The horrors of Kerala’s dowry deaths

It had solely been three months since her marriage, however Suchitra S, 19, had given her mom, Sunitha, sufficient hints that she was being harassed over dowry funds by her in-laws. So a lot in order that when Sunitha heard the information of a 24-year-old Ayurveda scholar in Kollam dying allegedly by suicide over dowry harassment on June 21, she instantly dialled her daughter, asking her to not take any excessive step.
“We’re always there for you,” the mom is reported to have informed her daughter. And in response, she mentioned, “No, amma, I’ll never do anything like that. I want to meet Vishnu (the husband) and talk to him.”
But opposite to the mom’s expectations, Suchitra was discovered lifeless the next morning within the bed room at her in-laws’ place at Vallikunnam in Alappuzha district, drowning her household and those that knew her in grief. It captured headlines because the third dowry-related demise in Kerala within the span of two days. Many extra have been reported since then.
“When she had clearly told her mother that she wouldn’t take any drastic step, how can we believe she died by suicide? We know her very well. She doesn’t have the temerity to do this. We strongly believe she was killed,” Suchitra’s maternal uncle Sajeev informed IndianExpress.com.

Suchitra’s marriage to Vishnu, an Army man, passed off in March this 12 months. Though she had simply accomplished her faculty schooling and was but to enrol for a graduate diploma, her dad and mom carried out the marriage as her horoscope mentioned she must wait seven years for an alliance if she wasn’t married earlier than the age of 20. As dowry, her dad and mom purportedly paid for 51 sovereigns of gold and a automotive. But inside months of the wedding, Suchitra’s in-laws’ pressed for Rs 10 lakh in money, alleged Sajeev, and subjected her to frequent name-calling and torture over the demand.
“It became very clear to us that they didn’t need a daughter-in-law. They simply needed money. It was Vishnu’s mother that tortured her the most. Somehow, they got wind of a piece of land that Sunitha got when our mother’s ancestral property was divided. And soon, they began to ask us how big the plot is and how many coconut palms are there. Why do they need to know these things?” requested Sajeev.
The Vallikunnam police has registered a case beneath part 174 CrPC (suicide) and is probing the sufferer’s household grievance about harassment over dowry. Jose R, deputy superintendent of police, Chengannur, who’s main the probe, mentioned a conclusion is but to be reached because the investigation is progressing. The questioning of the deceased’s in-laws is in its last levels, he mentioned.
The suspicious deaths of three girls, all beneath the age of 25, have as soon as once more blown the lid off the spectre of home violence and dowry-related persecution in Kerala, sparking conversations in regards to the place of girls in a household. One would surprise how such circumstances get reported in a state like Kerala that has repeatedly flagged the significance of investing in public schooling and set the paradigm for progressive gender-reform actions via the ages. But sadly, that is additionally a state obsessive about extravagant weddings and vulgar shows of gold. Where dowry funds, via money, gold, property and autos, proceed to be made straight and discreetly regardless of a standing laws enacted in 1961 that marks giving and receiving dowry a punishable act. Where such transactions are irrevocably tied to social-standing and ‘honour’ of the lady’s household.

Crime statistics over dowry inform a extra scary story. As per the state police’ crime data bureau, 66 circumstances of dowry-related deaths and over 15,000 circumstances of harassment by the hands of husband/relations have been recorded within the final 5 years. According to a different set of knowledge shared by the state girls’s fee, almost 1,100 circumstances particularly of dowry-related harassment have come to its consideration since 2010 with the capital district of Thiruvananthapuram accounting for almost half of the circumstances. The figures underline that the state’s southern districts are infamous for propagating the unlawful observe.
“For a long time, the atmosphere inside our households has been extremely bad. Our women have been subject to physical and mental torture to a great extent. Despite having such stringent laws against dowry and domestic violence, many accused in these cases are not being punished. When a case is registered, no proper follow-ups or legal actions are being done. There’s great anarchy in our society,” mentioned KK Rema, a first-time MLA from Vadakara who has spoken extensively on violence towards girls.
She argued for better authorities intervention in outlawing extravagant weddings within the state and strengthening the prevailing legal guidelines towards dowry and home violence as short-term measures. The unhappy actuality, she mentioned, is that even younger girls in households aspire for lavish weddings and using gold in ceremonies. She referred to as out the complicity of girls, inside households and in public areas, in dealing with testimonies of abuse, that makes it so prevalent, discreet and harmful.
The sacking of MC Josephine as the top of the Kerala girls’s panel is a living proof. Even because the state was outraged over back-to-back circumstances of dowry abuse, Josephine, a senior member of the CPI(M), went on a dwell tv phone-in programme and berated a sufferer for not reporting her ordeal to the police. When the caller mentioned she didn’t inform anybody in regards to the abuse, Josephine snapped again, “Enna anubhavicho (Oh, then you suffer!)”, spurring an intense public backlash. When requested by reporters why she mentioned so, Josephine justified it saying she had spoken with ‘the freedom of a mother’. But that didn’t reduce it a day later on the CPM state secretariat assembly the place she finally signalled her determination to step down. With her resignation, there have additionally been calls to nominate a non-political one that can deal with the workplace with grace, dignity and sensitivity.

Prof. Praveena Kodoth, who specialises in gender, migration and human improvement on the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, believes the idea of dowry has deep-rooted causes going again to the establishment of marriage and the place of girls within the labour market.
“Dowry is just the symptom of a larger problem and the larger problem is marriage. The problem is that a woman is not seen as having a life if she’s not married. In Malayalam, they say ‘ninakku oru jeevitham vende? (Don’t you need a life?). What does that mean? They say phrases like ‘ozhinju poyi, ninnu poyi, irunnu poyi’ (goes away, got left behind, got sat behind) if you are not married which means you don’t move. They don’t say that about men. Men are not seen as lifeless if they don’t get married, women are,” mentioned Prof Kodoth, linking it to the state’s modernity through the years.
“Another aspect is that women are not seen as moving to enter the labour market as men are. Even when families think of educating their girls, they think differentially about what they are going to do with this education. Lots of families think if a girl has the kind of job that doesn’t threaten the marriage, then that’s fine. Like a teacher, nurse, or a nine to five clerical job, that’s not bad, but let’s say a sales person or someone who has to travel. I’m not talking of the elite class. With reservation, we have over 50 percent women in local bodies (in Kerala) but those women don’t have the kind of mobility that male politicians have,” she defined.
The points that stay are of mobility and decision-making, mentioned Prof Kodoth, the place girls are nonetheless not given the area to make autonomous selections with regard to the general public area. “There are plenty of women who refuse promotions in a banking job so as to stay as part of the family. Men would never do that but because they have the mobility. So with regard to the labour market, women don’t have the agency required to be successful in the fullest sense that men have,” she mentioned.
And statistics again such observations. A report by the economics and statistics division of the Kerala authorities in 2019 mentioned large gender disparities exist within the labour market.
“Kerala has the highest female unemployment rate in the country according to various rounds of NSSO surveys on employment and unemployment. The latest NSSO data for 2011-12 indicates that the overall unemployment rate in Kerala is 6.7 with a wide gender gap of 14.1 per cent for women and 2.9 per cent for men…male employees also earn higher average salary than females in almost all employment categories. The sectoral distribution of employment in Kerala shows male dominance in all sectors,” the report famous.
In such a state of affairs, throughout match-making, it’s the person’s earnings that’s all the time taken into reckoning. “A woman’s income may be important, but it’s always seen as supplementary, like a second income that can be compromised subject to ifs and buts. All of this is part of the problem of dowry. You (women) don’t have that earning capacity and need protection. So the girl has to come in with some kind of property,” mentioned Prof Kodoth.
And so, the necessity of the hour is governmental welfare programmes that incentivise increased schooling and employment together with making certain security in public area, which might remedy limitations of parental management on younger girls, she mentioned.
On the authorized entrance, Sreeja Sasidharan, a lawyer who has handled dowry-related circumstances, identified that there’s rising propensity on the a part of courts to ‘settle’ circumstances.

“The courts mostly have the perspective that the institution of a family is important for a good society. The judgments of such cases show that. If we look closely, we can see that courts are trying to settle matrimonial and related disputes through adalats, mediation and counselling. Even though section 498 (a) of the IPC (that deals with cruelty of woman at the hands of husband/relatives) is a criminal section, yet the abuse suffered by a wife is often ‘forgotten’ and adequate punishment is not being handed out,” she mentioned.
Often, there are pressures from all sides to ‘settle’ circumstances and that younger girls are unable to beat them is a giant drawback, she added. Therefore, the trail to eliminating the evils of dowry and home violence is thru gender sensitisation alone, she careworn.