Khap panchayats seek legal claws / Divya

Khap panchayats seek legal claws
Divya A | TNN

New Delhi: Irked at being equated with the Taliban and kangaroo courts, 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.
Khaps are traditional areabased 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.
At a two-day meeting in Rohtak that ended on Sunday, 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. Lt Col (retd) Chander Singh Dalal, an advocate in Rohtak who organized the ‘‘seminar’’, said: ‘‘After elections, I plan to send the draft recommendations to each of the 90 MLAs and persuade them to bring a Bill in the assembly. I am sure it won’t be opposed. Once the amendments are brought in, there’ll be no place for dispute.’’ ‘Khap leaders are the keepers of Jat tradition’
New Delhi: Khap panchayats are often said to be the Taliban of India. Justice (retd) Devi Singh Teotia, a former judge of the Punjab & Haryana HC, who actively participated in the Sarv Khap Panchayat, said: ‘‘Khap leaders are keepers of Jat tradition and they have lately been facing flak for it. If the amendments come through, there will be no more clashes between tradition and the law, and they (the khap leaders) won’t be maligned.’’
He said the amendments will be sought at the state level, so that they apply to any marriage taking place in Haryana. ‘‘One of the sections of the Hindu Marriage Act says that you can’t marry your brother or sister, unless custom permits. This exception clause was added for some south Indian customs where sibling marriages are allowed under extreme circumstances.
“Since Jat custom doesn’t permit marriage within the same gotra and in the gotra of one’s parents, we can seek a similar clause. Similarly, certain other sections need small alterations,’’ he said.
The meeting, attended by more than 150 khap leaders besides intellectuals, doctors and social activists from the community, also debated ways to improve the khaps’ image in the media.
Teotia said he suggested that a handful of educated people from the community should be nominated to assist khap leaders in taking decisions and help them in media management.

Khap wrath: Lovers and their kin risk boycott and worse
Divya A | TNN

Dharana (Jhajjar): Love marriages are doomed in khap country, just 50 km outside the National Capital Region. Going by the complicated logic of the 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!
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.”
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.
Ravinder was luckier. Under pressure from the khap, he tried to commit suicide but fortunately failed. His family eventually left for a relative’s house in another village, only to return with security cover. The sarv khap mahapanchayat, which assembled on August 9, scaled down the punishment — permanent expulsion for the couple and three months for Ravinder’s father. Fines were slapped on his two uncles, Naseeb Singh and Ved Prakash, and his parents-in-law. Today, Ravinder and his bride live in Delhi. They would need a police escort if they ever want to return. Naseeb Singh, an armyman, says there’s more to it than meets the eye. Gehlot migrants came here generations ago, he says. “Today, we are around 100 families. Our family owns 100 bighas of land in the village. Maybe the Kadyans want to reclaim ownership.”
But Chhatar Singh Pradhan, 92, head of the Kadyan khap panchayat, denies this. “We just want to protect our bhaichara (brotherhood) and its maryada (honour). We don’t order killings and executions,” he says.
But can the democratically elected panchayats do nothing to blunt the influence of khaps? 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.”
Jaibir Singh, sarpanch of Dharana concedes that his panchayat’s role is marginal. “Such big dispute happened and I was not even called to attend the meetings. Even if we go by the caste-clan system, the marriage wasn’t illegal,” he says.
For its part, the state government grants them legitimacy. Its website reads: “Khap Panchayats… would be requested to use their influence in combating various social evils.” Even CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has defended them, saying they’re needed in times of crisis.
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.”


Chandra Devi, 80 | Dharana village, Jhajjar
When her grandson Ravinder married Shilpa for love, the entire family of 28 was banished by a khap panchayat. They were given 72 hours to leave. Six days later, the grievously ill Devi and some of her family were able to return with a police escort. Ravinder’s parents remain in exile. But the lives of those able to return have changed forever. “In a village where my husband was once sarpanch, most people don’t talk to us now. We can’t leave the house without police protection; our 100 bighas of land is lying uncared for, our crops and livestock are wasting away and our children can’t go to school. We have nothing to eat, no money left, and no hope of a reprieve…I don’t think I will last more than a month; this is killing me,” laments the old woman.


Chhatar Singh Pardhan, 92 | Dubaldhan village, Jhajjar
“They call us Taliban! Are we like the Taliban?” asks the head of Kadyan khap panchayat. Pardhan says the ruling on the Gehlot family was justified. “How can one marry in the gotra of the same village? Hindus aren’t allowed to marry brothers and sisters.” He can’t understand why an “internal matter” is making the news. “Even Chidambaram remarked about us. But how can a south Indian know about the customs of north India?” He insists that a khap never orders anyone to be killed. “We only order fines and social boycotts of the couple and their families. In many cases, they have no choice but to kill themselves as they have no place to live and no community to support them morally and financially.”

Khap wrath: Lovers and their kin risk boycott and worse
Divya A | TNN

Dharana (Jhajjar): Love marriages are doomed in khap country, just 50 km outside the National Capital Region. Going by the complicated logic of the 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!
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.”
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.
Ravinder was luckier. Under pressure from the khap, he tried to commit suicide but fortunately failed. His family eventually left for a relative’s house in another village, only to return with security cover. The sarv khap mahapanchayat, which assembled on August 9, scaled down the punishment — permanent expulsion for the couple and three months for Ravinder’s father. Fines were slapped on his two uncles, Naseeb Singh and Ved Prakash, and his parents-in-law. Today, Ravinder and his bride live in Delhi. They would need a police escort if they ever want to return. Naseeb Singh, an armyman, says there’s more to it than meets the eye. Gehlot migrants came here generations ago, he says. “Today, we are around 100 families. Our family owns 100 bighas of land in the village. Maybe the Kadyans want to reclaim ownership.”
But Chhatar Singh Pradhan, 92, head of the Kadyan khap panchayat, denies this. “We just want to protect our bhaichara (brotherhood) and its maryada (honour). We don’t order killings and executions,” he says.
But can the democratically elected panchayats do nothing to blunt the influence of khaps? 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.”
Jaibir Singh, sarpanch of Dharana concedes that his panchayat’s role is marginal. “Such big dispute happened and I was not even called to attend the meetings. Even if we go by the caste-clan system, the marriage wasn’t illegal,” he says.
For its part, the state government grants them legitimacy. Its website reads: “Khap Panchayats… would be requested to use their influence in combating various social evils.” Even CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has defended them, saying they’re needed in times of crisis.
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.”


Chandra Devi, 80 | Dharana village, Jhajjar
When her grandson Ravinder married Shilpa for love, the entire family of 28 was banished by a khap panchayat. They were given 72 hours to leave. Six days later, the grievously ill Devi and some of her family were able to return with a police escort. Ravinder’s parents remain in exile. But the lives of those able to return have changed forever. “In a village where my husband was once sarpanch, most people don’t talk to us now. We can’t leave the house without police protection; our 100 bighas of land is lying uncared for, our crops and livestock are wasting away and our children can’t go to school. We have nothing to eat, no money left, and no hope of a reprieve…I don’t think I will last more than a month; this is killing me,” laments the old woman.


Chhatar Singh Pardhan, 92 | Dubaldhan village, Jhajjar
“They call us Taliban! Are we like the Taliban?” asks the head of Kadyan khap panchayat. Pardhan says the ruling on the Gehlot family was justified. “How can one marry in the gotra of the same village? Hindus aren’t allowed to marry brothers and sisters.” He can’t understand why an “internal matter” is making the news. “Even Chidambaram remarked about us. But how can a south Indian know about the customs of north India?” He insists that a khap never orders anyone to be killed. “We only order fines and social boycotts of the couple and their families. In many cases, they have no choice but to kill themselves as they have no place to live and no community to support them morally and financially.”

PESTICIDE PILLS FOR ‘WAYWARD’ GIRLS
Nandita Sengupta | TNN

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 are pucca houses, cobbled streets, wellfed 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 cattlecarts. 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 fatherbrother 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.


Only whores choose their partners’
Sameer Arshad | TNN

Sisauli (Western UP): Squatting on his haunches, dhoti-clad and bare-chested, Mahendra Singh Tikait declares: “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.”
LOVE MARRIAGES ARE DIRTY | “I don’t even want to repeat the word…Only whores can choose their partners.”
EDUCATION HAS CONTRIBUTED TO “THIS DIRT” | “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).”
Those who dare to cross the line must suffer the consequences. Like Radha of Muzaffarnagar’s
Fugana village. Three years ago, she was stripped, burnt and hung from a tree. Her crime was to fall in love. Anecdotal accounts say she is one of many.
There is no reliable data on honour killings because the National Crime Records Bureau records them under ‘murder’ and many cases aren’t even reported. But there is growing acknowledgement that the problem is serious. Just weeks ago, home minister P Chidambaram told Parliament, “Villagers give precedence to caste panchayat judgments rather than that of the courts’’ and that some panchayats approve of honour killings. “I recoil with shame when I read about them,’’ Chidambaram lamented.
Few here in Sisauli would agree with him. There is broad social acceptance of the khap’s diktats. The chaudhary has so much clout over his people that the police are forced to stay away. “How will they know if parents kill and dump their daughter’s body?’’ asks Kamlesh Devi of Alipur village. “And what’s the harm if we solve our problems amongst ourselves?’’ 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.’’
The local police is dismissive. Additional SSP Raja Babu Singh says Jats like to brag. “Panchayats settle minor disputes. We’ve never come across any case of honour killing,’’ he claims. “If khaps violate the law, action is taken.’’ But a journalist who covered Tikait’s arrest last year for abusing Mayawati is sceptical. “A heavy police contingent laid siege to Sisauli for 12 hours but didn’t dare enter the village to arrest Tikait.’’ If they couldn’t implement the CM’s orders then, how can they stand up to the simple, stark, sinister moral code of the chaudhary and khap now?