Twenty women were killed by dowry seekers every day in India between 2017 and 2021
Statistics is a subject that has often attracted the ridicule of great thinkers and writers. “There are three types of lies—lies, damn lies, and statistics,” wrote Benjamin Disraeli. “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable,” said Mark Twain. Yet, it still does something that many journalists and intellectuals don’t do these days: it speaks to power. So, the Government said in Parliament on Wednesday that twenty women are killed by dowry seekers every day in India. Between 2017 and 2021, as many as 35,493 dowry deaths took place in the country. Do the sanctimonious nation-worshippers, who keep extolling the great and glorious Bharat ad nauseam, ever look around themselves? Don’t they ever come across such horrible murders? Have their dogmas numbed their cognitive capabilities? Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain? Typically, backward states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar top the list. UP had 11,874 dowry deaths during the five years, followed by Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, and Rajasthan. In fact, UP and Bihar had almost (48 per cent) of the total dowry deaths in India. On the other hand, Gujarat, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, and Manipur had fewer than 50 annual cases in the five-year period.
It is quite evident from the data that there is a correlation between prosperity and literacy on the one hand and poverty and illiteracy on the other. In general, the Hindi-speaking belt, often coterminous with what were earlier called Bimaru states, doesn’t appear to be very enlightened in social terms. Which is not very surprising, given the fact that the socio-religious reforms of the 19th century were not very influential in this belt. But we cannot ignore the fact that the problem of dowry and murders related to it are also reported from those parts which are relatively more prosperous and literate. There are laws to curb dowry, but the use of laws to eliminate social ills is not without limitations. At best, laws can be force multipliers, not prime movers. Even the efficacy of laws to catalyse social change is directly proportional to the soundness of policing and the justice system. It is a well-known fact that both the police and justice systems are in urgent need of large doses of reforms. Owing to the inadequacies of policing and courts, misuse of dowry laws, which are quite harsh, has widely been reported. The need of the hour is police and judicial reforms, but the problem is that reforms are not politically sexy; emotive issues are. The Bharatiya Janata Party does that all the time; when it’s not Gyanvapi Mosque, it is the name change game. Mandalite politicians keep focusing on caste. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has found a new vocation for himself: uplifting the moral standards of Biharis. This is surely easier than raising their living standards. Making women safe, however, is not an easy job, so our netas are not very keen on it.