What is this honour killing? Am I asking a stupid question? After all, people might say the answer is so simple – it means killing to safeguard one’s honour. Well, a little more thinking on this topic will lead to many questions unanswered. Do we at all need such honour killings?
It is steadily becoming a menace to the traditional Indian society. Youngsters and couples are getting killed in the hands of their parents and neighbours, for the sake of protecting a community’s respect and honour. The case of Nirupama Pathak, a budding journalist of Delhi who is the latest in the death row over honour killing, is haunting me for the past few days.
The girl in his twenties, decided to get married to the boy she loves and likewise chose a date to tie the knot. However, from day one, his father was against the wedding, as the boy happens to be of lower caste, while Nirupama is a Brahmin (a much higher caste).
She decided to take one final attempt to convince her parents to accept their marriage, and went to her Jharkhand home. However, some days later, the girl was found dead in her house.
According to her mother, she was electrocuted, but police sources and post-mortem report state that she is a victim of ‘honour killing’ and got murdered by her own family so that they could resist her from marrying the boy of her choice.
What else can we deduce from this incident, but such raw realities of crime and death? Her mother’s statements varied on several occasions, as and when asked by the investigating officers, which make the case all the more interesting.
In March this year in Haryana, the city court pronounced death sentence to five people who acted on the provocation of a “khap panchayat” – that are given powers to maintain caste contours and act as social guardians and kangaroo caste courts, to kill Manoj and Babli, a couple of same caste (another case of honour killing!)
In today’s face-paced, modern world, it’s really very hard to digest issues like same-caste marriage, or a girl marrying a boy of lower caste or otherwise. The above two cases of honor killing once again brought forth the memories of barbaric practices of “sati” that was widely prevalent among Hindus in the medieval period.
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