Write a letter to your friend, mentioning the evils of the dowry system and making the atmosphere ready against it.
13, Housing Society
South Extention Part-1
New Delhi-110049
23 April,…
Dear Friend
Please accept my loving greetings. I have received your letter just now. You have sought my opinion about your marriage in your letter.
You have written that the girl from one family is somewhat more educated and perhaps she is working somewhere. Those people don’t want a big marriage party and that they can afford only the clothes for you and the girl. Then there is another family which can give you fifty thousand rupees in cash and is likely to give you some valuable things with which you are dreaming of making your future bright. But since the girl of this family is less beautiful and less educated, you have no liking for this proposal. I ask you, friend, why, after all, this kind of transactional attitude is adopted towards one’s life. Your and our parents try to encash their boys as if they were ‘hundis’. The educated people like us should protest against it. Seventy percent families of our country are poverty-ridden. They find it extremely difficult to get a square meal and clothe themselves sufficiently. If the life of their daughters becomes a curse for them simply because they cannot give dowry, it is then a stigma on our society. Friend, if in their places, our own sisters are there and they also have the same attitude towards marriage alliances, what will be our condition? We have to see not only our own interest but also that of the whole society and nation. I, therefore, advise you that you should bear in mind your future, and not dowry.
I hope you will consider my opinion magnanimously. You must send a reply to my letter. Please convey my best regards to your parents.
Your most intimate friend
Sandeep Kumar Rastogi
