This social curse is very wide spread in the Bangladeshi culture. In our country there are many damaging and unpleasant social customs. This dowry is the most common one. It is something that unethical and unsocial people use it as a weapon against other family when they get agreed to be related. It is implemented after the negotiations among 2 families more specifically between the bride and grooms family.
So this dowry system has entered into our system of culture thus it is very tough to avoid now a days. A person of society and the relatives pressurizes such then it is impossible to avoid. It is like if you want to have a good bridegroom then you have to be ready to gift heavy duty dowry. That’s the rule.
Many people support this dowry by arguing that it came from ISLAM. In Islamic rules there is a term named “Dower”. It means according to Islamic encyclopedia,
“Portion of a deceased husband’s real property that a widow is legally entitled to use during her lifetime to support herself and their children. A wife may claim the dower if her husband dies without a will or if she dissents from the will. At common law, dower consists of a one-third interest in all the land that the husband owned during the marriage. In many states of the United States dower rights have been abolished and other provisions, especially rights of inheritance, have been made for the widow. Where it still exists, the dower right attaches to the land as soon as it comes into the husband’s possession; for that reason it cannot be defeated by a conveyance of the land by the husband in his lifetime unless his wife joins in the deed. If the wife is the guilty party in a divorce or the marriage is annulled, the right of the wife to dower is ended. The husband’s lifetime use of his deceased wife’s property, a right that is contingent on the birth of lawful issue, is known as courtesy.” [4]
In Bangladesh people made this dowry concept from dower saying that once it will be back to bride. The money groom taken from bride it will be back to groom again. It means that, the bride’s family is indirectly giving the money to the bride for her happiness. The thing indirectly is groom is threading indirectly that if you are not going to provide me money then the bride will be in trouble.