Christian ethics dictate that we have to abide with the secular laws. Matrimony is a sacred sacrament, not celebration or parties. The share of the wealth that the parents give excels anything as a bastion of enhancing the monumental sentiments attached to it. What all philosophy, religion or spirituality we speak or moralize, our relationship even with our parents and God can be counted at the roots of things in terms of money.

The Law governing the sacrament of Matrimony, however, after centuries of damnation and vituperation, abolished the conventional practice of ‘Dowry’ that outbursts into the passions of fury and fire, despite it is still haunting us malignantly by the mockery of illicit backyard operations. Anything that goes underground cost us detrimentally in financial as well as in ethical standards of performance. What all philosophy, religion or spirituality we speak or moralize, our relationship even with our parents and God can be counted at the roots of things in terms of money. Money and power corrupt everyone and everything, particularly in this Iron Age that swallows up anything fine and delicate. There are societies that uphold patriarchal and matriarchal systems in the world, but Christianity and Hinduism that used to value dowry as a bridge in connecting the marital relationship hails to be the majority of the world population. The societies that embrace the dated marriage system as the best of form of life partnership that allows the couple to move together and understand the balancing and reciprocating roles of complementing post-marital life shudder in horror of the inadequacies of arranged marriage that the odd and sinister couple who doesn’t know each other live together for a whole life of bondage, where also divorce is an anathema. Despite the dating plague that obliterated the arranged marriage system, the parent of dowry malpractice, the remnants of the conventional marriage values, which still infest the bride’s family to spend money in the stereotyped way of conducting the ceremony in highly, sophisticated ways.

The arranged marriage system is clogged with so many irrelevant pagan customs that give license for man to predate upon the weaker sex in undiluted forms, despite the communal life has evolved by the life style that affected by new inventions, discoveries and technology. The sobbing parents have been selling their under aged or teenaged and inexperienced virgin girls like milking cows to unfamiliar and strange households, together with a huge sum of money, valuable assets and ornaments for their lifelong maintenance. Customs and conventional practices vary from region to region and community to community. Apart from these briberies, the expenses and time- consuming efforts and travels in finding out a strange and suitable partner by crisscrossing various topographical areas on vehicles and foot, conducting the ceremony by entertaining the relatives, parishners and invitees for weeks for betrothal and wedding celebrations are of apocalyptic proportions, together with the formalities of mutual visits of the families and their relatives for a considerable period of time before and after the luxurious ceremony. It doesn’t stop there because it is the duty of the bride’s family to bring her to her own home and meet the expenses of at least 2 childbirths. The expenses and headache that associate with giving birth is another miniature wedding. It will break the backbones, financially also, of parents who have many daughters, as in the case of old life styles that had no other past time other than the nuptial hobby. The rewards of such sacrifices of parents and her siblings who conduct the wedding arrangements and parties are mere criticisms and gossips from the dear and near ones also for sometime.

Tortures inflicted upon the bride:
Physically and mentally immature girls who suffer at the hands of their muscular husbands, crocodile- like parents-in-law and groom’s siblings are of beyond description and imagination. When poverty was the main menu of the olden life style, the fall out of everything was upon her head. Torn between 2 families, she wades through a river of tears and abuses. Small huts and cottages are not ideal venues for leading a newly- wed married life, while some others with evil eyes dwell under the same roof. There have been number of cases of brutal tortures that ended up in the death of helpless brides and young mothers. In many cases the girl has to go back to her parents for more money and assets that doesn’t counter with her dowry and other benefits. There have been cases that ended up in sending the girl back to her home for good. In certain cases the war that engulfs between the new pair and old pair become unbridgeable, consequently the former ones will be either evicted or they themselves flee away. The reminiscences of the extended family system that had haunted upon the bygone periods are incalculably horrendous and unforgiving. These are the apparent reasons for making dowry system as illegal, despite the hiding thrill of voluptuous dating underneath of modern times roots out the traditional values automatically.

Christian ethics dictate that we have to abide with the secular laws- 1.Pet.2: 13-14; 1.Tim.6: 1. How come then the Nazranis continue the behind the curtain dowry bargain? Both Christian secular and religious ministers follow this old custom in pomp and ceremony; the law is blind and mute in this regard just as Jesus violated the 6th Mosaic commandment of ‘ not to kill’ by killing Death by the weapon of His own death. Rules are made for men, but men are not for rules is the other side of the coin.

Extravagant Wedding Parties- A Pagan Tradition:
Matrimony is a sacred sacrament, not celebration or parties. It was not a cruel tradition because man, a social animal, needs support and help from his kiths and kins and fellow beings. Once when we were mere farmers, marriage ceremony was a rare opportunity that comes generally only once in life. Blessings from the celebrant, parents, relatives and well-wishers are the co-travelers for the couple and their children in the years yet to unfold. Marriage welds a social acceptance of the couple with the system and the people; hence it was a good tradition in the days when we led a natural life. When starvation was a daily fact of life, giving a feast was considered to be a type of almsgiving, particularly for the local destitute and beggars. But we made this tradition as a curse lately because of the affluence of a minority. Firstly, they made the sacrament itself as a mockery by borrowing every filth from the pagan society, like the wedding choir, beautification of the bride and groom by the cosmetic doctors, decorations, audio video systems and all other paraphernalia that goes with it. Catering by offering alcoholic drinks for a multitude of invited guests convert the religious occasion as babel of tongues. Most of the invitees can’t have the food that is catered to, because of the chronic sicknesses that forces the guests to abstain from regular foods, consequently it is a burden for people who come from distant places to attend the ceremony by taking leave from their work. But the invitees don’t ignore the invitation on account of superficial prestige and social harmony. This is a display of one’s opulence and social position that everyone always craves for. It becomes a fashion and a malaise for the community once the screen stars, politicians and infamous wealthy minority invent many frills with it. The middle class follows them blindly to be in par with the upper class that conjures up the lower class to be ignited with their mode of life. This is very easy because the business classes who accrue money out of it makes it as an opportunity to fish in troubled waters for their gains.

How many businesses do thrive by wedding and other parasite celebrations? Catering is a small ocean of different opportunities. It triggers the price rise of all the commodities, edible and non-edible things. Taxi service that transports about average of an 800 people for each occasion is another area that consumes some money for the hosts and the guests. Unless the whole village and the hosts’ far of relatives are not invited from house to house, a tsunami is in the offing. Sari and jewelry shops are crowded with weird mob that is caught up in the mania of frenzy shopping. Chief of all, the main celebrant, the Beautician is the lodestar of the whole show; if she/he is late everything else, including the celebrant shepherd and other celebrant clergy who come from far distances, will have shock wave chain reactions. While the choir conducts the wedding, the invitees roam around the church for cheap talk and gossiping. There is no sanctity within or without the church. The sacrament and the celebrations shroud in cultic and pagan rituals that laminate by electronic displays. The romantic portrayal of the bride and groom sends heat waves all around, particularly for the unwed youths to follow suit without any delay because of business interests of the commercial entities. The commercialization of all our sacraments and religiosity is the death knell of Christianity. The cheap money that brought in all the electronic equipments, facilities and all other pompous living styles worked as cancerous cells that served as the nails on the coffin of our sacraments. I don’t want to make any comments on the bargaining dowry system that spins the bride’s parents’ head. In addition to the 5 or 6 digit cash dowry, there are other costly gifts of cars; houses and electronic items are other areas that invite mental torture.

It doesn’t start there. To find out a suitable partner it takes so much of energy, vexations of spirit and money and time. There would be a betrothal ceremony one similar to the wedding prior to the marriage; the expense for the same will be smaller to the main function. Then arranging of the venue, purchasing of costumes, invitations, caterings for a big crowd, etc. exhaust our spirit and finance. It is a good fun and thrill for those who have money, conveyances and other amenities in life. The post-wedding cosmetic show and expenses are other matters of concern. It doesn’t come to an end there. It then leads to the agonies that relate with birth of children, baptism, for which many other formalities that involve so much of expense is the ensuing matters of stress. These are merry- making ceremonies for the rich and the extroverts showing the colour of their money and eminence. The ass majorities who always follow the affluent charlatans by jumping from the fire into the frying pan feel the pinch of their wounded low status and financial burdens only at a later time. This is the consequential backlash and allergies of a system that flirts with marrying lucrative jobs, positions, connections and foreign money of the spouse, not the complementing partners who could dedicate their life in all walks of life, especially in the spiritual or religious fields.

A small thinking minority cannot do anything to put an end to this social pest while it brings money to all the sections of the business and religious communities that stifle and negate our spiritual and moral sensibilities. Once the so-called equilibrium of the society is in imbalance due to horse-trading economy, we can’t go back unless irreparable cataclysms hit us once in a while during this apocalyptic age. Religious hierarchies should have nipped such luxuriant celebrations at the very outset long time back, to protect the social and vulnerable followers by imposing with orders and reminders one after the other and their total non-cooperation by stamping and attesting the parish vicar as the only person celebrating the sacrament of any kind. Ultimately the middle and low -income families are the burning victims of this social anarchy of celebrations, precipitated by the notoriously wealthy miscreants of the modern celebrities. Unless we revert it back to the nuclear celebration similar to the one that cemented the social cohesion in the past, the suicidal death will increase in the geometrical progression.

Dowry:
No solution, dowry is the lingua franca of marriage contracts in arranged marriages. It started as a fair system that guarantees the girl to be provided with the share of her wealth in currency. This system of giving the share in money at the very outset has an advantage of not dividing the property into fragments that invite the groom, the symbol of masculinity to come and live in the neighborhood, which of course can trigger tensions and fight within the household and between other neighbors. Woman being the physically weaker section of the community used to adjust anywhere if her husband is co-operative and upright in all dealings. Even if the parents are poor, they want to give their daughter to a well-placed household, for which they, together with the support of her siblings, arrange the marriage by paying higher values of her share, exceeding in some cases more than ten times. This system of marriages of paying higher share values, without dividing the properties into smaller parts that invite unwanted pains, strengthened a cohesive and robust system, eliminating the distresses that are prevalent in other religions that followed matriarchal or patriarchal conventions and customs. The extended family culture that used to divide the property for the patriarchal and matriarchal heirs that finds the degeneration of the Hindu communities was rejuvenated lately in line with the Nazranis who used to thrive and flourish by buying their divided properties.

The share of the wealth that the parents give excels anything as a bastion of enhancing the monumental sentiments attached to it. In many cases, the share that one girl brings in may be used as a dowry given to her husband’s sister, however a close knit family unit is welded by such give and take web that cannot be broken by flimsy reasons. To wait and divide the property in the last days when the parents are mentally imbalanced is likely to show partiality that creates disharmony among the children, carting away the parents between different households for care and nursing in their dying days. The cohesion of the whole community with the thread of religious fervour is an institution that cannot be faced out from Indian culture. The financial security that serves as a catalytic agent is the guardian of all other mental and religious stability. A marriage is not only a bond between 2 individuals but also a contract between 2 families that affiliate and adjust within each other, leading the way for the incoming girl to nurture and care the in-laws at the evening of their lives for the judicious way of handling or investing the money that she brought as a share to foster a welding family life that cares and looks after the interests of one another. This dowry system is the one that keeps the family unity that disallows the family to fall apart. If the dated marriage is a sacrosanct system, how come the divorce rate soars up in many times than the arranged marriages? Just like the principle of democracy that upholds the integrity and welfare of a sound secular system, the dowry that synchronizes the pecuniary, religious and spiritual strata of our seen and unseen life is a fortress of our progress in all the spheres of life. Dowry is the shield and weapon of arranged marriages that only can balance the religious and social life of a community in the wider ocean of life.

Same- sex Relationship:
Our parents and the community continue this dowry system, though illegal, because of the security and safety that cemented and welded of our family life for further progress. Arranged marriage system that protects chastity and serenity of spiritual life will vanish once when the dowry system disappears. Dated marriage that precipitates moral corruption which destroy the fibre of family and social harmony is in geometrical dimensions than the inherent evils, if any, of the arranged marriages. While the fair and smart ones grabs their fit partners, the weak and ugly get into short relationship for sex gratification, leaving behind a good number of people roaming around only to have temporary or permanent defacto relationship that culminated in same-sex relationship. On the basis of money and status, the arranged marriage system used to find out a partner for everyone that helped to solve the problems of sex corruption to a minimum. The defacto encroachment and same-sex connections were not at all common during the days when arranged marriage system was prevalent.

Evils of Dowry:
The sanctity of this noble custom evaporated everything when it turned out to be a bull trade that is to be condemned as bullshit. The petrol money that pumped billions of dollars converted this sacrament as a bull market, finding couples to be joined by money, jobs, and high- profile sophisticated social survival diplomacy, the explicit exhibition of one’s megalomania. This trend cannot be bridled because the influx of money that drove time to its evening twilight, which culminated by the historical sign of Palestinian Intifida and 9/ 11 catastrophes, and we are approaching towards the moonless and starless mid-night darkness of an aeon of visible and invisible cataclysms that wipes out the endangered species for ever. Bartering sky- rocketing dowry that ended as a bargaining bull trade has landed the sacrament of marriage as a sacrilegious business enterprise. This sacrament that caters to many other business opportunities cannot be reduced to its bare minimum unless the artificial economy falters to its extinction to a time -old farming life style.

There are brokers who live their livelihood by false advertisements and deceits. The unsold commodities are sold by these treacherous methods that make marriage as a bed of thorns, whereas previously the relatives who knew and mingled with both parties together made the marriage connections. Dowry, together with high commodity presents, is a status symbol now. This noble and well-established and meritorious basis of an institution has become a horse-trading commerce that degenerates life to its decadent marketing of apocalyptic proportion. The money spinning of any sacrament that lands in profligacy degenerates the qualities of inner life, the guardian of our soul. Man minus Divine glow makes a human animal, chimpanzee, in its crude form. The time old customs, conventions and traditions are necessary to harness the human animal, but when it goes out of control, our life on earth becomes worth nothing other than celebrations, merriments and mimicry, the sign of an ape culture that wraps up everything in ashes. This type of arranged marriages come in par with dated marriages that ends in disharmonies of the animality of divorce, the main recipe for the annihilation of family and society.

Dowry has been a well-experimented partner of the bride that links to her husband as a financial guardian also. Instead of getting her landed property share after the death of the parents, getting dowry in currency at the beginning of her married life help the couple to build a shelter and other paraphernalia that goes as a bonanza in the beginning of one’s married life. To live as a couple in a big family of siblings will certainly make acrimony of various kinds; to avoid such incidents of bitterness it is a good thing to move into another dwelling, for which the dowry is her helpful partner in the years that last.

Minority commission:
There is a M.Commission that looks into the rights and welfare of the minorities in India. They allow us to keep all our religious rights, customs and traditions to be upheld, so that we can live as independent entities by keeping all our religious and social rites and rights and traditions. We had golden opportunities to present our cases and validate dowry as a legal and noble institution. But our religious stalwarts who represented our religion couldn’t visualize the importance of dowry that helped the Syrian Christian community to survive without fragmentation and molestation of other deviant practices. A minority of our religious spoke persons hasn’t yet understood the patriarchal system and its values that contributed the complementing roles of family life and its imprints upon the social and spiritual values. In order to reap cheap glory, the minority spoke persons who follow the mass media and real estate spirituality pleaded for making dowry as illegal, a weapon that forced to do backyard operations flourishing now. By giving importance to sentimental values and their shallow social glory they carted away our sacred tradition to be a backyard and illegitimate wholesale business that curtails the income of the parishes and many other future social blessings, inviting the system to be completely wiped out if the lawgivers enforce the law.

The problems of such bargaining dowry system have made social divides that embrace problems of similar ones of the dated marriages. There is not a vast difference between the dated and arranged marriage systems as both are bordered into the same territory of an irreligious culture of surface paradise. The affluence of money invites defacto relationship, sexism, feminism, divorce, marital disharmony that end in suicides and many other unhealthy social allergies. The illegitimate relationship that begets separation, biological father, social father, maintenance father, court battles, legal custody, divorce, alimony, vengeance, tensions, Juvenile Justice System that make the next generation as the vassals of infernal powers. Is this short life meant for all these vices that drive us as the heir-apparent of a nether world system? If our hierarchies had an inkling of such thoughts, they would have tried to continue the dowry system that fostered our communities for propagating their values and traditional blessings that we inherited from the past.

We don’t have any insight that could have precipitated for a farsighted solution of similar problems. As we give importance to immediate ephemeral gains, we betray the long-standing traditions and conventions that have fostered the communities in healthy conditions for all the antique years. Do nonsense in haste and repent at leisure that accumulates problems and irreparable damages for the next generations. This sacred tradition will vanish if the custodians of the law enforce it rigorously. However, slowly it may unlikely be wiped out by the fleeting trend of dated marriages that gulp the sanctity of the sacramental life style of arranged marriages. When people harvest the bitter fruits of dated marriages that transmit the genetics of future proofing-guilt and disorders that predate upon the next generations, they may throw away the pop musical symphony of lax marriages, and weep like the uprooted and exiled Israelites who wept at the banks of the Babylonian waters at the loss of their freedom of continuing the traditional way of worship and life (Ps.137). Nonetheless, it will be too late to mend the fences that are erected on the edifice of the exotic and erotic passions of the flesh, not on the Passions of Christ.