‘Jaan’ and ‘zindagi’ are two Hindi synonyms for the single word “LIFE’ in English, The so-called honour killings now rampant in India turn down the very concept of ‘zindagi’ which badly needs ‘jaan’ to sustain. When caste-purity dominates over individuality, ‘jaan’’ is being taken out so as to correct the wrongs in the ‘zindagi’, young blood washes the sins off and corpses teach lessons… Rajashri Iyer narrates its bloody episodes.

“I have no regrets.. I would punish them all over again if given another chance..” told a remorseless Omprakash Sainy to the media persons amassed at the Ashok Vihar Police station. He has been charged with murdering his own niece Asha 19, and her lover Yogesh Kumar 21.

*What was wrong with the deceased? They loved each other beyond the spiky barriers of caste system– Yogesh was from a Dalit Jatwa family while Asha was from a ‘privileged’ Sainy caste.

“She has done unethical thing..after had been engaged to a Sonipat boy, she sustained on loving this one…” ,continued Omprakash, “mera dimaag ghoom gaya ( I lost my intellect) after that he came to our home at night and she went out to meet him”.

During the interrogation, Omprakash, the elder brother of Asha’s father told the officers that he had flogged and gagged them to muffle their cries and then electrocuted them through their feet and palms. He also said, he had beaten them with steel rods before the electrocution.

*Before just one week prior to this incident, the capital city witnessed a chain of murders. Police found the body of Kuldip Singh 26, an Executive in HCL inside his car and his wife Monica 22, and her cousin Shobha 18, as murdered inside their home.  The police declared a look out notice for 3 youngsters Ankit, Mandeep and Nakul, the first two being the brothers of Monica.

After the seizure of the assassins, the nation figured out the crime committed by the deceased. The couple Kuldip and Monica, belonged to Wazirpur, Asok Vihar, was married in July 2006 ‘sullying’ and ‘defiling’ the honour of the family. As a Rajput , Kuldip had ‘no rights’ to marry  a Gujjar girl Monica, their marriage was under police protection. But the ‘defamed’ brothers waited for the right chance to give the ‘right penalty’.

“For the sake of family honour, we support this killing, though not involved in it personally”, declared Dharambir,  Mandeep’s uncle.

*In the same month, Nimriwali village, near Bhiwani (Haryana) witnessed a rarest of rare sights. Two teenagers were seen hanged in the open corridor of the girl’s home. Their bodies clearly showed the scarlet marks of umpteen physical abuses. Their crime was they were in love, but they happened to born in the same clan (Jat). It is not permissible to marry from the same clan as they were considered to be siblings, according to the Khap Panchayath,the informal courts who pass the ‘ultimate judgments’ in the villages of North India.

The bodies were exhibited to show the villagers that the families were cleared off their sin and recouped their lost ‘honour’ by making void an already happened ‘event’.

Killing Indian Honours

Those are a few of the instances of ‘honour killing’ took place in India even in this era of globalization. Earlier such incidents were come out only from the Muslim countries where women are treated just as vessels or passive receptors in the family. Hina Jilani , a Pakistani activists says : “Indian women are considerably better protected against honour killings by Indian Law and the countries affected by honor killings should follow Indian Law as a model”. But recently the things have got a tremendous change. People in India seem to walk behind into the dark harems of Stone Age.

Honour killings are supposed to maintain the so-called ‘honour’ of the family after it has been ‘blemished’ by a boy/girl of the family through a run away marriage or inter caste marriage. It can be spanned to dowry deaths or matrimonial combats, marital infidelity, or simply flirting, it can be of inter-religious relationships, or it can be any of the highly localized concepts of a particular area, village or a gotra.

Some are of the opinion that this can be bracketed with the atrocities against women. But if we scrutinize these cold-blooded murders, we can see that even though a woman or a girl is victimized in such act, the perpetrators in most of the cases will be from the girl’s family. So there is nothing to treat it as women-oriented issue, but rather a social concern which would be carcinogenic to the whole society.

According to the statistical report of the U.N. Population Fund, approximately more than 1000 are being murdered every year in India bannered as honour killing. Police and the media were of the opinion that after 1990, the urban areas have found a good reduction of such reports, thanks to the National Commission of Women’s constitutionally and legally renovated activities.

But the fact that most of such cases are not reported as it is being ‘managed’ internally by the khap panchayaths as the pivots. So the statistics may not be precise, but definitely more than those came out.

“Khaps are like Gods. They can do no wrong..” goes the talks of the villagers.

For undermining the reputation of a family, the khap panchayath orders to reinstall the down chips by any means. Thus the honour killings get justified as a sanction for ‘dishonourable’ behaviour.

Culture  vs  Honour

Don’t think that such barbaric episodes are happening only among the educationally backward rural areas. On 29^th of last April, Nirupama Pathak 22, a journalist in a leading business daily in New Delhi found dead at her own residence in Jharkhand. It was registered as a case of suicide at first. But when the autopsy result was out, it was something startling.

It was a clear case of murder caused by asphyxia as a result of smothering. And the girl was 3 months pregnant.

Later her mother, a modest Brahmin lady belonging to a respectable family in the Koderma District has been arrested for strangling her own daughter, who was carrying a baby in her womb!! Nirupama was in love with one of her fellow journalists who was a lower caste by birth.

After that incident a lot of hooh-haahs were plied through the social network sites as it was a case involving a journalist, who is supposed to be a person belonging to a socially committed profession. But eventually this case also will fall apart on some flimsy technical grounds, as the Law is pathetically scanty to deal with an honor killing as something more horrible than a common man-slaughter.

Capital city has been turning to an Aceldama for the last few months. When a duo from Panipat found dead in the New Friends Colony, the same series repeated. For one or two days the news occupied the slots of television channels, again one more day it came printed in the columns of some news papers. Does anything happen? People’s memory is short…

For  being  born  to  lower castes

If it is taken in a wide span of religion, the first one would come to our mind will be of Islamic Countries where a number of ‘offences’ are seemed to dump upon the shoulders of women who are lower in status in the society. Incredibly, these practices are much more common among Hindus and Sikhs in India.

“Like all other religions, Islam strictly prohibits murder and killing without legal justification. Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93) The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments.”, writes Dr.Mohammed Fadel in his Muslim Womens’ League, quoting the Holy Khoran.

But in Christianity even though there are certain nudges here and there justifying such things (only upon particular grounds) in their Holy Book, the number of honor killings by and on Christians are minimal or sometimes none right in India.

Honour killing is rampant among Hindus and Sikhs residing in Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and New Delhi even though no Hindu philosophy underlines such heinous acts. It becomes more intense when it comes to the interiors, when it comes to the issue of caste and clan. Deeply conservative and patriarchal cast-purity is dominant over individuality and marriages become mere stages to sustain the status quo. Otherwise Bimal and Harilal won’t have strangled by her father….. Sunita, a 6 months pregnant girl would not have half-stripped and abused to death along with her husband Jasbeer Singh in the dirty ditches by the side of her house.

Only because the marriage was not ‘socially sanctioned by the caste panchayath’, Gitarani of Hashiarpur had to witness her family chopping her husband’s limbs one by one ––In a nation where a ‘pure’ mother and ‘virgin’ sister determines the culture of a person, a lower caste woman in Uttar Pradesh had to undergo a gang-bang by the Yadavas (higher castes) for her son married a yadava girl!!!.

Blind  is  the  Law..

Such criminally rude and dangerous episodes are resulted out of the perception that the defense of honour justifies it when the victim’s behaviour dishonours his own clan or family. They are defiant after this ‘mission’ and shout from the roof “We are not ashamed of it, absolutely not; we have the honor of doing the village proud,”.

After brutally murdering his daughter and son-in-law, the father justifies his act to the media:”We would not have had a face to show if we had not done this. It was the act of ‘real men’.”

You can see this viciousness reaches its pinnacle if you see the body of 18 year old Sham Mohammed along with his girl friend Reena’s at the premises of their school (It is the latest incident of honor killing while preparing this report) in Samain village of Fatehabad District Haryana. His tender body had been battered and one of his eyes was almost gouged out while the girl had apparently been forced to consume poison. This heinous crime was executed by the girl’s maternal uncles to restore the ‘honour’ of the family their niece stained by loving a Muslim boy!!

Recently in Ghaziabad, a concocted crime story has been slipped off when the investigating officers took a scientific approach. A girl of 14 has been shot dead by her cousin Ishtaq who then committed suicide by shooting at his temple from point blank, was the report. But on autopsy, it was cleared that the bullet had pierced his skull from behind and exited through his forehead. After killing his own daughter the father along with her uncles were chasing her lover Ishtaq and was shooting him.

To  be  or  not  to  be

On the grounds of such moral vigilantism of fake concerns over the ‘preservation’ of perceived ‘purity’ of their lineage, the cast councils pass the judgments and the most obedient moral police implement the same with zero remorse before and after. As it is executed by a group of persons, one cannot pinpoint a culprit to the police.

Recently, women’s organizations and social activists across the nation have begun to overlook the matter more seriously and they asked the central Ministry to make a separate law for this kind of crimes. The ministries of home affairs and the law and justice are preparing to amend the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to define the act of “honour killing”. The demand for such a law was made repeatedly with the objective of stamping out this social evil from Indian soil.

But when it came to the Central Cabinet in last week, the Cabinet members were seemed to be divided in their policies. One segment asked to redefine the existing law on homicide and amend it so as to give deterrent punishment to the killers. But the other segment was not dared to take a step against Khap Panchayaths, as it would be a ‘sensitive issue’ and as to the sustaining folk culture it would bring out ‘religious sentiments’.

Meanwhile, outside the nation, the talks on such ongoing incidents in India seemed to have dwarfed India’s advancements in all walks of the globe. Press abroad depict India as still resorting to the caste system even after launching a Chaandrayaan .  They are of the opinion that honour killings that take place incessantly in India highlight the deadly effect of continuing and governing caste tensions which outbreaks all the cultural, religious, regional, educational, economical and personal barriers of life.

How can it be possible in India where the latest Census also executes on caste basis and students continue to carry their certificates on which their caste and religion clearly printed and pass to the coming generations? However, the Central Ministry and Judiciary are musing over this issue and a new Law to deal with this menace which makes the chips of the nation down

At the same time, the village leaders from many parts of the nation seem to be defiant at this move.

“No one can stop such deaths – neither the government nor the Supreme Court. Even the Army cannot stop this…”, boast the Khap Panchayats.

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