Judgment

P.K. Balasubramanyan, J.—The expression ‘dowry’ in ancient times applied to that which a wife brought her husband in marriage, goods given in marriage or the marriage portion. May be, it was conceived of as a nest-egg or security for the wife in her matrimonial home, especially since, most of the systems regarded a married woman as an addition to her husband’s family. But in course of time, it assumed a different shape and degenerated into a subject of barter, acceptance of the woman as a wife depending on what her parents would pay as dowry, varying with the qualification and the status of the bridegroom’s family. As felicitously put by Krishnaswami Aiyar, C.J. on behalf of the Full Bench in Sundaram Iyer v. Thandaveswara Iyer, 1946 Tra L.R. 224,

“But an abuse of the situation soon came into view when the bridegroom came to be marketed as a commodity for the value of his accomplishments and future promises and the high standards of the scriptural marriage which was a sacrament came to be contaminated by sordid considerations of immediate monetary gains at the sacrifice of the abiding purposes of the marriage union.”

The position cannot be said to have improved since then.

2.