Are We Silently Watching the Rising Honour Killing in India? Can Individual Vigilante be Encouraged?

Honour killing seems to be carried on in many parts of India regularly. It is shocking to note that more than 1,000 people are being ‘honour-killed’ by their own kith and ken every year.

Marriages are being forced upon youngsters and when the children opt for suitors of another caste, their parents, brothers and relatives resort to this form of punishment. The families most often force marriage on younger people to save honour of the family. Women are killed if they reject forced alliances or for marrying a person of their own choice and not endorsed by the family. Thus, convenience for the family, to suit the rigid caste system and economic arrangements between families have major roles to play in such marriages, with love appearing nowhere among the reasons for marriage. The girl appears to be married to the family and not to the spouse alone anymore. When this is disrupted, the family gets in the ways of the girl and the boy concerned, punishing them with death.

Caste and community panchayats of concerned localities seem to favor such a killing. Most often, it is the girl who is punished with vengeance more than the boy. People living in such societies, stand around and watch such crimes going on and on without raising objections, probably for fear of ostracism.

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The major cause this kind of heinous crime is the rigid practice of caste system in specific pockets in and around mainly rural areas. However, there appears to be no religious consent for such practices. It is true such people can be punished for murder where the trial lasts for a long duration. By the time punishment arrives, the dead person is forgotten or the case loses its relevance or media glare.

There should be more stringent laws to handle local panchayats handing decisions on cases promoting caste system still in remote areas and encouraging those who commit crimes. While the government system can punish the perpetrators, an individual vigilante by the states is too unwieldy to handle. Even stringent laws can come to help only to handle cases post murder and not before, where people are illiterate, stick to caste politics and refusing to budge.

It is the society at large that has to answer. Of course the ever present TV and print media can do a lot to remove the taboo from the minds of people. Extremely streamlined education and change in value system can alone achieve that progress, aided by the media glare for such events.