Chitralis are now not selling their daughter you moron.[emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] [emoji35] Thats called bride price. Will you sell your child?? Chitrali culture is very different from the culture of the plains. Some poor families marry their daughters outside Chitral and have bought us a bad name.
Another thing is in the old days Chitralis never sold their Children on their own free will. The ruler forcefully sold off the Shia Chitralis (ruling class being sunni who consideres shia as infidel) for their crimes as a punishment. Sunni were exempted from exempted from servile bondage and slavery.
You are quite right Sir,
Bride price / Dower are the money / goods / services paid by the groom to bride or bride's parents whereas ‘Dowry’ is what the bride brings with her.
Dower has been the norm in Africa, American Indians, and Middle East and in Iran /Afghanistan since the dawn of history. In the Bible it is mentioned that Hazrat Yaqub on seeing Rachel fell madly in love with Rachel at first sight. Her father Laban who was also maternal uncle of Hazrat Yaqub said that he had to marry the elder sister Leah first and the bride price was 7 years work for Laban. Hazrat Yaqub worked for 7 years in Laban’s service for Leah and for another 7 years for Rachel.
The Code of Hammrabi mentions bride price in various laws as an established custom. I personally know of an Iranian friend who recently paid 500 gold coins as bride price for his son’s wedding to a girl from Isfahan. I was told by an Arab colleague from Fujairah that poor families are sometime obliged to marry their daughter and use the Dower thus received to pay for the bride for the son.
My point is that paying the Mehar / Dower for your bride is common place among the Muslims. However, in the Hindu culture we hear the stories that the king offered his daughter in marriage along with half of his kingdom! Understand some orthodox Hindus decline to eat the food at their daughters’ house unless they pay for it.
Since the culture of the subcontinent Muslims has been strongly influenced by Hindu culture, asking for the bride price is considered same as selling the daughter and hence shameful. I have attended wedding where the Mehar is set very little and called per Sharia. Even there is no set amount in the Sharia for Mehar.
Every young man wants to have a pretty wife ( I also had a crush on Madhubala in my teens) therefore there is absolutely no harm in paying the bride price if that is the condition for marrying your heart’s desire. Many unscrupulous persons take advantage of this and marry the girls for the sole purpose of using them as money making machines once the girl is in their power. In the 1960’s there were cases where people went to East Pakistan to wed a Bengali girl, but after return to Karachi, forced her to work as prostitute.
The guilt is not with the culture, nor of the parents of the girl but of poverty because there is one mouth less to feed and of the callous & unscrupulous person who pays the bride price ostensibly to marry the girl but in fact exploits her beauty by forcing her to work as prostitute.
