Ensure Justice for Nirupama ! Stop Honour Killings !

AISA strongly condemns the brutal murder of the 22-year old journalist Nirupama Pathak at her home in Koderma, Jharkhand. Nirupama’s murder is just the latest in the long series of shocking and shameful examples of ‘honour’ killings. Nirupama was in love with Priyabhanshu Ranjan (who happens to come from a Kayastha family), and since she was a Brahmin, her family (including her brothers and parents) were strongly opposed to her plans to marry Priyabhanshu.

Over the past few months, she had been threatened several times by her father and brothers, and warned against marrying a Kayastha boy. A few months before her death, Nirupama even received a letter from her father stating that the Indian Constitution (which allows inter-caste marriages) has been in force for only 60 years, while the ancient Hindu tradition – which bars an ‘upper-caste’ girl from marrying a ‘lower caste’ boy – had ‘governed’ social life in India since eternity, and therefore the ‘Sanathan Dharma’ rather than the Indian Constitution should be followed!

Nirupama’s ‘crime’ was that she dared to have a relationship with a boy from a ‘lower’ caste. For the self-styled guardians of ‘honour’, nothing could be more dangerous. Her choice represented an assault both on the Brahmanical caste hierarchy, as well as on patriarchy, and therefore had to be suppressed at any cost. Following Nirupama’s death, the local authorities tried their best to hide the fact that she had been brutally murdered. To begin with, it was portrayed that she had committed suicide by hanging herself; later on the local police and her family said that she had been ‘accidently’ electrocuted. A post-mortem was conducted only after tremendous pressure was exerted by her friends. Subsequently, Nirupama’s family as well as the Jharkhand administration has been working overtime to distort facts, project her murder as a ‘suicide’, and place the blame of her death on her partner Priyabhanshu Ranjan. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he has been booked by the Jharkhand Police for rape and intimidation, which they claim led Nirupama to commit suicide.

Nirupama’s murder is NOT an isolated case, which can be brushed away as an exceptional case of intolerance. Her case has once again brought to the limelight the manner in which caste and patriarchy operate in our society, and the immense difficulties young people in India face in choosing their partners and marrying out of their own choice. When AISA activists visited the National Commission of Women (NCW) on 3^rd May, the NCW Chairperson Girija Vyas stated that this was the third such case reported in the NCW in a week.

Today, all over Haryana, UP and Rajasthan, young men and women who disregard caste and gotra restrictions to marry by choice are being killed in the name of “honour.”Caste-based ‘khaap panchayats’ have set themselves up as extra-constitutional guardians of ‘traditional’ values in society, openly calling for killings of men and women who defy their casteist diktats. The real intentions of the khaap panchayats are made crystal clear from the following statement of Mahendra Singh Tikait, farmers’ leader of Western UP:

“Only whores choose their own partners…. Recently an educated couple married against the samaj’s (community’s) wishes in Jhajjar. We hail the panchayat’s decision to execute them…The government cannot protect this atyachar (immoral behaviour)…. (The law of the land) is the root of all problems… That’s your Constitution, ours is different.’’

For the likes of Tikait, ‘dishonour’ lies primarily in women choosing their own partners. This choice threatens the structures of property and land and of patriarchal control over women’s sexuality – and with it, the very edifice of the feudal order.

What is even more shameful than the existence of these khaap panchayats and their casteist, patriarchal diktats is the wide-spread support and patronage they enjoy from ruling class parties like the Congress and the BJP. On 10th May 2010, Congress MP Naveen Jindal, Industrialist and Congress MP from Kurukshetra praised khaap panchayats in glowing words:

“Khaap panchayats have always given a ‘new direction’ to society. They have been rendering yeoman service to the society by resolving people’s problems even before the present day legal system came into existence…. I support their demand for amending the Hindu Marriage Act so that same gotra marriages are banned. I regret that I could not attend the Khaap Mahapanchayat….I and my family have always respected the society’s traditions, customs, beliefs and culture.”

It is indeed shameful, and highly condemnable, that members of Parliament (and the so-called custodians of the Indian constitution) come out in such blatant support of the khaap panchayats. Naveen Jindal is no doubt aware that the ‘yeoman’ service’ rendered by the khaap panchayats includes killing one’s own daughter if she commits the ‘sin’ of falling in love and marrying out of her own choice!  Jindal’s appalling sentiments were earlier echoed by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda on the eve of the assembly elections in Haryana in 2009: “Khaaps have never brought a bad name to Haryana. Who says they have caused discomfort or embarrassment to us?” And let us not forget that the Sangh Parivar’s ideological mentor RSS chief Guru Golwalkar wanted the Manusmriti– with its justification of the subjugation and exploitation of dalits and women – to become the Constitution of independent India!Such is the’respect’thatleaders of both the BJP and the Congress have for the Indian Constitution, and for the idea of an egalitarian India!

AISA demands that immediate action be taken against the killers of Nirupama. Also, the central government should immediately take steps to enact a legislation protecting the rights of people to choose their partners, regardless of any considerations of religion, gender or caste.We need to say a firm ‘NO’ to these defenders if honour killings and those who wish to reinforce a feudal and patriarchal set-up. We need to take forward these demands so as to ensure that the tragedies of Rizwanur, Nirupama, Manoj and Babli do not recur.