C-44 A SHAME FOR INDIA — Honour Killing
Just a couple of days back I was reading about an incident where a village girl was burnt alive by her neighbours because she had a relationship with a boy from a different caste. In another case, a boy’s hand and legs were chopped off by the residents for marrying a girl from their village. These are just two examples from a bagful of many more cases that occur every day. The number of live marriages might have gone up in the metros in India but the reality remains bitter and different in the villages in many other states.
“HONOUR KILLING “where men and women are killed by their kin or members of their caste, due to belief of the perpetrators that the victim has brought dishonor upon the family or community. Women’s activist group say that such killing happen in order to save the honor of the caste, community or family. Caste still remains one of the most important factors governing the lives of many people in some parts of India. The huge numbers of honor killing that sometimes go unrecorded happen because of inter-caste marriages or relationship between people of different castes. In many cases the groom or the bride has been killed for marrying someone from a lower caste.
India’s social system is based on a caste hierarchy but over years people living in the cities have come out of the rigid caste framework. But this level of maturity is never seen to reach the villages and they continue to function on their own belief system. The problem in the village is the strong presence of a ‘panchayat or informal court that consists of members of the same caste and decides all matters relating to their community.
In many villages, the leader of self-appointed court (panchayat) has so much power that the police are kept away from village politics. On many occasions parent kill and dump the bodies of their children in the name of honour and the police are not even informed. This is why there are so many unrecorded deaths, in an interview with the newspaper, a villager from one such village mentioned that they are happy to solve their own problems by not involving the police or government in it.
It is very unfortunate that the caste system in India has turned into a social evil for many. I wonder how many young people have lost their lives in the name of honour. And there many more who are at the gunpoint of this rigid belief system. It is a false notion that honour killing involves only of women. Men are equally victims of this practice. Many grooms have been killed by the father or the brother of the bride.
Shameful as it may sound, such things still exist in many parts of the country. When I look at India as a whole I see two different worlds. First, those living in the city, who are progressing not only economically and technologically but in terms of their ideas and outlook towards their lives. Then, those in the village who are still bound by the rigid belief of the caste- system that exists hundreds of year ago and refuse to move ahead.
I am not against the traditional belief system that exists in India. But what baffles me is the fact that so many innocent lives are lost in the name of this belief. It hampers the growth of the human mind and forces it to live within the illusionary world that it has created for itself. The government needs to enforce strict measures to stop honour killings. There should be a ban on all decision made by these self-appointed courts in the villages. They have proved fatal for many innocents lives. The most important is to change the rigid beliefs of the caste system. India is the world’s largest democracy and in a country where people have the right to vote their opinion freely, to be young and to marry the person of your choice shouldn’t be fatal anymore
