Some Reflections on Dowry

Abstract

The title of my lectures is 'Some Reflections on Dowry', and it would be insulting the sophistication of this audience to elaborate on its importance or topicality. Dowry has become literally a burning problem, and the
burning of housewives is not confined to any single part of India, though it seems to be concentrated in the region around Delhi. For instance, from 1 January to 1 November, 1983, 690 women had died of burns in Delhi alone.

Dowry is in many ways an archetypal institutions for (it illustrates the kind of problems which the social anthropologist/ sociologist studying his own society faces, frequently. However, this is not to say that social
anthropologists who study 'other cultures' do not face similar problems but only that while studying one's own society such problems are more frequent, and the dilemmas and conflicts they pose, far more poignant.