“In the commercialized world, marriage is monetized, the marital relationship is commoditized, and the abominable practice of dowry is institutionalized.” WomenMarriage QuotesViolence Against WomenDowryDowry System Author:Shalu Nigam
“The culture of senseless violence with impunity is growing because, ironically, though the practice of dowry is illegal on paper, socially and culturally, it is accepted, endorsed, and celebrated with zeal. The religion promotes the evil practice of dowry. The patriarchal culture encourages it, and the market benefits from it. The lives of young women are simply of no significant value. Women are considered as `perishable’, and `disposable’ commodities without dignity or agency by the state, the market, and their families.” PatriarchyViolence Against WomenDowryDowry System Author:Shalu Nigam
“Butler described some lives as `ungrievable’ which cannot be mourned for because they never lived and remained uncounted. Perhaps, women who are dying due to dowry violence in homes are such ungrievable, uncounted lives – the lives that no one wants to protect, no one wants to mourn, and no one wants to remember.” ViolenceViolence Against WomenDowry Author:Shalu Nigam
“Centuries ago, when Karl Marx wrote exhaustively about the callous exploitation of workers by the capitalist class, he may not have imagined how in South Asia, women as brides would be treated as commodities, pitilessly exploited, and violently murdered in their own homes by their abusive husbands for extorting wealth. As the ruthless oppression of the toiling masses could not be prevented by laws or policies, the merciless torture and murder of women could not be regulated despite establishing a legal mechanism in place. Over the decades, predatory capitalism has irrevocably acquired an altered form, and the free-market approach has devised a new mechanism of manipulation. Similarly, the viciousness of the neoliberal forces, clubbed with patriarchy, feudalism, conservatism, rampant materialism, and excessive consumption propelled by extensive consumerism, is aggravating the desire among men and their families to accumulate quick wealth using marriage as a tool to extract resources from women and their families. The bourgeoisie-proletariat categorization, in the situation of dowry practice, is expanded to include the classification of savagely privileged men versus women – rich or poor, and in urban or rural areas. Women from all backgrounds dreadfully suffer for the material gains of men and their families in a harsh and hostile environment fuelled by the neoliberal, Brahmanical capitalist patriarchy.” PatriarchyViolence Against WomenDowryDowry SystemDowry QuotesDowry Violence Author:Shalu Nigam
“When Gary Becker, an American economist, in his celebrated `Treatise of Family’ imagined a household as a primary site of production of goods and sustenance in the form of child care, meals, and shelter, besides a range of commodities such as health, happiness, self-esteem, security, sexual pleasure, and so on, he disregarded the fact that a family is also a site of reproducing inequalities and sustaining patriarchal values. Becker proposed the theory of a rational `economic man’ who makes choices based on his self-interest, but he has not contemplated the dire situations of exploitation, blackmail, and extortion within marriages in South Asian patriarchal, hierarchical societies where self-interest would turn into insatiable greediness to create an antagonistic situation where an `economic man’, driven by irrational voracity, ends up torturing and murdering `his wife’, and destroying his own family when his arbitrary demands remain unfulfilled” Violence Against WomenDowryDowry SystemDowry QuotesDowry Violence Author:Shalu Nigam
“When Karl Marx elaborated upon the savage exploitation of workers by the capitalists, he described that due to extensive mechanization and division of labour, the work of the proletarians lost its exclusive character and became dull and monotonous increasing the repulsiveness of work while decreasing the wages. However, in the case of dowry extortion, the women are oppressed in multiple ways. The authoritative Brahminic ideology that propagates the dowry, forcibly extorts wealth from a woman and her family, mercilessly exploits her labour, and simultaneously deprives of her any wages or any monetary compensation for her extensive contribution behind the veil of labour of love and the rhetoric of sacrifices for the sake of family.” Violence Against WomenDowryDowry ViolenceLabour Of Love Author:Shalu Nigam
“The discriminatory practice of coercive dowry demands and dowry violence not only persists with impunity despite legal reforms, but it is belligerently expanding in terms of magnitude, the severity of violence, and outreach.” LawMarriageViolence Against WomenDowryDowry Violence Author:Shalu Nigam