Shahnaj, a seven months pregnant housekeeper, works 7-8 hours a day. Due to her physical condition, towards the end of the day she feels she can’t breathe anymore, but the next morning she goes out for work again.
Her prime concern is to save a sum of Taka 70 thousand and open a grocery shop for her husband to take her daughter back from her in-laws. Three years ago when her first daughter was only one and a half months old, she had been snatched away from Shahnaj and since then Shahnaj is not even allowed to meet her daughter.
The fault was that at the time of marriage Shahnaj’s father could not pay the money for her husband to open a shop. She is just one of thousands of young married women who are tortured nearly to death, either physically or mentally, by their husbands every day.
According to Ain O Shalish Kendra, from January, 2014, to this July 140 women in Bangladesh suffered severely in dowry-related violence. Among them, 52 are physically harassed, 83 are killed and four committed suicide.
Dowry system is one of the worst evil cultures in this society. Dowry means gifts or payment by a bride’s family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage.
To get a ‘good’ groom, the bride’s family gets ready to fulfill the groom’s demand. When the bride is not beautiful enough or is a bit aged, the demanded amount gets higher. Dowry works as security to the bride’s family, so they want to give dowry.
In the upper class family, dowry is considered as a matter of prestige and reputation.
But in most cases, dowry becomes a curse to girls and they become its victims. A groom’s family forces a bride’s family to fulfill their demands before and even after the marriage. When the bride’s family is unable to give dowry, the bride has to face many problems and sufferings.
Sometimes the bride’s family has to take loan, sell their lands, furniture, ornaments and even their own house to collect the money.
Besides poverty, illiteracy, narrow mentality, negative attitude to the women, dependence on husband in decision making, living on male persons’ income and social corruption are the main cause of dowry.
Many people think giving money in their daughters’ marriage is much better than wasting money in education. For this dowry system, divorce, committing suicide, mental and physical tortures and the number of broken families are increasing day by day.
The dowry system is the root cause of abortion, child marriage and discrimination between genders. When women face torture in their mother-in- laws’ houses, they don’t want to give birth to a female child. They think it would bring curse for their daughter’s life.
Not only women in family but also men ignore female children as part of their family. Before birth if they know they are going to have a daughter they abort and kill the child.
Nina Goswami, Senior Deputy Director, Ain O Shalish Kendra, says that they get 10-12 cases of violence against women every day and in 70-80 percent cases dowry plays a very important role either directly or indirectly.
In the year 2014 from January to July some 40 brides were killed by the groom and among them, 26 cases were recorded and 10 cases were filed among the 17 brides killed by their husband’s family members.
Hosne Ara, Director Compliance, National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh says that of the cases they receive round the year in almost 30 percent cases of domestic violence, dowry is the root cause.
The organization does the investigation, provides the victim’s family legal information, assist them in filing case and even they make the case to be noticed by Law enforcement agencies.
Though women are tortured by their husbands, many women don’t want to go against their husbands. From a religious perspective, they believe that if their husbands get hurt by them, it will bring a curse for their life.
A good sign is that along with the government some private organizations and NGOs are also taking initiatives to remove dowry from the country. But more and more women need to be educated and aware of their rights to get rid of the curse.
