Crimes of ‘Honour’ or National Shame?

“...In every home a burning ghat

In every home a gallows

In every home are prison walls

Colliding against the walls

She falls...”

- Gorakh Pandey, ‘Band khidkiyon se takrakar’, (She collides against closed windows) 1982.

• In 2007, Manoj and Babli of Kaithal, Haryana got married. On the orders of a khap panchayat they were killed. Even more shameful is the fact that the police officers, who had been ordered by the Court to protect the couple, betrayed them and deliberately allowed them to be abducted by their killers.
•  In May 2009, a young journalist Nirupama was killed by her family in Ranchi because she had wanted to marry a fellow journalist from a different caste in Delhi
•   In June 2009, two young 19-year olds of Delhi, Asha and Yogesh decided to get married. But Asha’s family opposed the marriage on the grounds that Yogesh was from a ‘lower caste’. Asha’s father and uncle captured the couple, tortured them all night and then killed them by electrocution. 

These stories, unfortunately, are not the stuff of legends of Laila-Majnu and Romeo-Juliet. They are just a few of the hundreds of ‘honour killings’ that take place all over our country. Every year in our country, at least 1000 couples are killed in cold blood – at the behest of khap panchayats or parents and brothers. Their only ‘crime’ is that they chose to love or marry in defiance of caste and community norms.

 In Haryana, Punjab, and Western UP, it is caste panchayats (‘khap panchayats’) which often order these killings – when people marry within the same ‘gotra’ or when a woman from a ‘higher’ caste marries a man from a ‘lower’ caste. In urban centres like Delhi or Ranchi, it is often close family members who kill their own daughter along with the man she has chosen for her life partner. The killers defend their act in the name of ‘community honour’. According to them, when a woman chooses her own life partner, especially if he is from a different religion or caste, or from the same ‘gotra’, the family’s or community’s ‘honour’ receives a terrible blow. This ‘dishonour’, they claim, can be avenged only by killing the daughter and her partner.

Is there anything honourable in these killings? Or do they represent the worst assault on women’s freedom, the most vicious expression of casteism and feudal values? Can we continue to allow and condone such attacks in the name of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’?     

Even more shameful than the killings themselves is the role of police and politicians. The police, political leaders and Governments are committed to upholding the law of the land. And according to the law, every adult woman or man has a right to choose a life partner freely. But when young couples do break caste, community and class barriers to marry, they find that police and political powers support their killers! As was seen in the Manoj-Babli case, it is common for the police to betray the couple and hand them over to their killers.

What about political leaders? The Congress Government of Haryana is taking no action at all against the khap panchayats which issue their ‘death sentences.’ Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda and his son, Rohtak MP, Bhupinder Hooda, have expressed sympathy for the ‘sentiments’ of khap panchayats, while Naveen Jindal, an industrialist and Congress MP from Kurukshetra, has praised the khap panchayats for their ‘yeoman service to society’!

And what about the BJP? The BJP Governments of Gujarat and Karnataka have patronized violent gangs like the Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sene – which attack inter-religious couples. These groups have even ‘banned’ women from attending college because Muslim or Christian men may be their classmates! They have also attacked women for wearing jeans or other clothes of their own choice. So, they attack even women’s freedom to acquire education or dress according to choice.

In other states too, the story is the same – be it in the Nitish Katara murder in UP or the Rizwanur Rehman murder in West Bengal. Even in these states, the police and government backed the powerful families which killed the young men chosen as life partners by their daughters.

The ‘honour’ crimes are a grotesque version of the more common ideology and practice of ‘guardianship’ (brother as guardian of sister’s honour) celebrated by popular cinema and serials and normalised by the festival of Raksha Bandhan. Adult women are legally beyond the scope and control of ‘guardianship’. Yet in the patriarchal common sense, the ideology of guardianship (closely tied up with control of female sexuality, reproduction and labour) holds sway – closely linked to the ideology that makes women the repositories of izzat or honour of the community/nation. The women’s movement has achieved changes in the Hindu marriage and succession laws, allowing a daughter to inherit land and property – and ‘honour’ killings are in many cases an attempt to retain control over land and property, since a daughter who makes an own-choice marriage is more likely to claim her legal share of land/property.

The phenomenon of ‘honour’ killings is a powerful reminder of the ‘semi-feudal’ character of India’s capitalism: the most virulent expression of the ‘honour’ crimes phenomenon is not in ‘backward’ regions of our country – but rather in the areas which have witnessed the most advanced capitalist development in agriculture.

We believe that we cannot stand helplessly by as Nirupamas around us have to give up the partners of their choice or be killed. We believe that we need to stand up and make ourselves heard against honour crimes, and declare that we will not allow caste panchayats, communal outfits and community or family diktats take away our right to live and love according to our choice.     

Kavita Krishnan, Editor, Liberation, Monthly organ of CPI (ML)