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Following accusations at a seminar on the abuse of dowries in India that organized religions are "perpetuating" the illegal dowry system, prominent churchwomen have declared that the nation's churches have done little to put an end to the abusive practice among Christians. In their findings on the dowry system, the seminar participants declared that "organized religions are not part of the solution but part of the problem."

Many leading Christians agree.

"The message of liberation preached by Christ has been negated by the social influences here," Virginia Saldanha, secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) commission for women, told ENI. "The church here [in India] has absorbed the [dowry] culture of the society and is deep-rooted in it," she said in an interview at the CBCI secretariat in New Delhi.

Leading Christian women supported the findings of the fifth international seminar on "Dowry and Bride Burning in India," held here late in January, which condemned the dowry system, perhaps the best-known example of widespread discrimination against women here.

Female children in India are often viewed as inferior to boys. Once girls reach marriageable age, many families believe they need to pay a dowry in order to find a suitable husband for their daughters, despite a 1961 legal ban on the dowry system. Desperate to get their daughters married, parents often promise to pay a dowry that is beyond their means.

The bride's in-laws later pressure her to extract more goods, in cash and other forms, from her family. This happens even to brides who have already supplied the dowry originally promised.

Some brides commit suicide because of the constant pestering and, in some cases, physical torture by their in-laws, while others are burnt to death by their new family. The death is then blamed on "catching fire while cooking" or "suicide." The police generally take no action.

Even in cities such as the capital, New Delhi, "bride-burnings" are reported every day. A recent report from the federal Department of Women and Child Development—published as Violence Against Women—stated that registered dowry deaths rose from a total of 1,912 cases in 1987 to 5,157 in 1991. But women activists claim that at least 10 times as many cases are never registered.

"The word 'dowry' is dreadful to most parents, including Christians. The day a girl is born, parents start saving for her dowry," said Susy Matthew, president of All India Council of Christian Women (AICCW), which is linked to the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI).

She said that the dowry demands and the violence associated with them "prompt many [couples] to go for female foeticide. Thousands of girls do not get a chance to live. They are murdered in the wombs of their mothers," Matthew said, referring to the widespread use of gender tests after which some parents obtain an abortion to "avoid the burden" of an unwanted female child.

According to population experts, every year several million females "go missing." The female population ratio in India, which stood at 972 for 1,000 men a century ago had steadily declined. The 1991 census indicated the ratio had dropped to 929 to 1,000.

Some districts in the northern Indian state of Punjab have recorded a ratio of female to male children below 850 to 1,000 due to female abortions, which are widely advertised, even in small towns, despite a ban by the federal parliament in 1994.

Jyotsna Chatterji, secretary of Church of North India's (CNI) commission on national affairs, also endorsed the findings of the seminar. "Yes, it is true that organized religions, including Christianity, have not tried to combat the dowry problem originally rooted in Hinduism," said Chatterji, who also heads a national women's group called the Joint Women's Program with branches in a dozen states. "As per the scripture, Christianity should have combated the dowry system. But, instead of sticking to the written word, it has adopted a compromising position allowing this practice to continue."

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February (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45