Blood ties
A STUDY by the National Family and Health Survey (2015-16) on Consanguineous Marriages Percentage of Ever-married Women (Age 15-49) points out that various caste and religious communities prefer marriages within the community. It says that women in the southern States except Kerala are more likely to be in consanguineous marriages than in other States.
It further says that about one-third of the women in Tamil Nadu (33 per cent), followed by Lakshadweep, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana respectively, are reported to be in consanguineous marriages against the country’s average of 14 per cent. While studying the Proximate Determinates of Fertility, the survey points out that these marriages take place mostly between first cousins but also with second cousins, uncles, brothers-in-law and other blood and non-blood relatives. Marriages among non-related partners, however, account for over 80 per cent of the marriages across the country, though the study has not recorded specifically whether they take place across caste and religious barriers. Tamil Nadu has recorded the lowest rate among all States under the “not related” category of marriages (66.9 per cent).
A study by the United Nations—global Study on Homicides, 2019, of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime—says that though women and girls account for a far smaller share of victims of homicide in general than men (81 per cent), as of 2017, they do “continue to bear by far the greatest burden of intimate partner and family-related homicides”. Another U.N. report, “Progress of World’s Women: Families in a Changing World, 2019”, says that lone parent families have increased to 8 per cent across the globe, and of these the majority are single-mother units. But, of late, the report claims, “arranged” marriages of Indian women are increasingly becoming “semi-arranged”.
In fact, honour killing has a wide geographical spread and happens across all social groups. While India records about 900 such killings every year, it is 5,000-odd across the world, says an unconfirmed United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) report. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data in the
The eligible couples, one of them who has to be from a Scheduled Caste, have to apply for the assistance within a year of their marriage with appropriate documents. “So far, none from Tamil Nadu has received the assistance,” said Kappikulam J. Prabhakar, a Tamil journalist and social worker.
It is not surprising that political response to this issue is half-hearted. The political environment is dominated by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and both parties depend on the numerically past claimed that India registered 251 killings in 2015, a 792 per cent increase over 28 in 2014. The report was presented in Parliament in 2016. The Centre has submitted to the Supreme Court in connection with a case that 288 cases of honour killings were reported between 2014 and 2016. But this time, the NCRB has withheld the release of the data on honour killings and lynchings.
That these killings in the north had roots in history is no surprise. Guru Gobind Singh, the revered figure of Sikh religion, had asked his disciples to shun and reject “honour” killers and declared that “whosoever takes food from the slayers of daughters shall die unabsolved”.
Though khap panchayats (community committees) are active as extrajudicial entities in Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, the presence of such extrajudicial bodies is not officially recorded in Tamil Nadu.
Independent reports claim that Gujarat ranks third in terms of honour killings, with 30 cases reported between 2014 and 2016. Sustained interventions by activists in certain pockets had also led to some discernible changes in the mindset. In 2014, the Satrol Khap in Nardid village in Haryana permitted intercaste and intra-khap marriages in 42 villages under its “jurisdiction”. Activists claimed that a skewed sex ratio in that State, just 834 girls to every 1,000 boys in Haryana then, was the reason for decision.
Killings are reported beyond India’s borders, too. Pakistan is said to record around 1,000 honour killings every year. Honour killings are reported among immigrants in European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany and also in the United States. These immigrant groups mostly have their roots in West Asian and South East Asian countries. One report says that around 12 people get murdered every year in Britain, while a report quoting the U.S. Department of Justice claims that between 23 and 27 killings take place in the U.S. every year. Many women prisoners of the now infamous Abu Gharib prison in Iraq, who were allegedly raped by soldiers while in prison and became pregnant, were executed by their relatives after their release, all in the name of honour.
Ilangovan Rajasekaran
stronger B.CS for electoral support. This is the main reason for the Tamil Nadu Assembly not taking up the issue for a serious discussion.
When it was once brought to the notice of the House in February 2015, Deputy Chief Minister O. Paneerselvam, who belongs to the intermediate Marava caste, went on record denying any such killing in the State. He dismissed the demand for separate legislation saying it was unnecessary. This attitude has only accentuated the intensity of such crimes.
However, neither the courts nor activists are willing
to buy the government’s claims. Kadir said that around 190 deaths, including suspected murders and suspicious deaths of young women and men involved in inter-caste marriages and love affairs, which he strongly believed were honour killings, had taken place in Tamil Nadu between 2013 and 2019. He said that 80 per cent of the victims were women and teenaged girls. “They were murdered for marrying a Dalit or being married to a caste Hindu. Sometimes, as in the case of Nandish and Swathi, both were killed,” he said.
A. Marx, a social activist and writer based in Chennai, said that the rise of identity politics was the reason for social degradation. “Dravidian politics is the problem here. As their vote base lies among the B.CS, the major Dravidian parties are reluctant to take forward the Gandhian-periyarist ideologies,” he said.
He added: “Here, families and castes decide the fate of young couples. The state machinery, such as the police, often colludes with the murderers.” Marx insisted that parents of inter-caste couples should be held responsible for any harm done to them.in July 2019, a Deputy Inspector General (DIG) submitted an affidavit on behalf of the Director General of Police (DGP) of Tamil Nadu in the Madras High Court, in response to a petition being heard in the court. It said that 23 killings perceived to be for the sake of honour had taken place in Tamil Nadu, the first one being recorded in 2003.
The affidavit pointed out that four cases ended in acquittal and three, including one in 2003 and another in 2013, were under investigation. The rest were pending trial. While two cases ended in conviction, one is yet to be taken on file. The Gokulraj murder case was entrusted to the CB-CID and the case is before the Namakkal court.
Samuel Raj said: “The attitude of the state, especially the police, is brazenly partisan. The death of Vimala Devi of Madurai district is one such example. Despite knowing that she was facing threats, the police separated her from her husband, Dilip Kumar, a Dalit, and sent her with her parents. Later, the girl, who belonged to an MBC group, was found dead. The police panicked and tried to cover it up by saying that she had committed suicide. It was at the intervention of the Madras High Court, on a petition from Dilip Kumar, that the case was resurrected.” The TNUEF is assisting Dilip Kumar in the legal battle.
Palanithurai blamed the prevalence of these crimes on the failure of political parties to democratise society. “Instead of bringing people out of the caste system, political parties have forced them to remain in it. Politics has corporatised caste too today. More than 50 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s population is in rural areas, of which the majority is in agriculture, which, in itself, is a feudal system,” he said.
According to the writer and Dalit ideologue D. Ravikumar, who is also the Member of Parliament from Villupuram and a senior functionary of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), the Tamil Nadu government was “treating the honour killings with disdain”. Political parties must unite to force the State government to act against such crimes, he said. “Until then, honour killings will continue,” he added.
His party has been demanding a special law on honour killing for a long time. Dr K. Krishnasamy, the founder leader of Puthiya Tamilagam (P.T.), a political outfit that counts Pallars among its support base, held the Dravidian political parties responsible for these horrendous crimes. “Political empowerment of Dalits will remain elusive until Dalits carry the baggage of untouchability, socially and culturally,” he said.
The Supreme Court had observed that “inter-caste marriages are in fact in the national interest as they will result in destroying the caste system”. Prof. Y.S. Alone of the Visual Studies School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said: “Although it is one of the ways to counter caste prejudices and create a harmony in society, it does not break caste as such. The Scheduled Caste population has been vocal on the issue of intercaste marriages and has largely accepted it. However, wherever there is no Ambedkarite consciousness, such
marriages have always been forbidden by the respective communities. Marriage within has been instrumental in maintaining caste.”
AMBEDKAR PERSPECTIVE
Saying that Mahatma Jyotirao Phule also advocated inter-caste marriages, Prof. Alone said that caste was not a homogeneous category; it “is always fragmented and hierarchical”. He added: “Marriage outside caste becomes a bone of contention because caste will never have egalitarian values. The world outlook of the majority of human beings in India is shaped by their respective caste values and not by constitutional ethos. Caste blocks all abilities to create any enabling process. When society does not adopt rational thinking, prejudices impact all decisions in life and result in hate, anger and violence,” said Prof. Alone, who is also involved in research collaboration with the Buddhist Research Academy of Haungzhou, China.
Dr Ambedkar’s perspective on inter-caste marriage is deep and different. In his Annihilation of Caste, he writes that “caste will cease to be an operative force only when inter-dining and inter-marriage have become matters of common course”. He adds that the source of the disease has been located, but asks whether “the prescription was right prescription for the disease”.
He argues that caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire that prevents Hindus from co-mingling and which has to be pulled down. “Caste is a notion, it is a state of mind. The destruction of caste does not, therefore, mean the destruction of a physical barrier. It means a notional change.” Caste is the natural outcome of certain religious beliefs, which have the sanction of the shastras, he adds.
To agitate for and to organise inter-caste dining and inter-caste marriages, he says, “is like forced feeding brought about by artificial means”.
Dr Ambedkar wanted to free every man and woman from the thrall of the shastras. “Criticising and ridiculing people for not inter-dining and celebrating inter-caste marriages is a futile method of achieving the desired end. The real remedy is to destroy the belief in the sanctity of the shastras.” The destruction of belief in the sanctity of the shastras alone can eradicate caste, according to him.
The Supreme Court once said that the practice of honour killing devastated and destroyed the right of choice of an individual. “Ours is an obstinate society, backward and barbaric. The collective behaves like a patriarchal monarch, which treat the wives, sisters and daughters [as] subordinates, servile and self-sacrificing persons, moving in physical frame [and] having no individual autonomy, desire and identity.”
The court wondered how, despite constant social advancement, honour killing was persisting “in the same way as history had seen in 1750 B.C. under the code of Hammurabi”.
Tamil Nadu has become a classic example of this contradiction. A State that takes pride in Periyar’s legacies of self-respect, rationality and women’s liberation and which has achieved robust all-round advancement in the spheres of education, economy and social indices is also witness to a spurt in murders in the name of caste honour.
Apart from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have also been recording such crimes. In September 2018, a 24-year-old Dalit youth named Perumalla Pranay Kumar was hacked to death in broad daylight by unidentified persons at Miryalaguda town in Nalgonda district of Telangana for having married 19-year-old Amruthavarshini, the daughter of Maruthi Rao, a realtor, some eight months ago. Maruthi Rao was against the marriage. Pranay was murdered when he was taking Amruthavarshini, who was pregnant, to a hospital for a check-up. He died on the spot.
Maruthi Rao, who masterminded the murder, told the police that he “loved his daughter very much” but he was more concerned about his status in society, which he feared would ridicule him if his daughter married a Dalit. He paid hired killers Rs.10 lakh for the deed. Amruthavarshini and her child now live with her in-laws.
A civilised society should not allow a single tyrannical group or an individual to destroy the liberty of individuals to live and marry as they please. As the poet Edwin Arnold wrote, there is no caste in blood, ... nor caste in tears. Similarly, there is neither purity nor honour in these heinous killings. $