The customary practice of gifting our daughters on her marriage took the form of the evil practice of dowry. This being the root cause sowed the seeds of a practice that sometimes drag the poor parents of the daughters to the doors of penury or force daughters to commit suicide or provoke the parents to kill their daughters even before they are born or drags the parents to commit crimes like female infanticide.

I think parents are responsible to a great extent in giving airs to this heinous practice of dowry. The custom of bridal gifts assumed greater proportions in the form of forced bridal gifts, in which the groom's family seek bigger gifts from the bride's family --to fulfil which they go to the extent of taking back their so-called barati's or marriage party back from the doors of marriage, forcing the parents of the girl to listen to them.

May I know why do the parents of the girl need to give even a single penny to the guy's family? If the boy's parents had brought him up, didn't the girl's parents do the same? Or did the boy's family raised him in a different manner than the girls --like feeding him not wheat, flour or rice, but gold, silver...giving him not water to drink but cash or currency notes. I say why-- why do the girl's family has to suffer? Why can't the girl's family live in peace? Why does the family have to feel that giving birth to girls is the biggest blunder of their lives..for which they will suffer from her birth until death? Why?

Why does this happen?

Why is the purest relation between a husband and his wife hanging on the brink of dowry?

This brutal practice of dowry needs to be stopped. The first to take the initiative has to be the boy or the groom, who has to make his family understand the values that the girl is bringing into their family, not anything else that her parents give her happily.

Why can't we all live happy lives? Why are we fighting with each other? Why such an inhuman, beast-like attitude with our daughter-in-laws just for the sake of dowry?

This is high time we opened our eyes and brought this savage practice to an end before it drags our daughters to the death doors!

Who will initiate. I know merely writing or giving my views on dowry is not going to change anything unless the poor mind-set of the entire society is changed. Who will change it? From where will the winds of change blow? God knows whether that day will ever come....

 Today, I pledge that being a daughter, I will not take a penny from my parents to my husband's home. I am educated. I am standing on my feet, then why should my parents give their hard-earned wealth on my marriage? I totally reject that.

Girls wake up!!!! Please wake up and take the cudgels in your hands to put an end to this heinous practice once and for all. If you do not initiate and make your husbands understand this, your life will certainly be a hell.

I have seen so many girls being dragged to death, forces to kill themselves -- because their parents could no longer afford to dole out more money to her in-laws. Once the girl's paremts stopped giving money, or other amenities, the boy's family forced them to suicide or murdered them in cold blood.

My dear friends, this is the height of brutality. Kindly wake up and show to this world that girls are no less than boys and they stand on a par with them. Once this mind-set changes, lives would certainly bloom.....

Please listen to me.......................................................................