Why dowries persist in South Asia

THE WORD for dowry in Bangladesh is an English one: “demand”. It is the price, in other words, that the groom’s family demands in order to admit the bride to their household. In theory, such transactions are illegal in both Bangladesh and India, and limited in value by law in Pakistan. The legislators who enacted these rules (in 1961 in the case of India) thought dowries would go the way of sati, the horrific practice in which Hindu widows were encouraged to throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre to show their devotion.

Economics militates against dowries, too. India has 37m more males than females, so it ought to be women, not men, who are paid to marry (if they wish to marry at all). Moreover, recent decades have seen a sharp rise in levels of female employment in Bangladesh and Pakistan, at least, undermining the notional justification for a dowry: to defray the cost of providing for the bride.

In China similar factors have worked to women’s advantage. Not so in South Asia. Perhaps nine-tenths of all marriages are arranged, and dowries are involved in well over half of these, academics estimate. The authorities barely bat an eyelid. Newly married couples in rural Tamil Nadu still tour their village to display the bride’s dowry—typically cooking vessels and a little gold. Far from...

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