Dear Friends, This mail is a long one, read it when you have time. Also JOYnet members from countries other than India may not be able to understand the full aspects of Indian culture I am talking about.
Glad to see JOYnet on fire!! Dowry/share that goes with marriage is the latest topic, many are posting their thoughts/ideals/arguments, let me put mine too. Most of the time, we blame the guys and their parents for the dowry system and its painful ripple effects in the marriage market. Also I have seen many people challenging boys to marry someone without taking a penny from the girl. Very few people challenge a girl to marry a guy without giving a penny as dowry/share. May be many think this is impossible. I have something to say on this. Would any girl happily marry a guy from a family which is financially and socially inferior to hers, even if he doesn't demand anything? (Exclude the exceptional cases like love marriages) If you are a girl and if you wouldn't do this, then you cannot blame the dowry/share system. I don't blame you or your parents either. Because I would work harder and pay more for better food, if that is what I want. I don't hesitate to pay more for a better house, if I am worried about the lesser facilities available in a cheaper one. Well, this much said, the question is whether the sacramental event of marriage and sacred family life which follows it be comparable to the material stuff like food, shelter etc. In a way it is, let me tell you what I mean. I would work hard to earn more in order to make my daughter's life more comfortable than my financial status actually allows. I don't (any loving parent for that matter wouldn't) mind taking any kind of sacrifice for this. I would definitely do this or even more when it is time for her to marry a guy. What is wrong with that? That is part of my way of showing my love and affection to my kid, you cannot say it is 'showing off'. If you call it that way, then you haven't really loved anyone or taken any sacrifice for the sake of love. Thinking from my daughter's point of view, she wouldn't want to marry with a homeless and jobless guy, when she has other options. My dear friends, the problem is not dowry/share, but our greed for money and other material things and different wrong attitudes coming out of it. >From a technical stand point, I would say, the all system works based on the 'demand and supply' principle of economics, it cannot be any different because it is economics of marriage life we are talking here. Groom and his family very often go greedy if there is more demand for him. Well, I don't blame this, because, as a computer professional struggling to live in this competitive world, I would definitely ask my employer to pay me more than what he pays to the cleaning lady. It is not that I don't respect the cleaning lady and the work she is doing (I talk to her everyday as a friend, and thank her for the work she is doing for me) but because I think I deserve more. You can call me greedy, but you can find a lot of scenarios in your own life where you exercise the same attitude. Rich parents/brothers go greedy and don't give their daughter/sister what she deserves of the ancestral assets. Here also attitude is the problem, because in our culture, most of the time, we marry off (or send off) the girls. When we get rid of such a 'burden', we often try to make it as less expensive as we can. The major downside of all this is the struggle the girls from poor families face to get into married life they deserve. Since they don't have enough money, they end up agreeing to less matching proposal. What is the solution to these? We should be less greedy and more sharing, and along that process, we should redefine the standards with which we measure what we deserve. More we get, more greedy we become. That is what we do always, even spiritually. Most of the time, when we receive more blessings from God, we tend to drift away from HIM. Only when we face hardships, we realize that everything we thought we deserved was mere blessing from God. So the drive should come from girls, I guess. If you are ready to tell a greedy guy and his parents, that he doesn't deserve what he is asking for and go settle down with a lesser comfortable (than what you think you deserve) living conditions, then it would make start making a difference. Similarly guys should take a bold decision not to bargain for dowry/share. They should be ready to marry the girl whom they think they would match with and money should not be a part of this decision at all. If you reached till this point, I appreciate your patience :-) With a lot of love & prayers, Bijoy/Chicago/USA -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 7:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [JOYnet] Another input on dowry Priya, You brought up some good points. Let me share some of my views on it also. The dowry becomes evil when the marriage decision has a lot to do with the dowry (or even anything to do with dowry). It is also evil when the parents <SNIPPED> **************************************************************** This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to this mailing list, visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet For automatic help, send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****************************************************************
