Dowry
A dowry (also known as trousseau) is a gift of money or valuables given by the bride's family to that of the groom to permit their marriage. In societies where payment of dowry is common, unmarried women are seen to attract stigma and tarnish the household's reputation, so it is in the bride's family's interest to marry off their daughter as soon as she is eligible. In some areas where this is practiced, the size of the necessary dowry is directly proportional to the groom's social status, thus making it virtually impossible for lower class women to marry into upper class families. In some cases where a woman's family is too poor to afford any dowry whatsoever, she is either simply forbidden from ever marrying, or at most becomes a concubine to a richer man who can afford to support a large household.
The tradition of giving dowries is today perhaps most well-known in the Asian countries of China; in India, the practice is still very common, especially in rural areas, despite being prohibited by law as of 1961. However, dowries have been part of civil law in almost all countries, Europe included. Dowries were important social components of Roman marriages. Medieval Germans had the tradition of dowry and of Morgengab, both working to give a start in life to the young couple, as well as to secure the bride's future. This German tradition was followed by most people in medieval and modern Europe (all Western Europe being an outcome of Migrations of Germanic peoples), and only in the few recent centuries, the dowry and the Morgengab have disappeared from law in Europe.
A sort of opposite tradition to a dowry is a bride price, paid by bridegroom to family of his bride.
The direct converse analogy of dowry is the Morgengab, paid by the bridegroom (or his family) to the bride. Its purpose was to secure the girl for such happenstances as widowhood or loss of other means to survive or loss of other property. Strictly speaking the Morgengab is not a dowry.
Mahr means a kind of dowry in Arabic, and is an important part of an Islamic marriage. It is more similar to a bride price than a traditional dowry, in that the husband gives the gift to the bride. However, unlike a bride price, the gift is given directly to the bride and not to her father. Although the gift can be, and often is money it can be anything so long as it is agreed upon by bride and groom. Mahr is quite similar to the Germanic Morgengab, and the Persian equivalent is called Mahrieh. In the Quran vers 4:4, mahr is mentioned.
The practice of a woman giving a "dowry" or gift to a man at *marriage is said to have had its origins in the system of streedhan (woman's share of parental wealth given to her at the time of her marriage). As a woman had no right to inherit a share of the ancestral property, streedhan was seen as a way by which the family ensured that she had access to some of its wealth. There is no clear proof as to when this practice was first started in India.
What began as gifts of land to a woman as her inheritance in an essentially agricultural economy today has degenerated into gifts of gold, clothes, consumer dur-ables, and large sums of cash, which has sometimes entailed the impoverishment and heavy indebtedness of poor families. The dowry is often used by the receiving family for business purposes, family members' education, or the dowry to be given for the husband's sisters. The transaction of dowry often does not end with the actual wedding ceremony, as the family is expected to continue to give gifts.
British Dowry system at India's price
The Dowry system, which was non-existent before the late middle ages, can be attributed to the coming of the colonial and imperialist British with their land ownership rights and the associated revenues. Prior to the British instituted system, no single person held land ownership - in fact the village as a whole owned the land - so no give or take could be possible during weddings. Once individual and fractious land ownership was forcibly introduced by the British (as this facilitated the exploitation and pillage of Indian wealth by the Colonialists), it became possible for land to be traded and offered as gift or transferred. Prior to the British Dowry system, the only wealth given during weddings was the jewelry/ornaments passed from mother to daughter as has been happening since generations. Even now this tradition continues, but has been subsumed by the larger British Dowry system.
It was only in the middle of the 1970s that the women's movement and other human rights groups exposed the perniciousness of the system in India, when it was realized that there were an increased number of "accidental kitchen deaths" of young married women. The first reports to the police were often registered as suicides or accidents. The available statistics of dowry death are chilling and disturbing.
Initially, women's groups protested individual cases of dowry deaths. A national campaign focused on humiliating and socially boycotting the families in these cases. The campaign also demanded that mysterious deaths be presumed to be murders until investigated and proved otherwise by the police. The demand for special cells of women police officers to head investigations of dowry murders led to an amendment of the outdated Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, which was later further amended so that all streedhan gifts (both movable and immovable) had to be registered in the wife's name at the time of the marriage.
Unfortunately, in India basic attitudes to female life have remained unchanged, and the dowry is seen as a bribe to the son-in-law to keep the daughter, who after a certain age is totally unwanted in her parental home. Families often know that they are virtually signing a death warrant when they give their daughter in marriage, and yet, they do so.