The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Anti-dowry laws must have sting: Brinda Karat

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Monday, Jan 12, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Anti-dowry laws must have sting: Brinda Karat

Special Correspondent

COIMBATORE: Laws must be strengthened and the police made accountable in registering cases and prosecuting the guilty in order to put down dowry harassment, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said here on Sunday while inaugurating the party’s regional convention on dowry.

“We already have laws that say demanding dowry is a crime. But, there is a conspiracy of silence that prevents action to stop it,” she said. Gender-based discrimination, caste system and market forces were the main reasons for the evil of dowry to thrive.

“Dowry symbolises one of the most blatant practices of discrimination against women in India. It is a reflection of a patriarchal notion that exists in India that women are unequal to men,” she said. “Unless we do away with this notion, eliminating dowry will be a difficult task.”

Certain traditions in a strong caste-based society promoted discrimination and dowry. Dalit women were the most oppressed while women from even the upper, middle and backward classes were also victims.

Ms. Karat criticised market forces that promoted huge wedding expenses through advertisements of various brands. Bridegrooms’ families demanded expensive branded products in dowry after seeing advertisements that projected these as status symbols.

Ms. Karat also called upon party workers to launch a struggle against not only dowry but also female foeticide and infanticide. “We all know that a lot of struggle had been made to end female foeticide and infanticide in Tamil Nadu. But, the root cause for this practice is dowry. It made people feel that the girl child was a huge economic burden on the family. So, this is a case of one crime (dowry) breeding another (foeticide/infanticide).”

Reminding party workers that the Lok Sabha elections were drawing close, Ms. Karat said this was the right moment to make parties take up the cause of women and make it part of their agenda. So far, only the pressure put on them by women’s groups had made them at least speak on issues relating to women. As for atrocities on women, including dowry harassment, she said “domestic terror” was as bad as terrorism in the form of bomb blasts. State secretary of the CPI (M) N. Varadarajan and Central Committee members W.R. Varadarajan and U. Vasuki also spoke.

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