The Tradition of Wife Burning in India

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The ceremony of Marriage is different in many cultures across the world, for people have varied customs and traditional practices that go into the consummation of marriage. WE can argue that universally the primary reason one gets married is two spend the rest of eternity with their spouse, in love or by force marriage binds two people forever, sealing the act with a kiss of promise, To protect and be there with each other. Yet tragically, in some cases marriage is nothing more than a avarice way to gain power and materialistic value. In the Asian the country of India, a horrific act of torture has taken place for as long as 2,500 years. The act has been termed bride burning. Bride-burning is the practice of drenching a new bride with kerosene and setting her afire ultimately to die.. It is considered the most common form of dowry deaths.12 It is also known as a bride’s suicide, or a bride’s murder at the remorseless hands of her husband and as well as/or her in-laws promptly after getting marriage. Reasons for the act are primarily associated with the wife’s husband, and his family’s dissatisfaction with the amount of the dowry the wife was unable to provide her husband. This torotus act of dominance has killed countless brides in India leaving women, vulnerable to the volatile acts of their husbands. Typically in scoietys in india meen are seen as the strength of the housshold, they are viewed as superior beings, while women are merely there complementary prize enhancing their staus and place in society. Bride burning became a regonized health problem in India around the mid 1990s when investigation abroad reported that dowry deaths in India increasing astoundingly from around 400 a year in the early 1980s to around 5,800 a ...

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...adder, achieve economic security, accumulate material wealth.” Due to the avarice of consumer greed, the custom of dowry has disseminated to communities and social classes that normally do not engage in those practices. Furthermore, the nature of consumer greed facilitates the need to demand more dowry since dowry is representative of the social and economic status of both families and the extent to which their family co-exists in India’s caste system. Unfortunately, because of patriarchal attitudes, the bridegroom and his family have greater bargaining power and are typically the ones who set the dowry rates. In addition, the economic model used to calculate the dowry takes into account the bridegroom’s education and future earning potential while the bride’s education and earning potential are only relevant to her societal role of being a better wife and mother.

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