Love Marriages Are Dirty
Love versus Arranged Marriages: which type works best?
When Is Sex Dirty?
Cousin Marriages
Runaway Marriages- Can they be justified?
"Only Whores choose their partners Love marriages are dirty, I don’t even want to repeat the word" Mahendra Singh Tikait declares, the erstwhile leader of jat community says: “We live by a moral code where honour has to be protected at any cost.’’ As the chaudhary of the Baliyan khap, the 79-year-old farmer’s views matter. He presides over a system of justice that is almost medieval and disdains the laws of the Indian state.
Tikait’s moral code is simple. In his own words: Same-gotra marriages are incestuous, “No society would accept it. Why do you expect us to do so? Incest violates maryada (honour) and villagers would kill or be killed to protect their maryada.” Tikait claims panchayats are infallible because they have divine sanction. “Panch means parmatma and ayath means court. He also says panchayats have tradition on their side: they existed during Mughal and British rule and the rulers “never interfered’’. He scoffs at the laws of the Indian state, calling them “the root of all problems. “That’s your Constitution, ours is different.’’
Daryal Singh, one of Tikait’s retainers, adds that “shameless people (lovers) deserve to die.’’ He gives graphic accounts of lovers being “hanged, tortured or nailed to death”. But Singh stands alone in providing the only real explanation for what sustains this medieval system: bad governance. “The government has failed to provide basic necessities. It’s impossible for people to survive without the samaj. They can’t challenge it,’’ he says.
Raju, a Dalit, agrees. “Paani mein rehna hai toh magarmach se bair nahi le saktay (you can’t fight society if you are living in it).’’ He says social boycotts are a common punitive measure. “People are also regularly paraded and beaten with shoes.” Another villager says theft is punished by cutting off a hand or foot. “I’ve seen a couple being hacked to death after they were caught together.’’
Love marriages are doomed in khap country, just 50 km outside the National Capital Region. Going by the complicated logic of the Chhatar Singh Pardhan, 92, from Dubaldhan village, Jhajjar.
Feudal lords who rule here, the young must find love much beyond the boundaries of their village.
Ravinder and Shilpa are a case in point. On July 24, a khap panchayat banished his entire family from the village. Their crime: Ravinder is a Gehlot from Dharana; Shilpa is a Kadyan from Siwah in Panipat. The Kadyan khap panchayat ruled out marriage between the two gotras because they were kin. How? Because Ravinder’s family lives in the same village as Shilpa’s extended family! The ruling that banished Ravinder’s family came just 24 hours after the brutal killing of Ved Pal Mor. He was lynched by the villagers of Singhwal in the presence of the police. Mor’s crime was to have married a girl from the same gotra. They were just the latest in a long line of couples who offended khap propriety. In June, a khap panchayat forced Manoj and Babli to drink pesticide. A high court order gave the couple police protection but it was not enough. That same month, another couple, Anita and Sonu, were lured back to their village in Rohtak and stabbed to death in public.
Sociologist D R Chaudhary explains: “Those living in khaps are not allowed to marry in the same gotra, or even in any gotra from the same village or neighbouring villages. Given the skewed sex ratio in these areas, marrying off children has become quite difficult. ”Ranbir Singh is a consultant at the Haryana Institute of Rural Development in Nilokheri (Karnal). He says the khaps’ strength lies in the weakness of panchayati raj institutions. “Functionally and financially disempowered, the panchayats can’t challenge the authority of khaps.”
But Ranbir Singh says the khap panchayats’ increasing assertiveness is a sign of the identity crisis within the Jat community. “Their landholdings are fragmenting and many fear that they would lose their zamindar status.”
Khaps are traditional area-based community organizations whose rulings have no legal sanction. In keeping with tradition, khap panchayats oppose marriages within the same 'gotra' (lineage) and are known to have meted out harsh punishments to "erring" young couples. khap panchayats in Haryana are now determined to get some legal sanction.
Soon, they will draw up a set of recommendations for making "suitable" amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) at the state level so that their rulings become valid under law. the Sarv Khap Panchayat, a conglomerate of various khaps, decided to set up a core committee to suggest amendments to the Act to disallow same-gotra and same-village marriages as per Jat tradition.
The above article is from The Times Of India. After reading it I have one question if the Khap Leaders think that they are beyond and above the law of their own country that is India and they refuse to follow those laws, than they should not expect or demand any facility be it educational, medical or professional in nature from the Indian Government.
They seem to have lost the right to do so.
