History :
A dowry (also known as trousseau or tocher) is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage. Compare bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage.
Originally, the purpose of dowry concept was to help a husband to feed and protect his family, and to give his wife and children some support if he were to die.Even in the oldest available records, such as the Code of Hammurabi, the dowry is described as as an already-existing custom. Regulations surrounding the custom include: the wife being entitled to her dowry at her husband's death as part of her dower, her dowry being inheritable only by her own children, not by her husband's children by other women, and a woman not being entitled to a inheritance if her father had provided her dowry in marriage.If a woman died without sons, her husband had to refund the dowry but could deduct the value of the bride price; the dowry would normally have been the larger of the sums.
One of the basic functions of a dowry has been to serve as a form of protection for the wife against the very real possibility of ill treatment by her husband and his family.In other words, the dowry provides an incentive to the husband not to harm his wife.
Reality ...Dowry deaths
Dowry deaths are the deaths of young women who are murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by husbands and in-laws in an effort to extort an increased dowry.
Most dowry deaths occur when the young woman, unable to bear the harassment and torture, commits suicide. Most of these suicides are by hanging, poisoning or by fire. Sometimes the woman is killed by setting her on fire; this is known as "bride burning", and sometimes disguised as suicide or accident. According to Indian police, every year it receives over 2,500 reports of bride-burning.
The Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports that there were about 6787 dowry death cases registered in India in 2005. Incidents of dowry deaths during the year 2005 (6,787) have increased significantly by 46.0 per cent over 1995 level (4,648). However, the increase was marginal (0.1%) over quinquennial average of 2000-2004 and there was a decline by 3.4 per cent (7,026) compared to year 2005. The bureau, reported a total of 2,276 female suicides due to dowry disputes in 2006, that is six a day on an average.
And the fun fact..
Dowry, has been reported to be the predominantly favoured form of female family inheritance in India, and a method of 'equalising' with a groom of higher social status. SIF asserts that dowry harassment of women and their families is a feminist invention, and that the woman is the abuser in almost all cases of family abuse. It also asserts that since the dowry legislation is resorted to by women who have already decided to leave the marriage, it does little to affect the cause of abolition of dowry.The group notes high rates of arrest under the anti-dowry law but low rates of conviction ( 2% ). It campaigns for the decrimininalisation of anti-dowry offences, with the threat of imprisonment removed.
For the verification references:
http://www.498a.org/cont...498aReport_version5.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry_death 