Chandigarh, July 28 (Inditop.com) Love stories often go wrong in Haryana, especially if the couple does not meet social norms. But at last some young people from the state are speaking up against shocking honour killings that are carried out at the behest of caste councils.
“This is not Taliban country where we are living. The claims of our chief minister that Haryana is the most progressive and prosperous state of the country prove false in the wake of such dreadful incidents,” Anand Ahalawat, an engineering student at Panjab University (PU), told IANS.
“We cannot live in such fearful conditions any more. We have to start a mass movement to eradicate such illogical khaps,” said Ahalawat, who is a native of Ambala town in Haryana and is staying here in a hostel.
Many cases of young couples being lynched for marrying against the wishes of their community have come up in the state, a rash of them recently.
Most communities in Haryana villages have their ‘khap panchayats’, or caste councils, which pass illegal decrees on marriages and social customs. The khap panchayats enforce their diktat through violence.
A 21-year-old youth was lynched by a mob in a village in Jind district last week after his marriage to a girl of the same sub-caste was declared null and void by a khap panchayat. The council decreed since the couple were from the same sub-caste, they were ‘brother and sister’.
The youth was killed in the presence of 15 police officers and one court official. The villagers did not allow anyone to take the body of the victim till late night and displayed it at the village crossroad.
Aditi Chaudhary, a student from a village in Haryana’s Jind district studying here, told IANS: “Things have reached a saturation point and there is an immediate need to change the mindset of Haryana natives. I believe the youth can act as a positive catalyst in this process.”
Akanksha Gehlout, another student from Haryana, said: “Choosing a life partner is one’s personal issue and nobody should interfere in it.
“It is quite shameful that one can kill anybody in the presence of police. Our young generation should take a pledge to put down such practices and in fact, we should boycott those people who are adamant to take along these social evils,” she said.
A few days before the lynching incident, another family was forced to leave their village — on the orders of the khap panchayat — in Jhajjar district for allowing their son Ravinder Singh Gehlout to marry a woman from the same sub-caste.
The Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in the state has not said anything against the illegal activities of the khap panchayats, given the domination of the Jat community in the state’s social and political fabric.
“I have lived in a Haryana village and have closely seen the working of these khap panchayats. Their primary role is to do productive work in the village. In many cases, they have done exemplary work like road construction, protests against drugs, alcoholism and dowry,” said Sukhdev Kundu, a Panjab University student and a former president of the Indian National Students Organisation (INSO), the student wing of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).
“However, killing someone is an extreme step by khap panchayats and is totally intolerable in any civil society. They should abide by court orders and should not take the law into their own hands under any circumstances,” Kundu told IANS.
Honour killings are not new in Haryana, especially in areas dominated by the Jat community.
In June 2007, the bodies of a young couple, Manoj and Babli, were recovered from a canal in Kaithal district. They were murdered and thrown into the canal by the relatives of the girl for marrying against their wishes.
In Karnal district last year, Jasbir Singh and his companion Sunita, who was six months pregnant, were murdered in their village. The girl’s family was opposed to their daughter, a divorcee, living with Jasbir.
The family threw the bodies of the couple outside their house to send a message to other villagers that going against the wishes of the community and the khap panchayat would not be tolerated.
Paramjit Singh Jaswal, chairperson of the Law Department at Panjab University, said: “Despite vast development, there are certain sections of society that are still living with past traditions and beliefs. If we talk about our laws then they are very clear and obviously support inter-caste marriage.”
“Usually our laws keep changing and I strongly advocate the need to bring positive changes in law with fast changing times and needs,” he said.
