The questions asked by the parents of her would-be groom were plenty, and many of them were bordering on the insulting.

Yet while Dilara (not her real name) was seething inside, she managed to reply to all the queries with great politeness and humility, reminding herself that this was all part of Bangladeshi custom.

Dilara passed the gruelling interview with flying colours, with her prospective in-laws proclaiming her a worthy match for their son. In the end, however, no marriage pushed through.

After insisting that Dilara respect social norms in this South Asian country, her parents wound up bucking tradition themselves by refusing to agree to the other family's demands that she wear a veil all throughout her married life.

Dilara, though, knows that it is only a matter of time before she has to go through another barrage of questions from yet another set of would-be in-laws.

Indeed, not even her being an honours student at Dhaka University and belonging to a well-to-do, and relatively liberal family will free her from the way things are done in Bangladesh, which has had a parade of women chiefs of state, but remains staunchly patriarchal.

Low regard for women

In Bangladesh, even educated women are treated as second-class citizens, and sometimes even worse than that.

Women's rights activist Rashida Amin says the "marriage market", where women are reduced to mere commodities that men — or to be more exact, their parents — can choose from, and then even get a dowry afterwards for their "troubles", is only one manifestation of the low regard for females in the country.

While brides in other countries often look forward to getting married, many Bangladeshi young women cringe at the thought because they usually have no say in the matter and are at the risk of being exposed to public humiliation if the family considering them as brides later finds them "unfit" for some reason.

It is estimated that 99 percent of the marriages in Bangladesh today are still arranged ones.

While the future groom is often given a chance to pick his bride or at least list the characteristics he wants in a wife, young women are not afforded the same opportunities and are expected to follow the decisions of the elders without question.

Would-be brides also have to go through what many call demeaning procedures, such as the interview that Dilara endured. Says one young woman's father: "The practice of visiting the house of the bride by members of the prospective groom's family is insulting and should be put to an end forever."

Worse in rural areas

The practices are worse in the rural areas. There, a young woman can even be asked to walk to and fro in front of a groom-to-be's parents to ensure that she is not lame. Her hair is inspected for thickness and colour — the preferred one being jet-black.

In addition, she is expected to laugh so that her teeth can be seen and checked out.

It is also the rural areas that have been particularly devastated by the dowry system, which has driven thousands upon thousands of families there into debts that take a lifetime to pay.

In a country where half of the 131 million population live under the poverty line, the more modest dowries still run into hundreds of US dollars' worth of goods, such as television sets and bicycles, as well as start-up capital for a small business for the groom's parents or money to purchase farmland.

A rich bride's family can expect to be asked for funds for the groom's further education abroad and the purchase of a house in a posh neighbourhood.

Failure to fulfill a dowry demand can mean divorce, and sometimes even death. According to Adhikar, a human rights group, at least 83 women were killed in 1998 alone in relation to dowry. That figure increased to 152 the following year, it adds, and is still rising.

Dowry-related abuse

The Bangla daily Sangbad also reported recently that of the 13,300 cases of abuse against women filed with the police across the country last year, about a fourth were related to dowry demands.

The Marriage Registration Association says as well that most of the 200,000 divorces that occur in Bangladesh each year can be traced back to trouble with dowries.

Academic Dr Sirajul Islam Chowdhury says these figures show that some customs have deep roots that cannot simply be addressed laws against them. "Dowry cannot be eliminated by merely enacting laws. What can a law do when family offers dowry and another takes it? What we need to fight the menace is to wage a social movement against this scourge."

Activist Amin, meanwhile, says that Bangladesh's political leaders are guilty of "criminal indifference" toward the indignities that women are made to endure day after day, and even in connection with an event that is supposed to be a joyous one.

"It is really unfortunate," she says, "that although the prime minister and the leader of the opposition in this country are women, they are being subjected to humiliation, repression, physical and mental torture every day and everywhere in (Bangladesh)." — IPS