Difficult Customer

She called off her wedding, only to be married to a cause forever. And from now on, when stories of Indian women's struggle against dowry are recounted, 21-year-old Nisha Sharma is sure to be an inspiration.

Call it iconic courage in gender-unequal India or simple spunk, Nisha called up the police to report her greedy groom hours before her marriage last Sunday, even as 2,000 guests thronged her wedding pandal at Noida, a Delhi suburb. Her groom-to-be, Munish Dalal, along with his relatives, Nisha told the police, was demanding Rs 12 lakh at this last moment before the ceremony. And this in addition to the bridal booty he'd already extracted from her father: TV, refrigerator, AC, microwave oven, washing machine, music system—two of each, one for himself, one for his elder brother—plus a Maruti Esteem.

Dalal was arrested. And Nisha turned cause celebre overnight. A fearless, if fragile, image that newspapers and television have flashed many times over since. And the nation got to know Nisha, with her dainty hands henna-adorned, sitting against the many cardboard boxes filled with her dowry. Telling us she's a software student who'd have happily married government schoolteacher Munish Dalal whom her businessman father had chosen for her. Recounting how Munish was abrasive whenever she'd mention the mounting dowry demands being made by his side, ordering her to keep off the "business of elders". Narrating those dramatic moments when she got to know of the cash being demanded at the pandal, that the groom's side had assaulted her father, and how she first felt humiliated, then angry, and then called the police on the spur of the moment.

But the most significant chapter in Nisha's story perhaps is the response it has evoked from people. "Foreign and Indian newspapers, TV channels, radio stations have all been applauding me," preens Nisha. "Sunil Dutt visited me, lawyers have been offering to fight my case for free. Also women's organisations, our neighbours, unknown people have been calling up to congratulate me!" And then there's the spate of marriage proposals. "Many boys are telling their parents they want to marry a bold girl like me," Nisha shares without a trace of shyness. "But this time I'll ensure all the marriage dealings are upfront."

As upfront as can be in the business of dowry negotiations, a non-reciprocal, extractive relationship between the genders in India, cutting across religion, caste and social strata. According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau, there were 6,995 recorded dowry deaths the country over in 2000. And this year up to April 15 alone, the Crime Against Women cell in Delhi has already registered 37 dowry deaths in the capital.

But even these shocking statistics underplay the grimness of the situation. For, despite the most stringent laws, cases of dowry harassment and domestic violence are still woefully under-reported. And statistics anyway fail to capture the horrendous proportions this can take. Two years ago, Jyoti Dhawan was rescued by the police from a stinking barsati in Delhi: she'd been forced into solitary confinement, to eat, defecate, urinate in a cubby-hole room for two years by her husband and his parents. For falling short of Rs 50,000 on the dowry she'd brought them. When the cops found her, Jyoti weighed 20-odd kg, just skin and bones and a broken spirit. A month before Jyoti's deliverance, four sisters from Bhilai, MP, had hanged themselves to relieve their family of the burden of arranging dowry.

Which is why Nisha Sharma is so special, and her supportive family even more so. "I don't know whether I'd have courage to call in the cops like she did," confesses Nisha's father D.D. Sharma. "But I am glad she mustered the courage. We must have brought her up right for her to be so confident. " Nisha's mother meanwhile just dotes on her: "My daughter is with me, the dowry is still intact, why should we be anything but happy." The Sharma residence is abuzz with happiness. Celebratory sweets are offered to all who come visiting, and many do come. Nisha is centrestage, the heroine. Now it's for others to follow her script.