Re: India’s Real Face, Exposing The Hindutva Terrorists
The Real Face Of India - They Love To Burn Brides.
The Article, Chill of Kerosine, depicts the chilling tales of 25000 brides per year burnt in India.
If there is ever a Kerosine sanction on Indians, their life will come to a complete halt.
A Prelude: Dowry in India
Definition Of Dowry :- Dowry or Dahej is the payment in cash or/and kind by the bride’s family to the bridegroom’ s family along with the giving away of the bride ( called Kanyadaan) in Indian marriage . Kanyadanam is an important part of Hindu marital rites. Kanya means daughter, and dana means gift.
Dowry originated in upper caste families as the wedding gift to the bride from her family. The dowry was later given to help with marriage expenses and became a form of insurance in the case that her in-laws mistreated her. Although the dowry was legally prohibited in 1961, it continues to be highly institutionalized. The groom often demands a dowry consisting of a large sum of money, farm animals, furniture, and electronics.
**
The practice of dowry abuse is rising in India. The most severe in “bride burning”, the burning of women whose dowries were not considered sufficient by their husband or in-laws**. Most of these incidents are reported as accidental burns in the kitchen or are disguised as suicide. It is evident that there exist deep rooted prejudices against women in India. Cultural practices such as the payment of dowry tend to subordinate women in Indian society.
Though prohibited by law in 1961, the extraction of DOWRY from the bride’s family prior to marriage still occurs. When the dowry amount is not considered sufficient or is not forthcoming, the bride is often harassed, abused and made miserable. This abuse can escalate to the point where the husband or his family burn the bride, often by pouring kerosene on her and lighting it, usually killing her. The official records of these incidents are low because they are often reported as accidents or suicides by the family.
In Delhi, a woman is burned to death almost every twelve hours .
The number of dowry murders is increasing. In 1988, 2,209 women were killed in dowry related incidents and in 1990, 4,835 were killed . It is important to reiterate that these are official records, which are immensely under reported. The lack of official registration of this crime is apparent in Delhi, where ninety percent of cases of women burnt were recorded as accidents, five percent as suicide and only the remaining five percent were shown as murder .
According to Government figures there were a total of 5,377 dowry deaths in 1993, an increase of 12% from 1992. Despite the existence of rigorous laws to prevent dowry-deaths under a 1986 amendment to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), convictions are rare, and judges (usually men) are often uninterested and susceptible to bribery. Recent newspaper reports have focused on the alarming rate of deaths of married women in Hamirpur, Mandi and Bilaspur districts in the state of Himachal Pradesh.
The Chill of Kerosene http://himendra-thakur.sulekha.com/blog/po...of-kerosene.htm
[Note: Copious footnotes and supporting document references provided by the author had to be edited out due to constraints of length. Please email the author or visit the website he manages for more information. – Ed.]
Imagine a young Indian woman who just got married with all pomp and splendor in a grand event celebrated over several days by friends and family. Fresh flowers. Fine food. Fun. Frolic. Festivities. A beautiful bride with a full life in front of her – a life filled with a rich mix of many joys, some setbacks and a few delightful children. Now imagine somebody pouring kerosene over her.
Kerosense makes her feel cold as it draws out the heat from her body. And then they set her on fire. Now imagine these murderous blazes flaring up 25,000 times a year…yes, that is your India Today.
In India each year thousands of innocent brides are burnt, killed or maimed in the prime of their lives by their in-laws because the father-of-the-bride is unable to meet the demands of dowry which keep on increasing after the wedding. The existence of this crime in an otherwise civilized country is a baffling paradox.
The tragedy of dowry and bride-burning is one of the most brutal scourges of mankind. It is very different from domestic violence which stems from fits of rage between husband and wife. Bride-burning, however, is usually perpetrated by the mother-in-law, sister-in-law, husband, father-in-law or other relatives in the marital home of the victim. It is a calculated, cold-blooded murder. Unlike war criminals, those who burn brides wear no uniforms; they cannot be distinguished from other members of the community. After killing a bride, they continue their normal lives, attending religious festivals, maybe a religious gathering like Mata Jagaran, or a social event like a birthday party or, perhaps, another nice wedding. Their jobs or businesses do not suffer, nor do they suffer any social penalties. On the contrary, if the father of the victim raises his voice, he is ostracized as a troublemaker. A Dowry Prohibition Act (DPA) was enacted in 1961 in India. Notwithstanding the DPA, an undercurrent of tacit social approval of dowry and bride-burning continues in the dowry-infested areas of India, and the perpetrators seemingly feel no guilt when they burn a bride.
Numbers
The enormity of this crime may be perceived better if compared to the toll taken by land mines which has evoked world-wide understanding recently. In land-mine accidents, about 26,000 people are annually killed or maimed throughout the world, out of which about 80% are civilians (Human Rights Watch). Dowry and bride-burning kill or maim about 25,000 innocent brides every year in India alone (source: National Crimes Bureau of India).
Geographical distribution
Reported Bride-Burning Deaths
Name of State/Territory Total No. per Million
Andhra Pradesh 2481 6
Arunachal Pradesh 1 0
Assam 68 1
Bihar 1894 4
Goa 3 0
Gujarat 604 3
Haryana 1626 15
Himachal Pradesh 98 3
Jammu and Kashmir 129 7
Karnataka 1444 6
Kerala 63 1
Madhya Pradesh 3012 7
Maharashtra 4542 10
Manipur 0 0
Meghalaya 2 0
Mizoram 0 0
Nagaland 2 0
Orissa 651 3
Punjab 946 18
Rajasthan 1848 7
Sikkim 0 0
Tamil Nadu 672 2
Tripura 42 2
Uttar Pradesh 11118 14
West Bengal 1990 6
Chandigarh 9 3
Delhi 1037 18
Pondicherry 14 3
India overall 34297 7
It is interesting to note that dowry and bride-burning is not practiced uniformly all over India. The table here shows the total number of deaths and the intensity (dowry deaths per million Hindu population) in different parts of India. (The figures are drawn from the statistics published by the National Crime Bureau of Government of India, which reports about 6,000 dowry deaths all over India every year. This is widely considered to be the result of gross under-reporting.) You can see from this table that there are no dowry deaths in Arunachal, Meghalaya, Manipur and other eastern states of India. There is no bride-burning in Assamese or Nepalese communities. The highest intensity of dowry deaths occurs in Delhi, closely followed by Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and other North Indian states. Maharashtra and Assam claim that the small number of dowry deaths in their states is contributed by settlers who came from the North.
A Brief History
The history of bride-burning is very sketchy and scanty. There is no mention of bride-burning in the ancient Vedic period or in the epics of Ramayana or Mahabharata (3rd to 1st millennium BC).
As the practice of Jowhar Vrata continued (1193-1526), burning of women possibly became an acceptable scenario apropos for revival of Sati. Whether the social circumstances leading to Jowhar Vrata contributed towards activation and proliferation of child marriage, dowry and Sati need to be researched.
When the Mughal rule started in India in 1526, Sati was in full force, as evidenced by the recorded efforts of Emperor Humayun (1508-1556) and his son, Emperor Akbar (1542-1605), to stop the evil practice. At the beginning of British period in India (1757-1947), Sati was still in vogue. Any effort to stop Sati was criticized as interfering with religion and as an attempt to destroy the foundations of Indian society. Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) carried a crusade against Sati.
The differences between Sati and Bride-Burning are obvious. Sati takes place at a public cremation ground, and its planning is known before the incident. Thus, it is possible to send soldiers to surround the cremation ground, arrest those who attend the Sati, and save the potential victim’s life. Trials of the criminals are comparatively straightforward, as the evidence against them is rather obvious. These factors must have contributed to Lord Bentinck’s success.
The burning of a bride in modern times, however, takes place in the secrecy of her kitchen. No one knows when or where it will happen, or to whom. By the time others learn of the event, the victim is already a charred body. There is no evidence; there are no witnesses. Prevention is almost impossible. Conviction in a court of law is difficult and rare.
Causes, and Some Exceptions
Efforts to assign direct economic reasons (economic value of women, demand and supply, and other economic forces) to the practice of dowry and bride-burning are negated by the fact that, thanks to female infanticide, feticide and selective abortion with modern sonar test, the number of women are less than men in the dowry-infested areas of India, compared to eastern states like Meghalaya, Manipur where women outnumber men.
The notion that education will eradicate dowry and bride-burning is also disproved by the fact that people with lesser education like tribal communities in various parts of India have lesser of the evil. The intensity of dowry and bride-burning is most rampant in the area of highest education and greatest economical prosperity: Delhi and New Delhi, the capital of India.
Many activists are too quick to blame “male supremacy” and Hindu scriptures like Manu Samhita as the cause of dowry and bride-burning. A conspicuous exception is the Assamese Hindu community, which still carries the burden of male supremacy and Manu Samhita, but they have neither widow burning (Sati) nor the practice of dowry and associated bride-burning. In the geographical distribution of dowry death cases, we have observed that dowry and bride-burning is most rampant in north India. People of north India have carried the practice of dowry to their new homes in UK and USA. A striking exception is South Africa. There is no dowry among the north Indians who immigrated to South Africa about 150 years ago. These exceptions need to be researched in great depth. The solution to the problem may be hidden behind these exceptions.
In the dowry-infested areas of India, dowry and bride-burning is a very complicated problem sprouting from unidentified seeds in history on a ground mixed with old practices of caste, joint family, tradition, male supremacy, scriptural aberrations like kanyadan (donating a daughter), gotra (patrilineal dynasty), misunderstood values like “family honour” and “save the marriage”, to name only a few.
How it Happens
In India, most marriages are arranged. In selecting a mate for their son, parents consider education, financial status and character, but the most important factor is the caste, the bastion of Indian culture. No other factor can surpass the predominance of caste in arranged marriages. After the wedding, a bride goes to live in her husband’s joint-family, another citadel of Indian culture. The joint-family consists of her husband’s parents, brothers (married or unmarried) and unmarried sisters. In many cases, the entire family of her father-in-law’s brother is included in the joint-family. All live on the same premises.
It appears to be a tradition in the dowry-infested areas of India that permits a groom’s father to demand that the bride’s father pay a dowry (a large sum of money and other recompenses), as a consideration of the marriage. In these areas of India, the father of the bride is subordinate to the father of the groom and obliged to pay dowry and all other wedding expenses. Male supremacy in Hindu culture, where a son is more coveted than a daughter, is seen as the cause of dowry, but there are exceptions. However, male supremacy is conspicuous in the belief that only a son, and not a daughter, can perform the last rites (death rituals) of the parents.
Dowry negotiations are all verbal, and the demands keep on increasing as the wedding day approaches. Thus, the father of the bride inevitably falls behind the required payments, which invariably continue beyond the wedding date. The father of the bride rarely receives any support from other members of the community.
The tradition of dowry is so powerful in the dowry-infested areas in India that even in the rare cases where young couples fall in love and embark on an ‘un-arranged’ marriage, they concede that their parents should exchange dowry. In most of the cases, however, the young groom dumps his girl friend and goes to marry someone else arranged by his father with a guarantee of a bigger dowry.
In 1961, under the leadership of the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the Parliament of India declared the practice of dowry illegal by passing a law called “Dowry Prohibition Act”. But the tradition is so strong that the law could not eliminate the practice. Dowry has continued in secret and in full force, escalating apace with rising consumerism and the enormous power of black money in India.
No Place to Go
In this fire storm of greed and avarice, the innocent young bride becomes vulnerable and insecure within her husband’s joint-family. Once her father fails to remit the outstanding dowry installment, she becomes an object of taunts and torture. She walks a perilous terrain similar to a mine field, with no certainty when and where death will strike. She knows her life is in danger, but she has nowhere to go.
Her own parents refuse to take her back for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the ‘family honour’. In India, it ‘looks bad’ if a married daughter returns to her father’s home after marriage. Her father is still in the financial bind of her dowry and wedding expenses. Moreover, he cannot openly accuse the in-laws of his daughter for increasing their demand. According to the Dowry Prohibition Act, the dowry giver is equally punishable as the dowry taker, and the father-of-the-bride will go to jail for the offence of giving the original dowry. Very often, the father-of-the-bride persuades his daughter to return to her husband’s family. The bride rarely receives any protection from her father.
The tradition to uphold ‘family honor’ and to ‘save the marriage’ is very strong in India. Even the officials in shelter homes and police stations persuade the brides to return to the perpetrators. Most brides are killed after they return to their perpetrators.
Failure of Existing Shelter Homes
The existing shelter homes for women in India are shared by females who are forced into destitution for all kinds of reasons: disease, old age, sheer poverty, mental problem and abandonment. The running conditions in these shelters are so despicable that, in the First International Conference on Dowry and Bride-Burning in India, held at Harvard University in 1995, attorney Rani Jethmalani and attorney Subhadra Chaturvedi commented, “A bride would prefer to die at the hands of her in-laws than to move to such a shelter.”
There is a fundamental truth in this comment. A bride is very different from a destitute person. She is young, she is at her age of procreation, full of hope, faith and love. Together with her husband, she hopes to build a family. She has a strong faith that she will be able to win everyone with her love, and she does not want to give up that faith. Even when she knows her life is in danger, she hopes that everything will turn out all right. She cannot just move to a shelter. In her mind, shelters are for destitute women, and she is not a destitute. It is impossible for her to break her mental barrier and to go to a shelter shared by destitute women.
If their ancestors did it before them, surely they’ll pass it on to their decendants.
If they believe it’s advocated in their religion, and not criminal, obviously they won’t feel guilt or remorse while lighting a female up.
This is The Real Face of India - Pioneers of Terrorism.
Every nation, every race, every religion, that tries to stop the Hindutva terrorists from carrying on their criminal activities, is a militant in their eyes.