5 min readJun 4, 2026 02:19 PM IST First published on: Jun 4, 2026 at 02:19 PM ISTDowry discussions return every year like mango season. We replay the same script for every dowry-related crime, with three major characters: An innocent victim, evil, harassing in-laws, and an aggrieved family seeking justice. The focus shifts to harassment, and we can absolve ourselves of collective responsibility. These news items comfort the common person of their generosity, “we’re not that bad, at least”. News, legislation, and textbooks distance us from reality, giving us the elusive comfort of things happening somewhere else. I know that dowry is universally practiced in the country in coded cyphers like gifts, but I always saw it spread on a big thaal. Dowry was not concealed by aesthetics; it was the aesthetic. If anyone missed the sight, there was also an announcement voicing the quantum of cash given in the dowry. Early exposure to such unsubtleties ensured that we never believed that dowry was something that happened somewhere else or that demands for dowry were a layered social art.Also Read | Twisha Sharma and the mother-in-law trope in IndiaGrowing up with the background score of these negotiations constantly set off alarms on our moral barometers. We always questioned why things so obviously wrong were socially acceptable. A couple of years ago, I asked my teenage nephew at a cousin’s wedding about what he thought of dowry. He said it’s okay, I guess. The generation of people referred to as Gen Z was born 35 years after the passing of the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. Moral ambivalence is the flavour of this generation. They were born after the idealism of a new country had waned. They grew up in an increasingly polarised and unequal world. Their self-styled gurus or influencers are teaching them to focus on their lane. Energy is precious, and it should not be wasted on fighting your family. When I was in front of a bunch of elite school teenagers twice in the last two years, I returned disappointed. They’re all well-travelled and well-cushioned. They are full of “gratitude” for their wealth and are passionate about “animal rights” and “sustainability”, but fear looking at anything inwards that might make them uncomfortable. They feign ignorance and apathy for things that happen somewhere else. They probably don’t “simp” on ideas like “social evils” and “reform”. Dowry, as it unfolds, doesn’t find too many mirrors in popular culture.AdvertisementMost Gen Z conversations I’ve been privy to are about a minuscule minority for a minuscule minority by a minuscule minority. It is impossible to put such a diverse population in a single definition of a generational cohort. However, there is a thread that runs through them. They are being brought up in a time of intense crisis of identity and are tuned into a morally agnostic algorithm. It is truly a place beyond right and wrong. So, while the algorithm and the market have successfully launched the “one nation, one aesthetic” scheme for weddings, it is a narrow niche category of people on there who talk about things like dowry. There is probably more content on how to pin a sari pallu over the head without the pin showing.Modernity has, in fact, never been incompatible with practices like dowry. While the marriage market has undergone a digital makeover, with matrimonial apps, sub-caste-based WhatsApp groups, prospective spouses being “connected”, and pre-wedding videos, the core remains untouched. Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar write in The Indians: A Portrait of a People, “Because of the spread of the global consumer culture in which the Indian middle class is an enthusiastic participant, the amount of cash and material goods expected as dowry by the groom is today far greater than the more modest expectation of giving and taking in traditional Hindu marriages.”Are things changing? It depends on where one looks. The more things change, the more they remain the same. For an overwhelming majority, intra-caste marriage and dowry continue to govern marriage. Our expectation of change is flawed. Caste and dowry are parts of a package that defines belonging, affinity, and security; leaving that means exiting many doors of identity. Most young people do not have the financial means to challenge society and accept an exit. Even the educated, financially independent urban Indians only have limited freedom. While “choice” or “individualism” might be allowed in marriages, it doesn’t define the institution or its process.Upadhyay is an independent researcher and writer