Bhavana, a Yadav girl, had secretly married Abhishek Seth, a well-placed Punjabi while her parents had arranged her marriage to a boy of their own caste. She was under pressure from her family to call off the relationship but she decided to formalise her relationship with Abhishek. She had to pay for it with her life. According to police sources, she was strangled by her mother while her father held her legs in a tight grip.
In the media narrative the incident has got categorised as ‘honour killing’ and the parents were quickly identified as the culprits. This has been the routine reaction to honour killings along with the usual talk of vices of the patriarchal society. Firstpost sought to find the answer to the question whether the parents are forced to behave in that particular under compelling circumstances. Obviously, it is not a decision they would like to make under any situation. Why would the parents suddenly decide to kill children they brought up with love for so many years? Are they victims too?
The answer goes back to the power of the community over the individuals or families.
"I have noticed that parents may be very upset with their children for marrying against their wishes but they don't often consider murder. It's when they are shamed by their immediate societies and an enormous social pressure is mounted on them by powerful conservative forces that they sometimes are forced into killing their children as they see that as the only way to find acceptance in society again.
Often, parents live with that guilt for life. Look at the recent Meerut case where the parents of the girl were clearly pressurised by the local Hindutva goons as also the BJP," says film-maker Nakul Singh Sawhney, who has directed Izzatnagri Ki Asabhya Betiyan (Immoral Daughters in the Land of Honour), an award winning documentary film that shows victimisations of protagonists by illegal diktats issued by the khaps.
Jagmati Sangwan, president, Haryana chapter of the All India Democratic Women's Organisation (AIDWA), says, "Those who threaten the traditional code of the society and challenge the power dynamics of patriarchy invite the wrath of the society and its panchayats.
Parents are threatened of complete social boycott and ban on hukka-paani (social and commensal relations). A society's collective refusal to engage in the normal social and commercial relations that make life palatable and possible for an individual makes people so uncomfortable that they decide to eliminate themselves or their children or voluntarily leave the society."
For those born and brought up in urban India, it’s difficult to grasp the power of the community beyond the urban space. This perhaps leads them to advocate simplistic legal solutions like banning the khaps and similar community bodies to stop cases of honour killings and similar obnoxious practices.
The reality is ostracisation, refusal of access to common community resources apart from social shaming on an everyday basis and physical threats can bring to knee even the toughest of parents. If they don’t have the option to plant themselves in an urban area after relocating from the village, they hardly stand a chance. Seeking protection of the police does not work, particularly when the law enforcers belong to the same society and subscribe to its values.
"A man's ability to protect his family's honour is judged by society. As a result, he must demonstrate his power to safeguard his family's ‘honour’ by killing those who damaged it," Sangwan says. There are consequences if he does not do it.
Dr Alka Bhatia, lecturer at Government Law College, Sikar (Rajasthan), says the concept of honour remains "deeply entrenched in the socio-cultural fabric of the country and people go to any extent, without thinking about the consequences, to protect it". As honour killing is a "retaliatory crime, therefore, a large section of the society, including women, supports it," she says.
Delhi-based sociologist Deepak Mehta says a boy or a girl marrying against the rules of the community or without the parents’ consent "is seen to be polluting not just herself/himself but also the domestic group. In extreme cases, they are killed by her relatives for the restoration of 'honour' in the community's eyes."
"Extrajudicial bodies like khap panchayats reinforce conservative attitudes towards morality and caste, which encourage patriarchal order. Unfortunately, women are considered responsible for upholding a family’s morality and therefore, they are the most common victims of honour killings," he adds.
Putting incidents like that of Delhi in perspective, Mohammad Reyaz, a research scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, says, "In traditional societies like ours, community and society have always superseded an individual, whether they are male or female. As the position of a woman is at a much weaker level in the social hierarchy of patriarchal setup, they often become the victims."
In 2011, the Supreme Court had described honour killings as the "rarest of the rare" cases and said perpetrators should get death sentence. "In our opinion, honour killings, for whatever reason, come within the category of rarest of rare cases deserving death punishment. This is necessary as a deterrent for such outrageous, uncivilised behaviour. All persons who are planning to perpetrate 'honour' killings should know that the gallows await them," the apex court had said, adding that "there is nothing honourable in honour killings and they are nothing but barbaric and brutal murders by bigoted persons with feudal minds".
The anger of the court is fine but it falls into the familiar trap: it fails to look into the broader social context that almost gives honour killings social legitimacy. Stopping at the parents or the few people who passed the verdict for killings promises no lasting solution to the problem. There have to be ways to handle the external pressure the parents and relatives have to endure. Unless the state finds ways to protect the latter the problem of honour killing will continue.
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