Honour killing

The issue of khap panchayat and honour killing is tricky. What honour and whose honour? What is the logic and rationale of such acts? It means one thing at one place and quite another elsewhere. The honour killings are not confined to a place. These transcend temporal and spatial dimensions.

Whoever is executing honour killings, the khap panchayat in Haryana or a high caste family in Punjab or elsewhere, it is the women who bear the brunt of such sentences. Khap panchayats have generated much furore in the academic, civil and human rights circles. Such decisions taken collectively assume gravity whereas elsewhere these are executed at the family level only.
The patriarchal values and practices instigate such phenomena since in a patrilineal society women are gifted in marriage. They leave their home for their family of procreation and sustain the honour of their family of orientation which is why honour killings transcend barriers of caste, class or religion.
In Haryana, same caste people are involved in it while in Punjab it is the inter-caste marriage, especially with a boy of lower caste. Interestingly, it is not the honour of the high caste family that is at stake; even the lower caste daughter marrying into a high caste is also not spared.
There are different explanations but not a comprehensive one. Very often, honour killing is associated with medieval culture and society and Haryana being a largely rural, traditional agricultural society fits into this argument. Another explanation points finger to the lack of modern education that may enlighten the males and empower women.
However, if medieval culture is the cause, why do honour killings take place in places like London and Vancouver? The families there are not supposed to be traditional, yet they execute such acts. They are neither uneducated nor inhabitants of an uneducated milieu. Moreover, they are exposed to the plurality and multiculturalism of the metropolitan culture. But the openness of that world has not influenced the honour killers. If the cultural nut is hard to crack, how 'fractured' education here would solve the problem.
It is common knowledge how gangs operating in London, a metropolis that enjoys prestige and status amongst metropolises, take hefty money for providing information to the 'honour retrieving' parents about the hideouts of the runaway couples. Such gangs include both boys and girls since embeddedness is an important part of their strategy winning the confidence of the potential victim(s).
If educating the people solves the problem, as this is the only means of retrieving societies from medievalism, why do the educated living abroad commit such heinous crimes? Moreover, educating a father or a brother not to kill one's daughter or sister sounds ridiculous. Does it mean that uneducated people commit this crime? Do societies hitherto 'uneducated' been committing such crimes? They were not. Modern education as solution to all social problems is a recent assumption. The 'uneducated' primitives have lived all through yet without honour killings.
Thus, honour killings become an enigma transcending boundaries across states and societies — developed and underdeveloped, castes, classes and religions of the world. This writer has no clue to the solution except suggesting a probable explanation to avoid Haryana bashing that may be an alternative framework to approach this issue.
Khap as an institution emerged six centuries ago. In the era of regional feudatories and the Mughal empire, clans organised themselves vis-a-vis other communities and the state that remained loosely structured till Akbar consolidated it more for collecting revenue than anything else. The khaps then provided security to its people. Its social solidarity could be ensured with the observance of cultural norms and values. Hence its role was to ensure the safety of community from external threats and internal collapse.
Till the modern state was executing its functions of development and progress effectively, at least seemingly so, honour killings were hardly reported, even if these were happening then too, possibly because the khaps were involved in these projects supporting their leaders. Of late, the state seems to be withdrawing from its role and playing hostage to political leaders who are busy managing their power politics. The projects launched are also meant for direct and indirect self promotion.
The present-day populist and perverted political culture is not characteristic of this state but all others too. When the modern state is failing, a space is created for the rise and resurgence of traditional institutions like khap panchayats, itself a rudimentary state. They fill the vacuum. When law and order is decreasing, traditional institutions take law into their hands because it poses a threat to their own existence.
The state's failings are evident, thanks to the media. It is not the fiction of the Bollywood cinema or framing up of reports of corruption. People know their leaders in Haryana demand Monteros just two years after they were given Toyotas out of the public money. Their counterparts in Punjab ask for Toyotas while the schools and hospitals, the two pillars of a society, are starving of funds.
Consequently, it would be appropriate to make the state accountable because it has the responsibility and function of modernising a traditional society. The path of modernisation has to be treaded honestly. The state functionaries have to become modern themselves — a concern for the other — before modernising society