WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
Killings & For Free Choice Marriages
Women campaign against honour killings, against justification of crimes of honor as "tradition," and for free choice marriages. WFS Photo.
By Tripti
Nath
Such incidents are,
of course, not new. Surely the nation has not forgotten how Harpreet, the
daughter of the then Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) Chief, Bibi
Jagir Kaur, was killed in the summer of 2000 for allegedly marrying a man from
a modest background. In fact, it took the Supreme Court's intervention this
January to set a six-month time frame for the completion of the trial of this decade-long
case.
While women's groups
have long been waging a lonely battle against such crimes, what seems to have
galvanised public opinion are two recent developments. In March 2010, a Karnal
court pronounced a landmark verdict on the Manoj-Babli murder case of June
2007. Manoj, 23, and Babli, 19, were killed because they had chosen to marry
each other despite being of the same 'gotra' (a term applied to a clan, a group
of families, or a lineage - patrilineal - whose members trace their descent to
a common ancestor) and from the same village of Karoran, in Haryana's Kaithal
district. The court awarded the death sentence to five persons and life
imprisonment to Ganga Raj, leader of the Banawala khap, for conspiring to kill
the couple.
The response to the verdict
was swift. In April, a conclave of khap panchayats, or caste councils,
notorious for their regressive attitudes and barbaric methods of punishment was
held. More than 4,000 khap panchayat members from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh,
Rajasthan and
In the wake of the
judgment, women's groups and public-spirited individuals from all over the
country have protested against those who murder in the name of preserving
"tradition". In a strongly-worded letter to the President of India,
women activists from all over
The letter demanded
that action be taken against khap leaders who made statements at the conclave,
that state governments and the courts take suo motu cognisance of various media
reports and institute an inquiry into incidents of 'honour' killings; that
state governments take strict action to protect the rights of citizens to
choose their own partners. It also called for strong action against all those
who threatened Karnal Sessions Judge Vani Gopal Sharma, who had pronounced the
recent verdict, and all those policemen who did not perform their duty in the
Manoj-Babli case. It also noted "the ugly nexus between khap leaders, the
police, and local politicians" and argued that this needed to be exposed.
There were public
demonstrations, too. In
Joining this
resistance was a very special newly-wed couple - Rohit, a Yadav from Andhra
Pradesh, who had married a girl from Bawana, Haryana, belonging to the Nai
community. Rohit showed exceptional courage in keeping his wife safe from her
family, which was opposed to the match. The couple secretly wedded at a temple
in
Describing the
sequence of events, Rohit said, "Her family members kept dodging me. She
had left for Bawana on April 23 but when she did not return on the appointed
date, I started feeling uneasy. So I decided to contact Jagori, a women's
organisation in
"Her family
tried to put political pressure on the SHO but Jagori representatives convinced
him of the merits of the case and apprised him of the legal consequences.
Finally, her parents visited me in May saying that they wanted to formally
solemnise the marriage. But they tried to delay this again. By then my patience
gave way to anger. I warned them of legal action if they did not send her back.
Under pressure, they got us married with an exchange of garlands on May 14 at
their home in Bawana," says Rohit, remembering every detail of the ordeal.
Rohit was able to
save his marriage and his wife because of his presence of mind. In April, he
had consulted a lawyer and lost no time in sending e-mails to the National
Commission for Women, Delhi Commission for Women, the All India Democratic
Women's Association (AIDWA) and Jagori. "Had it not been for Jagori's prompt
action, my wife may well have been another victim of honour killing," he
maintains.
Jagmati Sangwan, the
Haryana State President of AIDWA and presently the director of the of Women's
Study Centre at
There is ample
evidence that honour killings are really about the exercise of social and
political power. Khap panchayats represent clusters of interests, with open and
tacit support from politicians, as reflected in the recent utterances of Om
Prakash Chautala, the Indian National Lok Dal Chief, or Naveen Jindal, the
young Congress MP from Kuruskhetra. Some khap representatives even attempt to
project themselves in a 'progressive' light. Baljit Singh Malik, President of
All India Gathwala Khap, claims that he is not in favour of honour killings but
still defends Ganga Raj, the man who has been awarded life imprisonment in the
Manoj-Babli murder case. He claims that Raj is not a khap leader but an elected
member of the block 'samiti'. Argues Malik, "In two decades of public
life, I have never seen honour killing dictated by a khap panchayat in Haryana,
Rajasthan or western Uttar Pradesh. But, I am against same 'gotra' marriages as
they are a departure from tradition."
Malik should know
that he is on the wrong side of history. At a recent media interaction
conducted by the Indian Women's Press Corps in
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