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This book studies the relevance of dowry as a customary practice in Indian marriages. It examines the historical articulation between traditional cultural texts and modern statutory law to understand how daughters are valued, and how dowry as a custom defines this value.
List of contents
Foreword by Professor Werner F. Menski
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One: Dowry and fatal auspiciousness
Chapter Two: Text and Context
Chapter Three: What is ‘good custom’ or sadācāra?
Chapter Four: Legal texts, religious rites and social traditions
Chapter Five: The phantom of dowry in context and text
Chapter Six: Ancient marriage expectations and the Ṛgveda
Chapter Seven: Dowry in ancient marriage arrangements
Chapter Eight: Anti-dowry law: A misguided strategy?
Chapter Nine: Dowry as sadācāra becomes dharma
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Anwesha Arya-Bhattacharya, an award-winning film academic, has taught cinema and creative writing widely. Anwesha has been Assistant Editor of South Asia Research (SAR), SAGE, and is a graduate of St Xavier’s College, where she edited the Bibliodelic (1993–1996). A Dorab Tata (1997) scholar, her pioneering Masters research at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, led to her PhD. She is the first female to be awarded the Research Student Fellowship (RSF) at SOAS. She has taught at SNDT University, Bombay, and University of Connecticut (London), where her course “Cinema as an Instrument of Social Change” exploring human rights, feminism and film proved popular. Anwesha has book chapters in Contemporary Stardom in Hindi Film, Madhumati, Janani, and Behind Closed Doors. Co-editor of the biographical collection Bimal Roy: The Man Who Spoke in Pictures (2017), she is also a published poet. Living with her actor husband and their four children in East Sussex, she now runs a small literary and film society.
Anwesha lives with her actor husband and their four children in East Sussex, where she began an Arts & Crafts initiative the Paper Place in 2011 to support dying creative arts. She also runs a small literary and film society at the local cinema, converted from the old town library. She is the third child of Indian Women’s Movement pioneer and activist Rinki Roy Bhattacharya.
Summary
This book studies the relevance of dowry as a customary practice in Indian marriages. It examines the historical articulation between traditional cultural texts and modern statutory law to understand how daughters are valued, and how dowry as a custom defines this value.
