No dowry' platform brings Hyderabad marriage families together

HYDERABAD: Families of prospective brides and grooms are now getting platforms to meet each other and fix up marriages where dowry is a strict no-no.City-based Muslim organisations have started ‘face to face’ contact programmes on Sundays at various places in the city. Families searching for a matrimonial alliance for their children get to meet at the venue, exchange bio-data, discuss their family backgrounds and fix a meeting. “Parents run from pillar to post to get a good alliance. Realising this need, the programme was started a year ago and is going well,” said Mohammed Farooq, founder and secretary, Ghouse Khamooshi Trust which conducts a programme at Azam Function Hall in Moghalpura every Sunday.

“Dowry is another issue. Parents find it difficult to get an alliance for their daughters without paying a dowry. Apart from putting up posters with anti-dowry Islamic messages, we invite religious scholars and social activists to speak on the topic during the programme,” Mr Farooq says. The Siasat Urdu daily has been organising the ‘Du Ba Du’ (face-to-face) programme for the last six years across the state. “So far, about 80 programmes have been conducted across the state by us. Our main intention is to promote dowry-free marriages and bring down the extravagance (of weddings),” said Zaher Ali Khan of Siasat Urdu daily.
Families of doctors, engineers, advocates, government servants and those working abroad in various companies visit these venues and register. 

“Absolutely no fee is collected from either of the families. It is purely a social cause,” Mr Khan said. Marriageable boys and girls are categorised as per their qualifications - SSC, Intermediate, MCA, MBA, PG, Medicine, Engineering etc. For those looking for madrasa qualified boys and girls, there is Aalim, Fazil and Hafiz categories to choose from. “Customs and practices alien to Islam have crept into the community,” says anti-dowry crusader Aleem Falqi.

No grooms for well-educated girls

The city’s matchmakers are encountering an unusual problem: late marriages and high qualifications among marriageable women. Mr Faheem of Naaz Matrimonial said, “At least 70 per cent of the pending cases are of well qualified girls who are aged above 25 years.” He says it’s a herculean task to find a groom for a highly qualified girl who has completed her MBBS, Master’s in Engineering or Sciences, PhD, MBA or MCA.  It seems that boys with similar educational backgrounds prefer girls who are just graduates, so families of highly qualified girls now compromise and settle for a boy who is just a graduate, Mr Faheem says. He adds that the mindset of people must change otherwise the community will stop sending girls for higher education.

Highly educated girls who could earn well are having to shell out for larger amounts of dowry. Ms Jameela of Ghar Sansar Marriage Bureau says that families of highly educated girls who can draw fat salaries are paying huge dowry to marry off their daughters. “The families approach multiple match-makers in the hope of finding a suitable match. While there were instances of graduates not marrying girls with post-graduate degrees, there were cases where MBA graduates were married to Intermediate passouts,” she said. In other communities, especially the marginalised communities, caste plays a dominant role, said Mr K. Sudhakar, a match-maker from Tarnaka.

Corporator Ayesha Rubeena of Ahmednagar division said that greater awareness about the importance of educating girls and the social and financial security that this brings means more girls are going in for higher education. Schemes like free education, fee reimbursement and scholarships are reducing the gender education gap among Muslims too. “Going by the present scenario, where women are being divorced in the middle of their lives over simple issues, they want to be secure. If something goes wrong, women want to work and sustain their families,” she said.

The All India Survey on Higher Education 2015-16 conducted by the Union ministry of human resource development found that enrolment of Muslim students in higher education went up from 89,524 in 2012-13 to 1,07,631 in 2015-16.  The number of Muslim boys and girls has both gone up, but the gender gap still remains. While enrolment in higher education increased among boys by around 27 per cent in the given time period, it increased by just about 13 per cent among girls.