Cousins' affair sparks new Indian honour killing horror (The Australian)
"Locals say the panchayat, or village council, was summoned into extraordinary session to consider the 'incestuous relationship' and the pair's defiance of the family.
"The couple were ordered to end their relationship. When they refused, the panchayat passed its verdict: a death sentence for lowering the standing of the Thakur community.
"The punishment was slow, painful and remorseless as the mob avenged the honour of the village. Only Mahesh's grandfather showed any sort of anguish, his conscience moving him to lodge a police complaint.
"An officer said yesterday charges had been laid against 12 villagers over the killings."
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Geting Away with Murder by Uddalak Mukherjee (The Telegraph (Calcutta), February 06, 2007):
"It is not as if killings such as this one are restricted to the tribal belts of Pakistan or other Islamic societies. The rise in the number of murdered lovers makes it impossible to believe that honour killings are ‘new’ to Indian society. In fact, the first reported honour killing in Muzaffarnagar, a district in western Uttar Pradesh, which has gained notoriety for such slayings, goes back to 1993. Since then, the numbers have been rising. For instance, in Muzaffarnagar, 16 such deaths were reported in 2005 alone. Other districts in the state, such as Saharanpur, Bijnor, and now Agra, have also witnessed similar crimes. Significantly, the claim that honour killings are restricted to certain feudal pockets in north India is a dubious one. The day Gudiya and Mahesh were done to death in Nehra, Mohua Mondol, a girl from Purulia in West Bengal, was shot dead by her own father, for daring to fall in love.
"It is not as if the deaths go unreported. But the method that the Indian media employ while covering such events is quite interesting. The vernacular press resorts to sensationalizing such deaths. On most occasions, there is also a hidden moral tone, which helps to legitimize the violence in the name of punishing defiance. The English dailies, as well as the electronic media, invariably point to these killings as tangible proof of the failure of the country’s vast rural hinterland to keep pace with an enlightened, modern, urban India.
"The caste panchayats, which often order lovers to be strangled, burnt or hacked, are found to have a direct role to play in the violence. But they are by no means alone responsible for the assault or killings; a patriarchal society’s curious interpretation of ‘honour’ and its relationship with gender and caste are as important. But while a lot has been written on this interdependence of caste, honour and gender, caste panchayats and their sinister designs remain curiously under-reported in the media.
"The caste panchayat is different from the gram panchayat, which is an elected body, headed by the sarpanch. The former draws its legitimacy from its claims of being a self-appointed keeper of tradition, customs and cultural practices, while the latter is a representative of the law of the land. However, in India’s villages, it is the caste panchayat which serves as an extra-judicial agency, a parallel court of law that resolves ‘private’ disputes at the local level. Its macabre verdicts are often read out in the course of conciliatory meetings, known as shalishis in Bengal. The nature of the disputes vary — people approach the panchayat for settling altercations arising out of inter-caste marriage, elopement as well as supposedly incestuous unions, as was the case in Nehra. A careful scrutiny of the incidents of honour killings would show that in most cases, the caste panchayats have passed judgments in an arbitrary manner, and always in favour of those who wield real power — social, economic or otherwise — to ensure that the status quo remains undisturbed. A runaway couple, guilty of defying time-honoured traditions, is invariably doomed once the kangaroo court steps in.
"Significantly, it is not as if only couples hailing from different castes are murdered. Mahesh and Janaka, a married couple from the same caste, were abducted from Kanpur and taken to Chak Kushehari, their native village in central Uttar Pradesh. They were first tortured for two days, then taken to a paddy field where they were left to die after the bride’s father and his henchmen slit their throats. What binds the killings in different parts of the country is the violence that is inflicted on the victims. The caste panchayat will not tolerate any resistance to a set of archaic rules, which determine individual lives in the rural hinterland. The gruesome deaths are meant to remind the men and women the price one pays for love."
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