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SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd Broken Mirrors: The ?Dowry Problem? In India by Robin Wyatt
In fairytales, good triumphs over evil and mirrors dont lie. Reality, however, presents a different picture as fairytale marriages fall apart and end in a ghastly nightmare: battered brides, unnatural deaths and the ubiquitous dowry. Why does the spectre of dowry death continue to haunt Indian society even a decade into the 21st century? Robin Wyatt, with Nazia Masood, investigates this very problem in Broken Mirrors, urging readers to look beyond the obvious. The narrative, as it effortlessly turns its gaze from the story of a survivor of domestic violence to that of one accused of the crime, smashes the conventional image of so-called dowry deaths. It picks up each of the shattered pieces of the mirror and looks into them closely, and what emerges is a complex portrait of a society where marriage counselling remains taboo and inaccessible to large sections of the population, where the quest for justice, armed with powerful, pro-women anti-dowry laws, brushes aside the truth behind the breakdown of many a perfect marriage.