Srinagar, July 7 -- By Suhail Gaznavi

Kashmir has spent two generations fighting dowry, and it has largely won that fight.

Grooms now refuse gold, families reject cash gifts, and brides' parents no longer feel compelled to bankrupt themselves feeding dozens at a wedding feast.

Religious scholars preached against the practice, civil society organized around it, and the culture, slowly, listened.

That victory is real and it should be counted.

But something has crept in behind it, unnoticed because it wears a different name, and it is doing to Kashmiri marriage what dowry once did: pricing ordinary people out of one of the most basic transitions a life can hold.

Men now marry into their late thirties, while women, once wed as teenagers...