Author: Subhadra Butalia
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 170
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143028715
Description
An informed and unsparing examination of just how widespread and well entrenched the custom of dowry is, The Gift of a Daughter is an account of a long battle that has made a small but significant difference.
Part memoir, part documentation of a twenty-five-year battle against dowry.
When Hardeep Kaur screamed for help, the entire neighborhood rushed out of their homes, but only to watch in mute horror as the young mother was burnt alive in her in-laws house. When the case came up in court, only one person, Subhadra Butalia, testified, while the others refused in the interests of maintaining good neighborly relations.
Thus began Subhadra's crusade against dowry. In the Gift of a Daughter, she records her struggle against dowry - of how she and her team set up short-stay homes for the victims and gave them and their families emotional support and legal advice, organized protests and street plays to increase awareness, and fought the corruption in the police force and the state administration.
While recounting the stories of the victims, Sahara comments on the system of marriage in India and the indignities women are subjected to, the tragedy of parents waking up too late to the danger their daughters are in, the compulsions that force them to forget the dead and focus on the living, and the inadequacy of the dowry Prevention Act.
Contents
Preface
A Rude Introduction
A Sense of Injustice
The Beginnings of Activism
Taking the Message to the Streets
The Complicity of Families
A New Location: An old Problem
Building an Institution
Encounters with the Judiciary
Convictions and the Benefit of Doubt
The Lawmakers and Their Logic
Prejudice and Bias
The Importance of Resistance
Bringing Things to a Close