The dowry law has been passed for a long time but our society still cannot prepare a face to welcome the twenty-first century. All the talk about our women s progress their increasing knowledge and rising status- turns futile in the context of this problem. The terror of dowry increases day by day and thousands of women are slaughtered for it. Nobody says, We must get rid of it . So it remains, and the patriarchal attitude remains unchanged.
Man continues to be a slave of old customs.
It never strikes him that dowry is a crime, an atrocity. He never stops to think that it is his responsibility to see that the society is purged of this abominable practice. The reason why men never question the dowry systems is that innate sense of superiority, which makes them look at women with a kind of amused indifference. It is not easy to make them respect women s work and, of course, they are quite disdainful about talent in women. Devoted to their own sex, men never lose an opportunity to blow out of all proportions the least talent in another man, but the same talent goes unnoticed in a woman.