Sanghi, like most villages in this prosperous belt, has dark secrets to keep. Here, rape is casual, murder-by-pesticide of teenage daughters acceptable and it is routine to dispose of their bodies by burning them in cattlecarts. Here, young women are routinely threatened, abused and killed.
Girls who survive their mother’s womb are brought up as daughters of the village. Not just Sanghi’s daughters, but of 12 neighbouring villages, says a khap member. All 12 villages form the Khidwali Bara khap, a Jat territorial unit. It decrees that boys and girls within these 12 villages cannot marry. Interestingly, the entire onus of ‘siblinghood’ rests on the girl. She is the keeper of village honour. Exceptions may be made for a boy, if the khap decides, but a girl is never allowed to bend the rules.
If a couple runs away, the women in their families run the risk of being raped, gang-raped, and boycotted. At times, khaps also ‘fine’ the families lakhs of rupees.
Fearing their daughters would go astray, many parents marry them off early. In the government senior secondary school, two Class IX students just got married, some others are engaged.
Squatting on his haunches, dhoti-clad and bare-chested, Mahendra Singh Tikait declares: “We live by a moral code where honour has to be protected at any cost.’’ As the chaudhary of the Baliyan khap, the 79-year-old farmer’s views matter. He presides over a system of justice that is almost medieval and disdains the laws of the Indian state.
Tikait’s moral code is simple. In his own words:
- SAME-GOTRA MARRIAGES ARE INCESTUOUS
- LOVE MARRIAGES ARE DIRTY - “I don’t even want to repeat the word…Only whores can choose their partners.”
- EDUCATION HAS CONTRIBUTED TO “THIS DIRT” - “Recently an educated couple married against the samaj’s (community’s) wishes in Jhajjar. We hail the panchayat’s decision to execute them…The government cannot protect this atyachar (immoral behaviour).”
Those who dare to cross the line must suffer the consequences. Like Radha of Muzaffarnagar’s Fugana village. Three years ago, she was stripped, burnt and hung from a tree. Her crime was to fall in love. Anecdotal accounts say she is one of many.
He scoffs at the laws of the Indian state, calling them “the root of all problems’’. “That’s your Constitution, ours is different.’’ Daryal Singh, one of Tikait’s retainers, adds that “shameless people (lovers) deserve to die.’’ He gives graphic accounts of lovers being “hanged, tortured or nailed to death”. Irked at being equated with the Taliban and kangaroo courts, khap panchayats in Haryana are now determined to get some legal sanction. Soon, they will draw up a set of recommendations for making ‘‘suitable’’ amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) at the state level so that their rulings become valid under law.
Justice (retd) Devi Singh Teotia, a former judge of the Punjab & Haryana HC, who actively participated in the Sarv Khap Panchayat, said: ‘‘Khap leaders are keepers of Jat tradition and they have lately been facing flak for it. If the amendments come through, there will be no more clashes between tradition and the law, and they (the khap leaders) won’t be maligned.’’
No comments:
Post a Comment