Radio Brisvaani
Medical professionals and academics are calling for a national law against dowry, as part of Australia’s first summit looking at the impacts of the practice.
*Deep, 27, met her husband on a matrimonial website.
He was nice and her parents approved of him.
One of his attractive qualities was that unlike many Indian men, he didn’t agree with dowries — gifts and money from the wife’s family to the husband and his family.
They had a lavish Australian-Sikh wedding, paid for by her parents.
But a few months later, her in-laws demanded the family pay for another wedding in India.
“For one year everything was going good,” she says.
“After that, the family said the marriage we did in Australia is not up to the standard… even the girl you have married, we are higher in standards.”
Her parents paid $16,000 for a 1,400-guest wedding in India, and also met demands of $8,000 in gold.
Deep, who works in the medical field, says it was insulting.
“I said to my father I’m an independent girl. I don’t want to marry a guy who is asking for the money. Are you selling me, are they buying what’s happening? It’s not a business. I’m a human being,” she said
But in India, there is still a huge stigma around divorce, so they paid.
“Girls’ families do every possible thing to save the wedding of their daughter,” she said.
“A divorced girls’ life is not normal in India.
“I belong to a small town, I belong to Punjab, they start abusing and start blaming girls.”
When they returned from India, she says, her husband became abusive.
He would force her to have sex, and would tell her on a daily basis that she was worthless.
“He’d start saying to me you are a loser. You are a piece of shit.”
Then he demanded that her family give them $50,000 for a house deposit.
Deep refused and he assaulted her before leaving the home.
This is an all-too-common story, according to Dr Manjula O’Connor.
The Melbourne psychiatrist has seen more than 100 cases of domestic violence, and more than 50 per cent of them are dowry-related.
“The grooms are not happy with the amount of dowry offered, it’s insufficient for their needs or their wishes, as a result of which there are demands for more dowry,” she said.
“When the women are refusing those demands, it is leading to domestic violence, emotional abuse much more than physical abuse, but then it becomes physical abuse, and then threats of violence.”
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-14/calls-for-national-anti-dowry-law/8121182
