Dowry Violence

 Dowry Violence 

Excerpts from the title Dowry is a Serious Economic Violence: Rethinking Dowry Law in India

For more see this book https://www.amazon.in/Dowry-Serious-Economic-Violence-Rethinking/dp/B0C5KLDF3P

Arendt[1] in her renowned book titled Eichmann in Jerusalem, applied the phrase `banality of evil’ to determine how, during the Holocaust, ordinary people committed extraordinary crimes and yet escaped their criminal liabilities because the grave seriousness of the crime was trivialized, routinized, and reduced to `banality’. In the Nazi regime, irrevocable crimes against humanity were committed in a systematic way on a daily basis and accepted without moral repulsion or political indignation[2]. In the same way, for decades, the horrific crimes of dowry violence and wrongful deaths have been reduced to `banality’ in India. 

Dowry-related violence is not only destroying lives, but it is also adversely affecting the way society contemplates it and distances itself from its dire consequences. In everyday lives, the incidences of dowry-related violence are normalized and routinized legally as well as socially without recognizing how these harmfully affect the daily lives of half of humanity. Rather, over the period, generations of men and women are being conditioned and socialized to accept this gruesome patriarchal violence silently, without thinking about it, without questioning it, and without resisting it. Moreover, the ghastliness of pervasive violence is shielded by a culture of carnival around it.

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[1] Arendt Hannah (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Viking Press, USA

[2] Butler Judith (2011) Hannah Arendt’s challenge to Adolf Eichmann, The Guardian, August 29, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil