101 East - Caste in stone

age-old Traditions continue to rule Modern India each year some 1,000 people die from honor killings here their crime marrying outside their cast or from within their own subcast the Indian government wants to Stamp Out such brutality but they risk upsetting traditional societies I'm FIA ibraim on this edition of 101 East we ask can India end killings in the name of Honor but first chanto looks at what happens when a love story has the wrong [Music] cast when rajes Nei married his neighbor bavna pal it was against her family's wishes in Late July he was attacked near his home in new dehi he suffered 90% Burns his brother mukes said he was on his motorcycle when the attackers accosted him drenched him with kosine and set him Al light the rock that neighbors used to D the fire still lay on the ground before he died in hospital rajes claimed his wife's brothers were the attackers all I want is Justice for my brother I can't tell you how I feel he apologized for his faults before he died but I tell you he did know wrong to others you can ask anyone he might have upset his family at times but never anyone else but the search for justice has not been easy the girl and her family has left the neighborhood and remained uncontable rajesh's family believes the source of dish owner was their poverty they were not happy simply because they wanted a rich boy his salary was less than $200 a month and her aunt told me it wouldn't buy the girl any happiness her mother came over to challenge me she said her daughter would never be part of my family she kept her word and I had to see my son die the family say several neighbors witnessed the attack but police remain unsure they told the local media Rajesh might have committed suicide with multiple suspects and local sensitivities involved authorities say honor killing investigations are complex any communi is involved in it obviously they will try to cover it up they will try to they will try to stunt the progress of Investigation in such a case but that's a normal policing challenge in any case so to that extent one has to live with it but I don't think that U if there is any such incidents uh there is any problem in uh implementing the law it it can take time there are reportedly more than 1,000 cases of honor killings in India every year most of them take place in the northern regions the government is debating a new law with stiffer penalties to curb honor killings nobody has a right in a democratic Nation to not allow a adult person to make choices for his or her own life but many Community leaders want the Hindu Marriage Act amended so that marriages that go against tradition are also illegal while intercast marriages are slowly be becoming more tolerated the most forbidden unions in these parts are between couples within the same subcast or gotra they are believed to share a common ancestry Elders who take part in traditional councils condemn such marriages they are a powerful force that local politicians find hard to ignore it directly converts into vote for the politicians you know so you don't have to go and mobilize these are solid vote Banks which will fall behind you if you support those cast related activities we joined a village meeting in harana to discuss on a killings many of the elders here represent a community in the Region's Council meetings called K panchayat they say there has never been an honor killing in their Village even though they are against marriages within the same gotra cross breeding interc marriage so what are the social consequences for the family if the couple insists on getting married but why is it that there continues to be many reports of honor killings so what's what's happening if the panchayat rules against the union then doesn't it give uh their family the moral right to feel angry at them to want to do something to punish them does that not create the potential risk of Honor [Music] killing how truly representative are the views of this meeting if the women are not allowed to attend and the young people don't seem to speak up there is no medical scientific social proof for uh really hold uh holding such a kind of belief but uh this belief is there and it's been uh it is among a very predominant uh farmer present communities huk Singh Village utar Pradesh Northern India here the love story of suda and shial Kuma is only spoken of in harsh tones all 800 families belong to the same subcast or [Music] gotra marriage within a gotra is an ageold taboo seen as incestuous the tradition long precedes Indian law which allows such a union despite the shackles of tradition the couple fell in love it broke a time honored code of the community putting their lives in danger The Village Council op payat ordered that their families be ostracized and even thrown out under pressure the couple eloped the girl's family later sold their home and left too today only a faded reminder of happier days remain but just up the road suda's family refuses to buckle his father gajendra Singh showed us the papers to prove that his son's marriage is legitimate the Lord does not forbid their marriage but Society does we're stuck in the middle The Village pchat held big meeting that lasted a few days even politicians came we were insulted and told we'd be thrown out and beaten with sticks the situation now is bad people resent us nobody comes close to us and we don't go anywhere it's lonely until recently local police provided protection for gendus family they left after things appeared to cool down but gendra doesn't want the couple to return they could get killed if they come back which parent would want that I want him to be safe we don't want to leave our home people have threatened us they say either we get your son or we will take your daughter if they do I'll find fight them such fights destroy families we don't want trouble we don't want to kill anyone but neither do we want to be [Music] killed social practices that survive time create tradition India abolished cast based discrimination more than 50 years ago but time has not erased certain values of the cast system system which remain cast in stone coming up after the break we'll discuss further the issue of honor killings here in India stay with 101 East welcome back to 101 East this week we come to you from New Delhi India where the government is planning on introducing legislation to curb out the practice of honor killings practice that's already been outlawed joining us for the discussion now is Kavita Krishnan from the all India Progressive women's Association also surinda jodka is a sociology Professor from jawahar neru University thank you so much for being with us today perhaps if we could just start off very briefly Kavita if you could just Define what is honor in the Indian Society um I don't think it's only Indian Society but basically the idea that uh some kind of community identity and patriarchal Authority and honor can be eroded or can be lost by uh women's sexuality getting out of control I think that goes close to defining the way in which honor is seen in many communities including Indian Society Indian context has something special also that's the question of cast exactly I mean in India cast hierarchy is very strong and traditionally marriages have taken place within the cast community and when you cross the boundaries of cast Community it is seen as violation of your traditional practices so that is something which is very specific to India honor killings happen in different parts of the world but there's something specific about India and that has got to do with the question of cast but why is it that it is so important to defend honor in such a way that killings occur yes I mean this is how people have kind of made sense of themselves traditionally that there are communities and these communities are in a sense closed communities you have to protect the purity of your cast Community but the fact is that the world is changing and since the world is changing cast communities are also changing very rapidly there's a process of what one would call as internal differentiation earlier people used to live in one region uh mostly engage themselves in specific kind of occupations now with younger generation moving out going to colleges universities getting into different occupations their lives are changing very rapidly and this change is something which uh C communities are finding difficult to negotiate with Kavita earlier on you said that you mentioned a patriarchal society you mentioned this is a way to control women's sexuality it's also a way to control women's choices freedom of choic isn't it freedom of movement as well uh exactly when you're in a cast bound society that is very anxious about the breakup of cast Purity or anything like that then uh there's a great anxiety created by any possibility of women's Freedom of Choice especially in the matter of choosing a partner because inevitably if women have the freedom to choose a partner outside the community outside the cast then the cast uh Purity and cast endogamy cannot be maintained anymore so in a way this is really traditional societies who are perhaps starting to feel like they're being sidelined in the modern Progressive India and this is them trying to come back to reestablish their identity is that the way it is is that the way well at some level yes but it's kind of little more complicated in the sense that uh the so-called traditional Society used to be also Village settlements and Village settlements had a particular kind of social design where different cast communities were ranked and they used to kind of relate it to each other in a particular hierarchical manner now that system has has has disintegrated it has disintegrated most rapidly in the regions where development has taken place and uh particular in the peripheries of metropolitan cities like Delhi uh it has even kind of gone further you know beyond the control of any kind of traditional system so tradition is not there any longer it's already disappeared so it's not like they can come back at the Village level the traditionally upper cast or dominant communities lost their authority over the over the so-called lower casts they kind of decided to choose their own occupations they went out of the village they stopped working for for big farmers and now what is happening is that these elderly men are losing authority over their children as well and when they lose authority over their women their daughters they feel very restless and very kind of you know so that is something which they're not able to negotiate with at personal level as well as at the social level you're talking about these Elders who do dictate the cultural norms of a of a traditional Society but many of those who actually carry out these killings are young men yes how can a young brother kill his sister to defend the honor of a family well uh this is of course an extremely common phenomenon and I think that in part of course but in possibly in areas like the state of harana possibly one of the reasons might be that there is a high degree of unemployment among youth High degree of unemployment so there's a great deal of dependence on those who own land who are the older uh you know sections of society so you do because you're dependent on them you would tend to carry out their dictates on many things but I think that another thing that needs to be seen is that it isn't only in these area it these kind of killings are happening uh in a more organized way and in a more public socially mobilized way in certain areas that we're talking about but actually in many parts of the country including in urban centers uh including in the national capital you having families which are reacting in uh precisely this way which is why I'm saying it's more complicated than saying it's just a feudal backward reaction it's very partial very distorted well to a certain extent it's it's almost become the point where it's accepted it's an accepted cultural norm but on the whole in the public sphere so far nobody has defended honor killings and there there AR very many cases who actually go to court do they they do they do now they do much more let's not kind of you know there is other side to it also there was a case of Honor killing where several members of the family were you know by the court given death sentence and that's when this whole thing revived itself and there is judicial system in India a democratic political system which is trying to engage with it it's not easy it's a Democratic Society you can't just pass a law you have to build an opinion you have to take people along with you so that process has been going on yes we are against honor killings and there are problems and there is political appeasement happening at some level and they want to keep these elderly men of those dominant cast communities with them the political parties but at the same time there has been no Public Defense of H killings I think that also needs to be taken into account so there is a larger consensus in India that this needs to be stopped how long it will take would depend on the pressures that organizations can build up and movements can come up well we're talking about the legislation here but how serious is the government when it comes to implementing or even coming up with this legisl see that is a serious problem there is a lack of administrative will and lack of political will why is there a lack of political or administrative will these are primarily personal affairs of individuals State Should interfere only when they transgress those boundaries part for example the example she she mentioned about out love affair being relinquished these cases never come out in the open right these are private Affairs so resistance has to be also at a very kind of you know uh family level and some kind of mobilization can do certain things and St should do those things I'm not saying that it should not do I think that that's not quite the case I'm saying that the young people who do who are facing this who are battling this they are asking for help they are challenging they asking the state to step in and intervene so it is not a social or a personal Affair and I don't think the issue issue is that the state cannot interfere because it's a personal thing regarding the individual cases where marriages are broken by families believe me uh the there are so many cases which come to women's groups where women are asking and demanding for public support and help on this but they they they are faced with a ston wall by police because the police says this is a private Affair it's a family affair we can't do anything about it this is even when cases where the killings where it doesn't go up to a killing it might just end up in just locking the girl up an adult woman how do you change a mindset that's been entrenched for decades and centuries where do you start it's not a question of changing their mindset I think that certain material conditions you have to put in place right the government is speaking in two voices on this one section the law Ministry has said all right we will amend existing laws but we won't have a separate law on this and another section of voices within the same government is actually saying we don't need to do anything about this at all you already have a law against killings you don't really need any legislation but we are saying you do have legislation in India which came about through you know against Sati against against dowy killings this is a certain form of agendered and cast based and patriarchal violence that requires a separation yeah but there is there is something more to it I mean I I agree with her but not entirely uh see uh we cannot expect state to do everything cast is a social problem honor killings is a social problem patriarchy is a social issue uh lack of uh Choice with younger people is a social issue State can pass legislations state it can punish people who cross boundaries and it can redraw those boundaries beyond that we would not like state to come and enter our houses and tell us this is how you have to behave with your brother or sister or your son or daughter that's understandable the my original question there how do you change mind that's where I'm coming so for that you need action at various levels right uh there is resistance Within These communities don't think that within the community everyone accepts this the change has already happened as I said let's not forget that today India is very different country right Indian young people want different kind of life even within these families I've been doing field work in rural harana where I know that younger people don't really agree with their elderly people women want to make choices for themselves it's just that it has not found a kind of organized voice and they will get organized so you need to have reforms Within These communities state has a role to play no doubt about it but it should also recognize its limitations and it has limitations beyond that point it can't go there has to be a social kind of uh understanding of the fact that things are not similarly uh that things are not as as they used to be earlier and we will have to renegotiate our relationships I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there thank you very much for a very enjoyable discussion and that's all the time we have for this edition of 101 East you can always follow the program on our podcast our website and Facebook from the team here in New Delhi India thanks for watching oh

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 122,857

Keywords: aljazeera, 101east, 101 East, India, honour killings, honour killing India, caste system, caste, caste discrimination

Id: 3KS1FXBYNWM

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2010