Honorably yours…
Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl fall in love. Family disagrees to the union and hence the couple elopes. Family decides to punish them.
With death.
You could copy paste the above template to most honor killings in our country. From 2017–2021 as per the Ministry of Home Affairs, there were around 200 such reported incidences in India. A tragic end to an otherwise perfect union. The reasons sighted are plenty but with the same undertone of bringing dishonor to the family. The individuals in question belong to different castes hence it would be considered blasphemous to marry them off or at other times, they belong to the same Gotra, hence in this case the union is considered incestuous.
However, in some parts of South India you have first cousins marrying each other and that is somehow socially acceptable. If you are totally flummoxed and confused by now, so am I. If you are trying to make some sense of the social protocol and draw a pattern, forget it. You can’t make sense of archaic senseless dogmas. There isn’t any structure or thought behind it. Only an age old custom followed religiously over the decades.
Caste is an important concept in India. Somehow you are placed on a certain social rung on account of your birth. The whole institution has definitely changed drastically over many decades, but in certain pockets the stigma remains. It was an unsaid dictum set in stone. If you are born lower, you die lower. And between birth and death, you serve the ones higher in the hierarchy and keep yourself inconspicuous. One would dare not leap over the hurdles of this societal norm then, lest they brought dishonor to the family.
Definitely, a distorted view of honor in my opinion.
When I recently read one of my fellow writer’s post about the tragic life of Rosemary Kennedy, I was appalled. Other than the nurse involved at the time of her birth being a total moron and a criminal and committing a certain top notch blunder, her own father had managed to sabotage her life and well being all because his daughter wasn’t as demure as the rest of his children. His way of setting the honor equation right was supposedly slicing up a part of her brain.
Take rape crimes for instance. Rape victims, rather survivors are required in many parts to remain mum about the crime in social circles as though it is a shame they have brought over themselves and their family. The perpetrator however goes around flexing his manliness. The recent incident where the accused in the Bilkis Bano gang rape were being celebrated and garlanded post their very short lived acquittal, had put every conscientious individual to shame. No, honor of a man/woman does not exactly dwell in the persons orifices :/
A medical student committed suicide in Kerala because her family couldn’t afford the dowry that the groom demanded. He went on to call off the alliance and then ridicule the girl in public. Instead of having him thrown behind bars, she thought it was apt to take her own life. The incident had supposedly brought her ‘dishonor’.
Where I studied for my undergrad, there would be at least one admission every surgical on call day of a severely burned victim. The reason would always be that it was accidental. But, we knew better. Dowry deaths and victims of domestic abuse are more commonplace here than you think. I know of people who would rather put up with an abusive marriage than walk out of it and pick up the pieces of their life. Divorces are still a taboo in many parts because of some kind of pseudohonor coming in the way of their freedom and peace of mind. I know of people who have put up with the abuse until their kids became victims of domestic violence. That being the final nail on the coffin, they finally decide to sever ties.
Take a social situation for example. Today people are always on the backfoot when it comes to expressing their feelings. As I mentioned to someone, it is considered cool to reject than be rejected. To cheat than be cheated on. To dump someone than get dumped by someone. If you are the twisted one in the partnership, you are considered to have the upper hand. It is considered to be shameful to get traded for someone so much so that it stops us from truly expressing ourselves. Not saying that there aren’t players out there, but that doesn’t exactly put your honor at stake. We have been conditioned in the wrong ways. What’s the worst that could happen?
I digressed. If you look up the world indices, honor killings are normalized in many cultures. South Asia and Middle East top the list. In many parts of Europe too, the quantum of punishment for honor crimes or crimes of passion as some of them call it is far lesser than that of what an other murder or manslaughter would warrant. With the influx of migrants, many societies are clueless as how to deal with the same.
In India, Khap Panchayats rather be called Crap Panchayats considering the amount of crappy verdicts they dole out every day. Some of them being pro honor killings. As someone once rightly said, the law enforcers too are part of the same society. You cannot expect them to imbibe wisdom overnight.
I still fail to see how a person’s distorted sense of honor triumphs over their love for their family, their kids and the many beautiful memories they made with them. How it triumphs over their love for mankind or their own conscience. I will never understand how they choose to shoot, burn or hack to death someone supposedly dishonorably theirs.
