, Story-writer Rakesh Paswaan in 2009 decided to show the other way...how the girl is not accepted by the groom in such marriage. The show's name was "Sabki Jodi Wohi Banata ..Bhagyavidhaata"

Lack of sympathy/Empathy to the episode to people who have suffered in different manner

therefore I believe today's episode may not touch the entire nation like the first two episodes. Clearly there is increasing menace of men being slapped with false 498 A cases under the same women protection. This was not shown. Girls are already protected through law and giving dowry is equally an offence as taking is. So that leads us to the point what was the episode's driving point.

What was show focussing on ?

• Was it that DON'T SPEND SO MUCH FOR A WEDDING ?
• Was it DON'T ENTERTAIN DEMANDS POST MARRIAGE ?
• Was it a case of Don't give dowry..that battle was long won by girl..under PM Indira Gandhi's regime.
• So what were we discussing ?

If some of the Muslim communities have come with such wonderful community ideas, was anything happening of that sort in the other religious communities...the Hindus (Komal's family), the Sikhs (Paramjeet kaur), the Christian comunity (Nishala) ?

As Ummesulaiman this topic easily forays into domestic violence.

I guess Aamir Khan should have restricted himself to a particular chain of thought in his victim's narratives rather than being mired in their entire emotional story and thereby becoming distributed all over the place and watering everything with no clear focus.

episode 3 was also a good epi...i felt bad for the victims in all the cases...it defenitely sounded more like extortion rather than marriage...in the case of the girl that took her life i was horrified that a situation can get so out of hand...how does dowry include expenses after someone is already married?...why do they think its ok to keep asking for money?...this is a multilayered problem...in the cases presented there was also abuse going on...it wasn't as simple as asking for things...it was also abusing the vuctims to get it...i wish this for no one...