Bride Burning in India Essay

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Pages: 5

Bride burning in the Hindu religion is a hideous custom enforced by the Brahmin priests to eradicate non-Brahmin women, in order to destroy the non-Brahmin races. Other methods used are wife-burning, sati or widow-burning, jauhar, and witch burning. Most of these murders are passed off or regarded as kitchen fires and are never brought to justice. This is a result of the low status of women in India who are viewed more as personnel property that can be disposed of at anytime. About eighty percent of India is Hindus. Bride-burning is a result of the Vedic decrees enforcing of dowry, which is the extortion of large quantities of wealth by the groom's family from the bride's family. The Veda is a collection of the oldest of Hindu …show more content…
The people were forced to burn their women instead of just killing them because of the sex starved Hindu warriors. The warriors would then use the dead bodies to use the bodies in necrophilia in order to satisfy their sexual desires, even today districts in Rajasthan lack women because of the Vedic eradication of female infants, as the Rajasthan proverb goes, "a dead woman is better than none". Widow burning or Sati is a Hindu custom in which the widow is burnt to ashes on top of her husband's pyre. A pyre is a pile of burning material in which a dead body is ceremonial cremated. Although cruel this custom is believed to be a voluntary Hindu act when a women decides to end her life after her husband's death. But there are some cases when women were forced to commit sati, and dragged against there will to their husband's pyre already aflame. The woman known as Sati in Hindu religious literature did not commit suicide on her dead husband's pyre. Instead Sati was the wife of Lord Shiva and she burnt herself in protest because she didn't think her father gave her husband the respect he deserved, while she was burning she prayed to be reborn as Shiva's new wife. There are many theories about the origins of Sati some were tales of a jealous queen who burned herself because she heard dead kings were welcomed to heaven by hundreds of beautiful women, called Apsaras. So she demanded to be burned on her husband's pyre so when he entered heaven