This is a bunch of horrific crap. Do you think we should nuke the Hindus in India for this behavior? At least the Muslims are killing for political and religious ideologies....these Hindus kill for material things.
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As India's middle class grows, deadly dowry tradition persists
By John Lancaster
The Washington Post
NEW DELHI, India — Charanpreet Kaur, 19, had been married less than nine months when her husband and his family decided it was time for her to go. Trapping her in the bathroom, her husband clamped his hand over her mouth while his father doused her with kerosene, according to a police document. The father then lit a match, setting his daughter-in-law on fire. She died five days later.
India's endless dowry wars had claimed another victim.
Despite the gold jewelry, color television set and other finery that served as the price of admission to her husband's middle-class Sikh household, Charanpreet's new relations were not satisfied with the bounty and kept demanding more, according to her relatives and the statement she gave investigators before she died.
"Even before this incident, my father-in-law used to put pressure on me to get more money," said the statement by the young woman, who was three months pregnant.
Unusual only because she lived long enough to point a finger at her alleged attackers, who claimed the fire was accidental, the case underscores the deeply entrenched nature of dowry — and its grim corollary, the murder of young brides whose families fail to ante up — even in the face of rising levels of income and education linked to India's fast-growing economy.
Crossing classes
In particular, the death of the young newlywed — a shy, deeply religious schoolteacher's daughter whose husband had a college degree and worked in computer graphics — shows that the age-old practice endures even, and perhaps especially, among the educated urban middle class.
Despite laws barring dowry, and decades of protests and public-awareness campaigns, a nationwide survey of 10,000 households by the All-India Democratic Women's Association in 2002 found that the practice was no longer confined to the Hindu upper castes, where it originated, but had spread across a broad range of classes and communities, including Muslims and Christians.
One consequence is the growing dearth of baby girls in India, where many middle-class parents, fearing the high costs of dowry, have taken to aborting female fetuses identified through ultrasound examinations.
Some improvement
There are some signs of progress. For example, the number of reported dowry killings has dipped slightly, from 6,851 in 2001 to 6,285 in 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available. And two years ago, Indian news media made a heroine out of Nisha Sharma, a 21-year-old computer student who summoned police to her wedding when the groom's family escalated their dowry demands at the last minute.
Matrimonial ads placed by parents of prospective brides occasionally come with the caveat, "Dowry seekers need not apply."
By all accounts, however, dowry-giving remains the norm in Indian marriages. The union of Charanpreet Kaur and Sarabjeet Singh was no exception.
Born in 1985, Charanpreet grew up in the New Delhi neighborhood of Guru Nanak Nagar, a maze of narrow paved alleys with small brick row houses. Like Charanpreet and her family, most of the residents are Sikhs, a religious minority known for its strong work ethic and egalitarian values. Typically, Sikh men use the name Singh and women take the name Kaur.
Until last year, Charanpreet lived with her parents in a tiny, well-scrubbed ground-floor apartment with a closet-size kitchen, a refrigerator in the hall and pictures of Sikh gurus on the walls. She shared a bedroom with her 14-year-old brother, Amandeep. Her father, Satwant, 47, earns his living as a private tutor to primary-school students; her mother, Paramjit, 42, teaches at a government primary school.
A quiet young woman, Charanpreet graduated from high school two years ago and had enrolled in a college correspondence course with the aim of following her parents into teaching, relatives and neighbors said.
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