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lose their homes and lifelong savings, resulting in worrisome lives. Even, quite a few girls remain unmarried or get married to unsuitable and incompatible matches (to the old, invalid, poor, sick, cruel, or criminal). Since the practice of dowry and lifelong giving is common, there are continuous and constant tensions, strife, quarrels, and domestic fights in the families regarding the amount and frequency of the dowry. As a result, some marriages end up like living hells. Bride abuse, torture, burning, and suicides happen quite often. Such is the state of marriages shadowed by dowry.
o About sixty years ago, one Jain muni (monk) who abhorred this menace came to the prominent area of Jains in Delhi. He delivered many sermons and lectures against this horrible practice and undertook a fast to death till the Jain community takes vows to stop this practice. The community, other than paying lip service and verbal sympathy to his cause, did absolutely nothing. After about two to three weeks of fast, some prominent members of the Jain community went to meet the muni ji and persuaded him to break his fast as the Jain community will not change (their conscience was not even pricked) and his death and sacrifice will go in vain. He realized the reality, broke his fast and to the best of my knowledge never again returned to Delhi.
o In Rohini (New Delhi), there is a Saroj Hospital. It belongs to a non-Jain family. In the lobby of that hospital, there is a bust of Saroj, a young woman, erected by her parents. It reads "in memory of our loving daughter who became a victim of dowry and death by burning by her in-laws.” There must be stories like Saroj's amongst Jains, too.
o As soon as my first child (a son) was born in New Delhi more than fifty years ago, I went to a Jain sadhu and asked him to administer me a lifelong vow that I would neither demand nor accept any dowry, in any shape or form, for my son. The monk thought that I was crazy, but he did administer the oath to me anyway. Luckily, I immigrated to USA, my son got married more than twenty-five years ago,
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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