While a number of people across the country continue to make efforts of doing away with the age-old dowry system and the messed up beauty standards in India, HSC students in Maharashtra are being taught that “ugliness is a reason for dowry.” No, we are not making this up!
In an extremely disturbing logic, a Maharashtra HSC book in Sociology has cited “ugliness” as one of the reasons for dowry. According to a report in DNA, in a chapter titled, Major Social Problems in India, the author claimed that dowry system is prevalent in India and went on to explain how dowry is deeply rooted in Indian society.
The problem starts when the students were taught from the book that the parents of the bride are forced to pay a dowry to the groom’s family when they cannot find a suitable boy for their “ugly” daughter.
“If a girl is ugly and handicapped, then it becomes a very difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls, bridegroom and his family demand more dowry. Parents of such girls become helpless and pay dowry as per the demands of the bridegroom as family. It leads to a rise in the practice of dowry system,” the book read as.
Instead of teaching the children and educating them about the flawed logic of this system, our education system is teaching them to believe and actually study this distorted and regressive logic.
On one hand, we claim to strive to overcome what the society made us believe about beauty. While on the other, we are teaching the students of Class 12 to feed on to such preconceived notions. We are only passing these disturbing ideas to the future of our country. Bravo!
