Badhi: Dowry, Daughters, and the Economics of Belonging in Bunt Society
SSN Shetty- Apr 17
- 10 min read
Updated: May 5
I remember a joke that went around our house once. A man we knew had apparently taken a hefty badhi from his wife’s family. Everyone laughed, and I turned to my grandfather, eyebrows raised, and asked, “What does badhi mean?”
That was my first brush with the word—what I’d later understand was the Bunt version of dowry. Since then, every time I’ve brought up the topic in conversations with people from Europe or America, I’ve noticed a similar reaction: a quick moral monologue, complete with a shake of the head and a “how could India still do this?” tone. They’d launch into a takedown of the dowry system with the kind of conviction that made it hard to interrupt.
But if you’ve been reading me long enough, you know by now—I don’t do well with easy moral binaries. I had to dig. Where did this idea come from? Who taught us this behaviour? Was it human nature, or was it, like machine learning, something learned—fed to us over time?
Luckily, anthropologists have done the homework. The concept of dowry goes far back—Babylon, Greece, Rome. What we call dowry today had many names and flipped directions. In ancient Greece, a man paid a “bride price” to the woman’s family. In ancient Rome, the bride’s family paid the groom’s, but the purpose wasn’t to show subservience. It was more like a contribution to the household the couple was about to build together.
In Vedic India, there’s evidence that dowry wasn’t mainstream and was almost insignificant. It was upper-caste, mostly Brahmin (North India), and far from being a pan-Indian practice. In fact, in many indigenous communities—including matrilineal ones like the Bunts—dowry wasn’t just about money. It was about structure, power, reputation, and responsibility.
Fast forward to the British era—and then Bollywood. Now, India is globally infamous for its dowry system. It’s a word that makes people wince. And for good reason: it’s been tied to female infanticide, domestic violence, and poverty. But when we look closer, we see the ways dowry systems vary—and in the case of the Bunt community, how badhi had its own ecosystem.
There is no written history of when dowry arrived in Tulunadu, but oral histories and anecdotes give us clues. I traced one of the earliest signs of badhi to the time when Jain Bunts were still dynasties—the Chowtas, Ajilas, Ballalas. These were matrilineal households. The eldest daughter usually inherited the title, the land, and the aramane (ancestral house). The family tree branched not from sons, but daughters.
I know this is complex, but bear with me!
Scenario One: The Matriarch Sonne and Her Strategic Daughters
Let’s imagine a Gurkaardi (matriarch) named Sonne. She has four daughters and two sons. Her eldest daughter, Abbakka, inherits the main aramane. This wasn’t a modest inheritance—Bunt land was measured in gramas (entire villages) or naga banas (sacred serpent groves). My great-grandmother’s family was said to have owned land with seven naga banas—roughly 600–700 acres.
Now, the other three daughters don’t get left behind. When they marry, they’re given land too—pockets of it near or farther from the main house. Depending on the role of the aliya (son-in-law) in that household, it was ranked either a Beedu or a Guthu, and that was further broken down in the concept of paal ( the right a girl had to land).
And the sons? Well, they don’t inherit from their mother’s house. But they’re not out of the economic equation. Sonne, being sharp, uses her sons strategically. She marries them into respectable houses. And for this, the bride’s families pay her. A high badhi—because her sons come from a reputable aramane. Prestige has a price.
So badhi flowed in three directions:
From Sonne to her daughters – land and houses, a kind of security.
From Sonne to the families of her sons-in-law – to bring them in as aliyas.
From brides to Sonne – for marrying into her house via her sons.
But in all this, the power stayed with the daughters. The land was theirs. The gods they worshipped were matriarchal. And their sons always returned home to fulfil rituals. Women were anchors—not guests.
Scenario Two: Daaramma and the Sons-Only Household
Now let’s imagine Daaramma. She’s a Beedu woman with no daughters—only three sons. She herself inherited the house as her mother’s eldest daughter. But matrilineality means the house must go to her niece, not her sons. Still, Daaramma holds the reins till her death—and Bunt women, famously, live long. Even through plagues.
In the meantime, she brings daughters-in-law into her household—and still takes badhi. But this badhi is different:
She marries her sons only to second or third daughters—never the heiresses.
The badhi is like a trust fund, often in jewellery and gold.
It has three trustees: Daaramma, her son, and the daughter-in-law.
Here, badhi is not for prestige or land. It’s for continuity and cushion—protection for the household. But the daughter-in-law still belongs to her mother’s house. If her husband dies, she returns there, badhi included. This return is called Nukkadde—a widow's ritual exit from the household.
Scenario Three: Ginde and the Economics of Desperation
Now imagine Ginde—Sonne’s youngest daughter. Her husband’s a gambler. Her wealth is dwindling. She has one son and three daughters to marry off. What does she do?
She puts a price on her son—a high badhi—and uses that money to marry off her daughters. This wasn’t cruelty. It was math. Survival. Families like Ginde’s sometimes received support from the maternal main house, but when that wasn’t possible, badhi became her only option.
More Than a Transaction
In these stories, badhi isn’t a villain. It’s economic logic wrapped in emotion, politics, and survival. It’s reputation management, asset redistribution, and sometimes, a lifeline.
Scenario Four: Sharmila and the Return to the Family Tree
Bunts, let’s be honest, understood DNA long before Mendel and his peas. The bari system—their way of tracking matrilineal lines—was essentially a genetic map. You didn’t marry someone from your own bari because, well, they were you. The rule was strict: if the bari matched, marriage was off the table. You were kin.
But here’s the thing—these families were huge. People back then weren’t exactly doing two-kid policies. We’re talking 13, sometimes 14 children. Cousins galore. Somewhere along the line, the family tree wasn’t a tree anymore—it was a jungle.
Now comes the controversial bit. Enter: Sharmila.
Sharmila was Ginde’s granddaughter, and her childhood was full of stories of property lost, badhi debts, and the price of marriage. When it was her turn to get married, she was dragged from one guthu to another, assessed like mangoes at a market. “Tall enough?” “Too outspoken?” “What is her bari again?”
Years later, with her own daughter reaching marriageable age, Sharmila was exhausted. She looked around and realised something: her maternal uncle’s son—the very one whose badhi had funded her mother’s marriage—was now a wealthy, stable, landowning man. He was a bit older, sure. But he was responsible, stayed rooted, and most importantly, he was family.
So she married her daughter to him.
Now here’s the twist: because they were from the same extended clan, no badhi changed hands. It was all internal. But it wasn’t about money. It was about strategy.
The 6-acre adike thota (areca nut plantation)?
The small ancestral house Sharmila still had title to?
The jewellery from her own mother’s wedding?
All of it would now stay within the family line. No transfers. No cousins coming with claims. No dilution.
It was a bold move, and one that likely raised eyebrows. It may even have caused some distance with other branches of the family. But in a world where property often slipped away through marriage, this was a way of keeping the roots intact.
Some might call it regressive. Others, genius.
But either way, it wasn’t new. Sharmila just tapped into an old logic: in a matrilineal society, daughters are legacy. And sometimes, the best way to protect that legacy is by bringing it full circle.
Scenario Five: Why Look Far? He Was Just Next Door.
This one’s my personal favourite—because it’s romantic in a deeply Tulunadu way.
Back in the day, you didn’t need to go scouting across kingdoms to find a suitable match. The logic was simple, efficient, and beautifully local. If you asked your grandmother how they found your grandfather, there’s a high chance she’d say,
“ill alpa alpane ithand”—
"He was nearby, why look far?"
Welcome to the neighbourhood marriage.
In this setup, daughters and sons were married into houses just a few gramas (towns) away. Neighbouring beedus, guthus, or even the house by the Ashwatha tree across the paddy field were fair game. It wasn’t about romantic love in the Bollywood sense—it was about logistics, legacy, and love that grew with time.
There was practical genius in this system:
Travel between maternal households was easy—you could visit your birth home for festivals, rituals, or just when you missed your mother’s uppad pachir.
Property surveillance was passive—you could keep an eye on your inherited land while walking to the market.
Grandchildren grew up knowing both sides of the family deeply, often mingling like one big, extended crew.
In matrilineal societies like the bunts, where women didn’t “leave” home but expanded it, marrying within walking distance made perfect sense. It reinforced kinship. It allowed for shared celebrations. And perhaps, it gave a little more breathing room when Gurkaardis wanted to keep their eyes on how the sons-in-law were managing the areca crop.
This wasn’t about isolation or insularity—it was about weaving a strong, accessible social fabric across land and kin. And maybe, just maybe, it was the earliest form of local matchmaking powered by grandma’s gossip network.
How Was Badhi Fixed?
If you’ve ever negotiated rent in Bombay or haggled for gold bangles in Mangalore, you’ll understand one truth: everything in life has a rate. Even the son-in-law.
Badhi—the Bunt word for dowry—was never just a number picked out of thin air. It was meticulously calculated based on a series of deeply cultural, spiritual, and social variables. Here's what was factored in:
Reputation of the House – A guthu known for its fierce daiva, generous feasts, and lack of family scandal could command a good rate.
Heritage Type – Was he from an aramane (royal lineage), beedu (noble, powerful), or a powerful guthu (landowning)?
Education – The higher the marks, the higher the money. Especially if the groom held foreign dreams.
Looks – Yes, it mattered. A handsome boy with good skin and thick hair was seen as a blessing for the family tree.
Dosha and Uppadhra – Curses, troubles, from astrology were serious concerns. If the house had suffered strange deaths, illness, or legal fights, the price dropped. Sometimes drastically.
Even the podhu maker— Bunt matchmaker—calculated this like a stockbroker. They knew how to tilt the story of a house so it seemed more or less affordable depending on the buyer.
But colonisation came. So did the Land Reforms Act, and overnight, whole families went from being land barons to hoteliers, professionals, and industrialists. Did that kill the badhi system?
No. It merely changed costume.
Now, badhi became an aspiration. You paid for a boy if he could secure your daughter’s future, or if he could help your family climb back up the ladder.
Let’s break it down through the four major waves of modern Bunt badhi evolution:
Wave 1: The Strategic Mother
Late 60s – 80s
Let’s take Mallika. She has two daughters and a son. Upper-middle class. Her husband runs a private clinic. She’s clever, matriarchal, and legacy-focused.
Her eldest daughter, a finance grad. The second one, a business major. The son? Just about to graduate from medical college.
Mallika doesn’t want to waste money on a lavish wedding. Instead, she uses her son as leverage.
She offers a heavy badhi, not to her son's bride, but to secure an accomplished doctor groom for her daughter. Preferably, someone who can take over her husband’s practice.
In this setup, the son becomes currency, and the daughters are the real investments. Love may follow, but the math came first. This kind of mother also thought of Pagaarsaate - the marriage of her daughter with the son of another, and her son in turn would be married to their daughter. Example: B1- brother 1 | S1 - sister 1 B2- brother 2 | S2 - sister 2 B1 would be married to S2 and S1 would be married to B2 - no badhi exhchanged. Sometimes the wedding would happen on the very same day so no one would back out later.
Wave 2: The Fixed Price Era
1975 – 1999
This was the age of clarity. Everyone knew the rate card. Podhu makers, aunties, priests—everyone had a number in mind.
A KREC (now NITK) engineer. An MIT engineer? : ₹400,000 -600,000
A doctor from KMC or Mysore Medical, UK/US-bound: ₹1,200,000–3,000,000 (I mean there were visa costs)
A legacy CA: Equal to engineers, if not more.
A lawyer from a family of influence: ₹500,000–600,000
He owned a hotel - ₹300,000, but more jewellery to release the hotel from its lease.
You were basically buying IPO stock in a boy. Everyone understood this was a market. If you didn’t have the liquidity, you waited or married into a lesser-known beedu. But this also left many boys unmarried or girls unmarried because either the boy didn't fit into a mould or the girl couldn't afford to buy one.
Wave 3: Badhi in Kind
2000s Onwards
Then the government began cracking down. You couldn’t legally ask for a dowry. So people evolved the script.
Enter: “We’re not asking—but it’s the boy’s dream”("Namak bodchi, aanag manas undu”)
The badhi became a wishlist, not a transaction. But the girl’s side still had to tick every item off:
One Toyota Innova
One independent house, or flat, at a minimum
Complete home furnishing
Honeymoon to Switzerland (Thailand was out of fashion)
Seed money to open a clinic, CA office, or architecture firm
No one used the word badhi anymore. It became code: "We're not taking anything, but we want the girl to be comfortable."
Wave 4: The Destination Dowry
Now we live in a time where dowry doesn’t exist—officially.But have you seen the wedding?
"We’re progressive," they say. "No badhi. Just want a small wedding…"
But the "small wedding" involves:
400 people were flown into Udupi from America
Silver plates for meals
Rituals done in full regalia
Photoshoots in Bali
A wedding planner who charges ₹250,000,000 to match the bride’s lehenga to the mandap flowers
The dowry has now turned into Instagram PR. The family may not receive money—but they get clout. And clout, in modern Tulunadu, is currency.
Coda: The Cost of Continuity
Dowry was never just gold or land. It was insurance against uncertainty, against a daughter’s silence in an unfamiliar house, against the slow loss of lineage.
In every generation, badhi morphed to fit the economic logic of its time.
In agrarian years, it was land and seed. In the license raj, it became degrees and foreign dreams. In liberalisation, it was capital for clinics and cars. Now, in the age of Instagram and stock options, it’s aesthetic wealth—the wedding that signals caste, class, and cosmopolitanism in one snapshot.
Families didn’t just spend for love. They invested for access, stability, insurance, and sometimes, in revenge.
The daughter was always the fulcrum, but the equation was never hers alone.
And still, beneath the silver plates, beneath the destination mandaps and quiet shame, there remains the ghost of badhi. It lingers in whispered negotiations, in the performance of equality, in the phrasing of wedding invitations.
Tulunadu never truly killed its customs. It rebranded them, marketed them better, and learned to price love with plausible deniability.
Because here, tradition never dies. It just recalculates.
So next time someone raises their brows about dowry, I think about Sonne, Daaramma, and Ginde. About how matriarchs moved wealth, managed households, and made difficult choices. Not with submission, but strategy. Not with weakness, but wisdom.
Disclaimer: The girls are so educated, and we're mostly double-income, calm down with the badhi.
P.S. But internally we're also looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6'5, blue eyes. I'm kidding. Of course, house husbands are in now. I shall pay the highest price for the Andy Samberg, Adam Sandler type.
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