For the last couple of months, there has been a spate of news items about “honor killing” of women in India. Many of them are reported from the villages and small towns of Haryana and UP, where most times either the girl or the couple are killed because they marry outside their castes or sometimes within the same “gothras.”
Being brought up in large Indian cities and in a progressive, educated family, this kind of mentality and treatment of girls seems so illogical and alien to me. To me, we live in two different Indias — here, I talk solely from the point of view of rights of women. One India — which is relatively progressive. No one thinks of bumping of their daughters in the mother’s wombs or not giving education to their girl child, not allowing her the option to study or pursue her career or find a partner of her choice. And, then there is an India living in smaller towns and villages — where orthodox families commit female foeticide and these horrendous so-called honor killings. A woman is treated as a property of her male relatives, and how dare she go against their diktats? So, in many horrid cases, she is brutally hacked by her own father, brothers, or uncles. Some of the stories could really leave you cold by their sheer inhumanity.
What can one say of the people who can kill one of their own? It is unimaginable that a parent could ever take the life of his own child. Are these people human beings? I do not know. What is the answer to tackle this atrocity? Surely, a swift and befitting punishment and arrest of all culprits. Will that solve the problem of mindsets? I am not sure. Many of them come from families which are educated. But, their brutal customs seem ingrained in them. I can only hope that social change happens faster.
And, finally, I would have expected the young MP, Naveen Jindal, to have behaved a little more maturely. How could he praise the draconian “khap Panchayats” which regularly pass verdicts to kill innocent couples who marry within their gothras or a person of lower caste? He says, he will take their case to Delhi. Really, how low can the politicians descend for their vote banks! Shameful, if educated people do this.
Rachna says 
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