Mahr Present-Value Calculator
Express a deferred mahr agreed years ago in today's terms — gold-weight or CPI basis, no interest
Frequently Asked Questions
A deferred mahr (dower) agreed years or decades ago in a fixed rupee amount loses real purchasing power over time due to inflation — restating that original figure in today's terms, using either the gold-weight it was originally equivalent to or general price-level (CPI) change since the agreement, gives a more meaningful current value than treating the original rupee number as still representing the same real amount.
Why this is a purchasing-power restatement, not an investment calculation
This calculator explicitly does not apply any interest, profit rate, or investment-style compounding — doing so would raise clear concerns around riba (interest) in an Islamic finance context. Instead, it offers two purely inflation-tracking restatement methods. The gold-weight basis takes the amount of gold (in tola) the original mahr amount could have purchased at the time it was agreed, and revalues that same gold quantity at today's gold price — since gold has historically tracked purchasing power reasonably well over long periods, this restates the mahr in terms of what it was originally worth in real goods, not nominal rupees. The CPI basis instead uses the general Consumer Price Index change between the agreement date and today to scale the original rupee figure for general inflation, which is a broader measure than gold price alone and may track different agreements' original intent more closely depending on context.
A worked example
A mahr amount agreed in rupee terms several decades ago, restated using the gold-weight method, typically comes out to a present-day figure many times the original nominal number — not because the obligation "grew," but because the original rupee figure has lost the vast majority of its purchasing power to inflation over that period, and the gold-weight method reveals what the original commitment was actually worth in real terms.
How this connects to your other financial planning
This is purely a restatement tool for an already-agreed mahr amount — it doesn't determine what a mahr should be, which is a matter of family and community norms, negotiation, and Islamic guidance rather than a calculation. If the broader context involves estate or inheritance planning, the Inheritance Calculator handles the separate, structurally different calculation of how an estate is distributed among heirs under Faraid.
Common mistakes
Treating an old, fixed rupee mahr figure as still representing its original real value — without any inflation adjustment at all — is the most common oversight, understating what fulfilling the obligation in genuinely equivalent terms would require; conversely, applying an investment-style compounding return (rather than a pure inflation restatement) overstates it and introduces exactly the interest-like calculation this tool is deliberately designed to avoid.