|
Literary Review
Dying for dowry
IN 1996, a man called Trimbak cut up his pregnant wife into several pieces, most of which he stuffed into two suitcases, while the head, perhaps for its inconvenient shape, he tossed into a bush. This aspiring Hindu Hannibal was sentenced to death by the sessions court and high court. But the Supreme Court sympathetically commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
According to the book which narrates this incident, the Supreme Court's logic was as follows: Death sentences are only given in the rarest of crimes; Trimbak had murdered his wife for bringing insufficient dowry; dowry deaths are very common; therefore this crime, related to dowry, was not rare enough for the maximum punishment.
Subhadra Butalia's is a book by an 81-year-old woman. As an ordinary lecturer in a Delhi college, she happened to witness a neighbour being burnt to death by her in-laws. It galvanised her into furious action. Through the next quarter century, she and her NGO, Karmika, have been fighting for the rights of women being oppressed, literally to death, by their families. Her book describes cases she encountered, our frustrating law courts, obdurate society, and corrupt bureaucracy. The conversational style perhaps unconsciously mimics the routineness of women's death, which might happen for, say, the lack of a scooter. The book reminds one powerfully of an issue that has been forgotten by the media. What we learn almost incidentally is also how grotesque and weird middle class Indian families can be.
The Gift of a Daughter, Penguin, Rs. 200.
ANURADHA ROY
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
|
