In the name of honour

Published : Aug 28, 2009 00:00 IST

in Jhajjar and Jind

IT is not very difficult to locate Dharana village in Jhajjar district of Haryana. The road meanders through jowar fields deep into the interiors of the district and most people helpfully direct visitors to the narrow paths leading to the village. The reason why all roads lead to Dharana is the notoriety it has earned following a diktat by its dominant caste panchayat to a family to leave the village permanently.

House No. 419, where Risal Singh Gehlout, an agriculturist, and his family reside, is under siege. Around 450 members of the Haryana Police are stationed in the village to protect the family, and an uneasy calm prevails. People, including the police, speak in hushed tones. The problem began when Risal Singhs Delhi-based grandson, Ravinder Gehlout, married Shilpa, a girl of the Kadyan gotra from Panipat district.

In Dharana, the writ of the Kadyan khap (caste panchayat) runs. Dharana and the villages neighbouring it, including Doobaldhan, the native village of Haryana Assembly Speaker Raghuvir Singh Kadian, are dominated by people of the Kadyan gotra. Shilpa, being a Kadyan, could only be a sister to Ravinder, argued Kadyan khap representatives. They added that by marrying her, the Gehlout (pronounced Gehlawat) family had committed one of the worst transgressions of the bhaichara (brotherhood) principle of social organisation, even though the gotras were different.

According to the brotherhood principle on which khaps organise themselves, marriages cannot take place between people of different castes. Within the same caste, marriages should not take place between people of the same gotra. Even when the gotras are different, people living in the same village or adjoining villages cannot marry. Marriages that fall in the latter two categories are interpreted as tantamount to incest, though on account of the general paucity of girls and the difficulty in finding different gotras within the same caste group, some flexibility is allowed.

This is our parampara. The media are writing all wrong things about us, said Narender Singh, the sarpanch of Majra-Doobaldhan village. Another spokesperson, Rajinder, also called Shastriji by Kadyan khap members, warned that the khaps should not be defamed. He said: There was an agreement that a Kadyan wont marry a Gehlout. Risal Singhs family violated the pact. If a girl gets married into our village, she adopts the gotra of her husband and then gets assimilated. Anyone from her gotra can only have a sibling-like relationship with the rest of the village; marriage is out of the question.

Asked where the khap would get brides for its young men in the face of the acute shortage of women in the State, one of them quipped that they were already getting them from outside, referring to the bought brides syndrome prevalent in the State. Even as the controversy raged in Parliament and outside it, Raghuvir Singh Kadian and the Lok Sabha member from Rohtak, the highly educated Deepender Singh Hooda, preferred not to join issue. Hooda said on a television channel that it was a social issue and should be understood from the perspective of society.

Who can question the raja? says Ved Prakash, Ravinders uncle and one of the three sons of Risal Singh, referring to the Kadyan khap panchayat. The Gehlout family owns a good amount of fertile land and livestock, and its roots in Dharana go back several generations.

On July 13, the Kadyan khap began an indefinite protest demanding the ouster of the family as the marriage had not been annulled. It said Ravinders father, Rohtas Kumar Gehlout, was unacceptable in the village, though his brothers could continue staying but after paying a fine of Rs.21,000 each to the panchayat.

What was our fault? Ravinder grew up in Delhi with his aunt from the time he was a baby. We had nothing to do with him, said a relative. Ironically, the couple had no intention of staying in the village as Ravinder had made Delhi his home several years ago.

The panchayat has taken a wrong decision, says 83-year-old Chanderpati, Ravinders grandmother. How can things be normal? Even if the police are there, we do not venture outside our home. Weve sent the children away as we fear someone would attack them when they go to school, said Sheela, Chanderpatis daughter-in-law, who has come from Hardwar in Uttarakhand to support the family.

On July 16, the family was given an ultimatum to leave the village in 72 hours. On July 19, the day the Gehlouts left, angry villagers attempted to stone the house, following which clashes erupted between them and the police. A tehsildar, some policepersons and several mediapersons were injured in the melee.

On July 19 itself the Gehlout family filed an application in the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking directions to the state to give it protection as well as to initiate immediate action against autocratic individuals for issuing diktats to end the marriage. Meanwhile, Shilpas family in Panipat has stood resolutely behind her.

The Gehlouts returned to the village on July 28 with heavy police protection. The stalemate continued as the khap panchayat planned to take the issue to a sarva khap meeting on August 9. On that day several concerned citizens, led by the Left and democratic groups, were also scheduled to meet to find a way out of the impasse.

In the April 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress in Haryana won nine of the 10 seats in the State, and Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda cemented his position as the undisputed leader of the party and of the Jat community in the State. His son Deepender Singh Hooda retained the Rohtak seat with over four and a half lakh votes, consolidating the domination of the Hoodas in this belt. The party also boasted a young brigade that included, besides the Hooda scion, Kumari Selja from Ambala, Ashok Tanwar from Sirsa, Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra and Shruti Choudhary from Bhiwani.

However, despite the overwhelming mandate, the State leadership, the youth brigade in particular, has maintained an uneasy silence over the spate of violent incidents, including the murder of young couples and their families by the khap panchayats. Barring the Left parties and womens organisations led by the All India Democratic Womens Association (AIDWA), no political outfit has come out to condemn these kangaroo courts.

On July 28, Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member, raised the issue in Parliament, evoking a response from Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram. He said he recoiled with shame after reading about the murders of two teenagers in Meerut (Uttar Pradesh), the diktat of a panchayat in Jhajjar district, and the brutal killing of a young man in Jind district of Haryana in the presence of a warrant officer.

Chidambaram added: We do not recognise the right of a caste panchayat to take it upon itself to pronounce whether a man or a woman should live together or whether a woman has committed an act which allegedly brings dishonour to the family or the community. No caste panchayat, he said, had the right to pronounce upon the conduct of individuals.

However, the government and the Minister were silent on the issue of initiating legal proceedings or drawing up a policy to deal with such honour-related crimes. Apart from Brinda Karat, who initiated the debate, Jayanti Natarajan demanded to know if special legislation such as that in the case of sati would be brought to stop honour killings. As many as 14 members, cutting across party lines, spoke on the calling attention motion in the Rajya Sabha.

On June 23, 2008, Justice Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, while disposing of 10 cases involving young married couples, noted that of the 26 matters listed, 10 pertained to marriage between young persons aged between 18 and 21; that in the last four to five years, the court was flooded with thousands of petitions where married couples came seeking protection; and that the State remained a mute spectator. Couples hiding themselves in the corridors of the court, chased by relations, accompanied by musclemen armed with weapons, is not the answer which they seek by performing marriage. Society has to insulate these couples, the Judge observed. The High Court constituted a committee comprising the Advocates General of Punjab and Haryana, Standing Counsel for the Union Territory of Chandigarh and some senior advocates in order to work out an alternative, efficacious, compassionate and humanitarian remedy.

On July 22, 2009, Ved Pal Maun, a 27-year-old medical practitioner of Mataur village in Kaithal district, reached his wife Sonias village, Singhwal, in Jind district. He was accompanied by a warrant officer appointed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court as well as half a dozen policemen.

Ved Pals wife had been kept captive by her family against her wishes and he had come to take her. But at her house he was told that Sonia was not in the house. He began looking for her. Soon, a crowd gathered, armed with weapons, and pushed its way into the house and, in the presence of Sonias family, the police and the warrant officer, bludgeoned the young man to death. The warrant officer, Suraj Bhan, who was injured, said in his complaint to the Narwana police, Jind, that the crowd would have killed him had the police not been there. They killed him in front of my eyes, Suraj Bhan said in his complaint.

For several years, Ved Pal had provided medical care for the people of Singhwal. The trouble started when he fell in love with Sonia, who was of the Banwala gotra, and the couple, realising that there would be opposition to a choice marriage, eloped and got married under the Hindu Marriage Act on April 22, 2009. They were of different gotras and neither was theirs an inter-caste wedding; both were Jats. The couple did not feel that they had caused any dishonour to their families.

But matters took an ugly turn. Incensed already by the fact that a couple had dared to marry out of choice and determined to convey a message to the community, the Banwala khap got together and, at a public meeting, declared a reward for the murder of the couple.

(Two years ago, the same khap had called for the elimination of Manoj and Babli of Karoda village in Kaithal district (Frontline, July 27, 2007). The couple were murdered despite having police protection as per a High Court order and their bodies were found near a canal in Hisar district. While some persons were arrested after a prolonged effort by AIDWA, no action was taken against the instigators.)

He was the only earning member in this family, said Harkishen, Ved Pals father, breaking down. In another part of the house, where Ved Pal had stuck two posters of Sania Mirza on the mud walls, his mother wailed uncontrollably, Why did they kill my son. What did he ever do to them?

Ved Pals case had nothing to do with honour or sanctity of relationship. The diktat was based on numerical strength and political clout. The issue was baffling as not only were the gotras of the couple different, but the villages involved were located in different districts.

After registering their marriage the couple returned to Ved Pals village. Apprehending danger to their lives from Sonias family, the couple filed an application seeking protection from the Senior Superintendent of Police, Jind.

On June 22, Sonias parents sought the panchayats help to request Ved Pal and his family members to send her home for a few days. Only two days earlier Sonia had stated in court that she wanted to stay with her husband. Following the panchayats intervention, her parents gave an undertaking that Ved Pal could take her back any time and that there was no threat to her life from them.

Ten days elapsed and there was no word from his in-laws. When he went to get his wife back, they refused to hand her over. On July 14, Sonia sent word through friends that she was being harassed, physically and mentally, by her family and that there was a threat to her life. Ved Pal then sought the help of the court again and, along with the warrant officer and the policemen, went to bring his wife.

The whereabouts of his wife are not known. Neither are the police taking any interest in locating her, said Jagmati Sangwan, president of the State unit of AIDWA. As for the action taken against those accused of murdering Ved Pal, the Narwana Station House Officer was suspended and seven persons were arrested on the charge of murder. On July 31, taking suo motu cognisance of media reports, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Haryana government, calling for a factual report within four weeks. Interestingly, the NHRC issued a similar notice in the matter of the besieged Gehlout family at Jhajjar and sought a factual report within four weeks.

The public declaration by the khap is totally shocking and unprecedented, said Inderjit Singh, State secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), referring to the death sentence announced by the khap.

The Banwala khap argued that even though the gotras of the youngsters were different (sections in the media erroneously reported that it was a sah-gotra, or same-gotra, marriage, causing more confusion and anger as such marriages are strongly disapproved of), the villages, Singhwal and Mataur, were neighbouring ones where the norm of bhaichara or Seem-Seemali (a concept of fraternal neighbourhood for villages located in a proximate vicinity) applied. Therefore there could be no conjugal relations between people of even different gotras.

The phenomenon is not confined to Haryana, and is common in western Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, rural Delhi and some areas in the South. Many reasons have been cited for the prevalence of such killings and harassment in the name of honour. Among them were the absence of social reforms and the tendency to suppress the rights of the weaker sections within castes and between caste groups. Many view the phenomenon as an outcome of the stranglehold of patriarchy and caste.

Therefore, here is a situation where shopping malls, sprawling private universities, multinational companies and caste panchayats coexist rather conveniently and comfortably. With the mainstream political class opting to remain silent when such incidents occur, the casualties only escalate. It is perhaps because of this that a khap panchayat can, in the full glare of the media, declare a reward for the murder of a married couple or declare the man and woman brother and sister or even sit on an indefinite protest to oust a family from a village all in the name of tradition.

There are innumerable cases like Ved Pals or Ravinder Gehlouts. If, in 2007, the murder of Manoj and Babli shocked the region, in 2004, a pregnant woman, Sonia, and her husband, Rampal, of Asanda village in Jhajjar made headlines when they were almost forced to declare each other brother and sister (Frontline, November 19, 2004). Today, following the efforts of AIDWA and the intervention of the High Court and the NHRC, they live in Asanda.

But not all are so lucky. Two young girls of the Dhanak caste were burnt alive in Kaluwas village, Bhiwani district, last year. Their crime: they had gone to convey Diwali greetings to their male friends. The matter came to light when one witness, unable to stomach the crime, complained to the police.

Sometimes girls just disappear. It is as if the earth has swallowed them, said Inderjeet Singh. He explained that it was immaterial whether the honour crimes were committed by an individual or a group of persons. In both instances, there was social sanction and consensus. He said there were many cases of bodies of young couples being found on railway tracks. These need to be investigated and a proper post-mortem done, he said, adding that standing instructions had to be given to the State that without a minimum level of inquiry, false cases declaring a person as a minor should not be registered.

Khazan Singh, Professor of Sociology at the Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, said the principle of khap exogamy ensured that even different gotras falling in a particular khap could not intermarry. He said that of late people themselves allowed flexibilities after they realised that excluding the gotras of too many relatives in the family would make it difficult to find alliances.

So earlier, a prospective brides, her mothers and her grandmothers gotra needed to be different from that of the boys family. Now they waive the grandmothers gotra in order to forge an alliance, he said.

The patterns of settlement and migration also played a role in marriage norms of communities. Where settlement as in the Deswali belt, comprising parts of southern Haryana, has been more or less of a permanent nature because of the availability of irrigation facilities, the systems are more rigid as compared with regions like Sirsa which have seen migration over several years. The dominance of caste, he said, was within a radius of 250 kilometres from Delhi.

This is a situation where contradictions of the worst imaginable kind exist. And when elections are round the corner, the silence of the mainstream political parties is deafening.

Assembly elections are soon to be held in Haryana and neither the Congress nor the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) of Om Prakash Chautala would like to take on the khap panchayats. But not to do so would be perilous to the interests of democracy and its institutions in the long run.

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