More bad press...
Sensationalization continues. There are 4 articles related to Khaps today on TOI's website. While I have no sympathy for the functioning of Khaps, I hate the way media is making a mockery of the issue by writing whatever crap they can imagine.
This was the worst one.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...lls-for-wayward-girls/articleshow/4984365.cms
ROHTAK: Less than 100 km from Delhi, smooth roads take you to Sanghi, the village where Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was born. There
Young girls are generally at the receiving end of khap 'justice'. (TOI Photo)
are pucca houses, cobbled streets, well-fed cattle, neat schools and sprawling green fields. It’s easy to be impressed by the colleges and professional institutes that dot the area.
But Sanghi, like most villages in this prosperous belt, has dark secrets to keep. Here, rape is casual, murder-by-pesticide of teenage daughters acceptable and it is routine to dispose of their bodies by burning them in cattle-carts. Here, young women are routinely threatened, abused and killed. Standard khap operating procedure?
In Sanghi, flush with development, khap rule has been the norm. The village women want the status quo to be maintained, uncertain of a life without khap decrees. “With mobile phones and television, milna-julna (interaction between the sexes) is too much. What can parents do except kill a daughter who disobeys?” says a local teacher defensively.
Girls who survive their mother’s womb are brought up as daughters of the village. Not just Sanghi’s daughters, but of 12 neighbouring villages, says a khap member. All 12 villages form the Khidwali Bara khap, a Jat territorial unit. It decrees that boys and girls within these 12 villages cannot marry. Interestingly, the entire onus of ‘siblinghood’ rests on the girl. She is the keeper of village honour. Exceptions may be made for a boy, if the khap decides, but a girl is never allowed to bend the rules. “If a girl married in her community’s villages, she will be in purdah in her own house. How can we allow that?” asks middle-aged Bedo.
The 10 to 15 men who rule a khap derive their power from being fatwa-issuing ‘samajik karyakarta’ (social workers). They settle disputes out of court, play matchmaker and assert their control by frowning on relationships between girls and boys.
In keeping with khap rules, older villagers do their best to keep the sexes apart. Last year, the senior secondary government school was forced to become single-sex with girls attending in the morning and boys in the afternoon. But such measures have limited impact, say villagers. “Yeh mobile sabko bigaad rahein hain,” says Bedo. “Kabhi kuan pe milenge, khet mein, kabhi ghar mein (The cellphone is corrupting the young who keep looking for ways to meet),” complains Ompati, a 50-plus housewife.
Intimacy is not a khap-level issue. Relationships are kosher so long as they’re casual flings, but dreams of marriage can spell death for the girl.
Vidya, who teaches at a government school in Sanghi, says she has had students who died in mysterious circumstances. “We are only told so-and-so is dead,” she says. The physical trainer in her school adds, “Kaaran koi nai batata (No one gives reasons).” On average, 10 to 12 healthy girls die every year, locals reckon, but there are no reliable figures.
Generally, it’s the parents or father-brother duos who kill ‘wayward’ girls. A sympathetic mother may plead with a daughter to take the goli herself. A protesting daughter may be force-fed a pesticide pill, the preferred mode. The other route is death by hanging, all the better to ‘show’ it as suicide. No police, no complaint, no records. “Yahan izzatdar woh hain jo ladki ko marte hain (Those who kill their girls are respected here),” says another teacher.
If a couple runs away, the women in their families run the risk of being raped, gang-raped, and boycotted. At times, khaps also ‘fine’ the families lakhs of rupees. For the locals, that is par for the course. “What else can be done?” asks an old woman.
Fearing their daughters would go astray, many parents marry them off early. In the government senior secondary school, two Class IX students just got married, some others are engaged. The married ones stay with their parents and aren’t allowed to speak to their husbands, also at school in other villages. “His name is Sonu and he’s in plus 2,” says Poonam of the youth she married in July. They hope to meet during vacations.
For their part, the “keepers of honour” have unquestioning faith in the khap. The only dirty word for the women here is ‘adhikar’. “Adhikar ke upeksha se ghar toot te hain (Asking for rights leads to broken homes),” says schoolteacher Kanta. But there is change, she insists. Her family can at last visit her. That’s adhikar enough for her.
In the last 10 years, the khap’s influence as the moral police has only grown. But Sanghi sleeps easy. Even when its daughters are being put to sleep.
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The other links:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...choose-their-partners/articleshow/4984378.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...-just-50km-from-Delhi/articleshow/4984351.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...yats-seek-legal-claws/articleshow/4984423.cms
