I do find it extremely distasteful. I think if these women, and the Romani in general, are given chances for education and economic opportunities currently closed to them by prejudice and ghettoization, that almost all will choose to shed this tradition and it will slowly go the way that the dowry in its other forms has in liberal Western society. I will not mourn it. But I’m a brass tacks kind of person. India’s 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act has been a spectacular failure. European countries attempting to outlaw it among the insular Roma with whom those countries have never had much mutual trust would surely be even less effective, and there would only end up being even less public scrutiny as it became something they could not talk about with gadjos (outsiders). So if I want to see the practice relegated to the dustbin of history, I believe increased opportunities are the most effective means of facilitating that.
True. But these are features of the mating dance in all cultures, which doesn’t make them any less repugnant, but I don’t think they’re in any way particularly unique to arranged marriages. The one caveat is that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting a prosperous spouse; I only object to the belief that it must always be the husband, and I think many seek it superficially in America where conspicuous consumption gets elevated above real financial stability.
