A Modest Proposal

In India, a boy's best friend is his prospective father-in-law. Before he even considers marrying the girl next door, an Indian blade critically eyes the dowry her father is prepared to put up. In the old days, dowries were usually paid in bright 1-rupee coins, neatly stacked on silver trays. Today, the cash is supplemented by such fringe benefits as clothes, furniture and tableware. Rich families--especially those with homely or dark-skinned daughters--raise the ante with refrigerators, sewing machines, autos and/or an education abroad for the lucky husband.

At the Kalvan, or wedding-day breakfast, the groom is entitled by custom to ask for one more gift, which must be handed over immediately. Usually this is negotiated before the event, but sometimes a groom gets greedy. One Lucknow father who earns $38 a month and had al ready spent $1,000 on his daughter's dow ry was staggered when his son-in-law asked for a $95 radio as a Kalvan gift.

The distraught father rushed to a money lender, is still paying off the loan two years later, and sees no hope of marriage for his remaining two daughters.

In Gujarat state alone, an estimated 150 girls a year kill themselves rather than remain dowryless spinsters. Other Indian girls resign themselves to marrying old or unattractive men, who are not too demanding about a dowry. Fathers of nubile daughters have been known to com mit suicide from shame at their inability to raise money; many are forced into a state of perpetual indebtedness.

In New Delhi last week, India's President Rajendra Prasad put his signature to a law against the giving of dowries "indirectly or directly" under penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The legislation was not received with cheers, especially by fathers who have already shelled out to marry off their daughters and are now ready to recoup with sons of marriageable age. One college girl argued that her oldest brother got a dowry of $4,200 and another brother one of $3,150, "so why shouldn't my husband get a handsome dowry as well?" A senior clerk in Calcutta, though he has five unmarried daughters and no mon ey for dowries, thought the law could be easily evaded: "It's not like smoking cigarettes in a bus, which can be stopped immediately as soon as the law is adopted." Even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who strongly supported the bill in Parliament, seems gloomy about its prospects.

Noting that "legislation by itself cannot normally solve deep-seated social problems," Nehru modestly hoped that the anti-dowry law might give the problem "a push and be an educative factor as well."

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