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Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

No, you cannot make an empty argument and then say I have no argument. Quoting the supreme court randomly, does not argue anything. You fail to explain why the supreme court's quote is relevant to anything you said, or anything I said for that matter. You will need to back up your assertions about "Indian feminists" with actual real data; otherwise it is just an inappropriate generalisation.

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The supreme court judgement is not random, it is a judgement from SUPREME COURT which proves that even the most respected institution of India knows that there is hardly any problem of dowry. If, instead, I would have just said that, then you would have given me citations from news articles showing 'how bad the problem in dowry is', and then I would have pasted this same judgement to show you the "real data". I posted it to cut short that argument. There is obviously a difference between our perception of self-infallibility and my attempt to cut short that argument has failed. So why don't you show me some "real data" to prove that dowry is a major problem in India against which there is an 'ongoing campaign', because I have shown you already that there is a 'ongoing campaign' in India to match reality with fictional bullshit (that most probably you learned about India when you were a kid) by curbing down the abuse of the exactly same rhetorical argument you presented in your original post. Seriously man, Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1969. You are 50 years late to the party. Now we are passing laws to water it down.

Regarding the second paragraph, that whole argument comes from Madhu Kishwar but because I don't have the exact url I will leave it at that.

As per the effects of feminist media upon Indian villages (where, as Gandhi said, real India lives), I would ask you to go through these: 1. http://fathersforlife.org/pizzey/DV_is_not_a_gender_issue.ht... 2. http://www.odsg.org/Said_Edward%281977%29_Orientalism.pdf 3. http://www.rediff.com/news/special/ls-election-madhu-kishwar...

Thanks for the more clear explanation. However, just because a law is abused by some women, does not mean "there is hardly any problem of dowry" - you are making a logical jump here. Also, the supreme court isn't important here; they're just quoting statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau. (Does 1,97,762 mean 197k or are we a missing a number here?) Last time I heard there were about 9k dowry-related deaths (also from the NCRB); you'd expect the incidence of non-fatal violence would be higher, but I don't know numbers for that. Regarding the "ongoing campaign" I saw things a while back, possibly it was "Say No To Dowry", and there are others just from a quick web search. I am not a researcher in this area, and perhaps western media is more biased around this topic. But you're not making any good arguments against it.

Regarding your links about feminism, [1] is not relevant to India, [2] is you being very lazy - I'm not going to read through 400 pages just to entertain your whims, you will need to quote specific extracts from it, and [3] is fairly neutral regarding feminists.

You also seem to getting offended personally that I am pointing out problems with your country. I don't know what to do, other than point out that this reaction is not rational, and that I don't mean personal offence.

No problem. India is a shit country and if it were possible for me to give up my citizenship I would have done it without second thought. I have no issues with people pointing out problems, but problems of India are not reported in news unless they happen to be about cultural differences. [2] is not an argument, it is just to give you a direction if you want to find out real structural problems in all colonized countries and the sheer depth of it all. Read it at your own leisure. Orientalism by E. Said is phenomenal book that changed sociology studies. It is a very good read and even first 50-60 pages are enough to make you think.

Regarding dowry related death, any death of wife within 7 years of marriage is reported as dowry related death. Why? So police-lawyer-NCW nexus can make money out of it by harassing husband. A lot of times even women's family jumps in to make money. That is the level of discrimination women face. For example, the dowry harassment lawsuit (498a IPC) is non-cognizable, which means once filed, it cannot be taken back. Then it is Husband vs. The State. The moment a death occurs police and lawyers will convince family members to file 498a. Then they can simply use it to extort lakhs. My friend himself paid 10 lakhs. Is NCW interested in that data? No. It actively hides the real data, instead relying on vague statistics like 'how many dowry related deaths have been reported to police' and not 'how many dowry related deaths actually happened'. And why not? NCW is run by politicians and wives of corrupt IPS officers.

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