Murder in honour’s name

The rate at which murders and suicides, particularly of and by the young, are taking place across the country, goes to show that the worth of human life is shrinking rapidly. For a while I thought “honour killing” of a woman who dared to defy her family and marry the man of her choice, was prevalent only in Pakistan, where in Sindh it goes by the name of karo-kiri . It now seems we Indians are not far behind in this barbarous practice.

I remember landing in Lahore one morning in 1999, to find screaming headlines in all Pakistani newspapers of the brutal murder of a young woman by her own family, and that too in the office of the eminent feminist and human rights lawyers Asma Jehangir and Hina Gillani.

Samia Sarwar, a young woman, had come to the law firm to seek a divorce from her cousin, as she wanted to marry another man.

Not able to withstand this “shame”, her family arranged her murder, and for quite a while the police was reluctant to make arrests because Samia’s family had powerful political connections. Next year, the BBC award-winning documentary License to Kill covered this killing.

In the tribal regions of Pakistan, honour killings continue unabated, and we seem to be in a hurry to catch up. Last week, Tamil Nadu saw the gruesome hacking to death of Shankar, a Dalit, who had dared to marry an upper caste girl Kausalya.

The two were college mates, had fallen in love and got married despite Kausalya’s family’s protests. The couple was attacked by a group of unidentified men armed with hatchets and sickles and they hacked the man to death, and injured his wife grievously.

He was only 22; while he died on the way to hospital, she was admitted in an ICU. She has blamed her family for her husband’s murder and sought the arrest of her parents, specially her mother. .

But the tragedy is that in our caste-dominated political set up, including in Tamil Nadu, condemnation of such heinous crimes is mostly conspicuous by its absence, even though this time some politicians have termed it a “barbaric act”. But there is no political outrage.

Apparently, there have been 80 such “honour killings”, mostly of young women, including pressure by family resulting in suicide, in the last three years alone in the State.

On March 14, a man claiming to be a lawyer put up a Facebook post urging people accused of “honour killings” to come to him. “Don’t worry if you have committed an honour killing. Come to me and I will take up your case and see that you are saved. There is no crime called honour killing.”

A Chennai-based woman advocate was quick to share it, tagging the police commissioner. No prizes for guessing that two days later, the post was deleted and the account disappeared.

While on the one hand infuriated families have no value for their children who marry “below” their caste, on the other, disappointment in love or lovers’ tiffs are another atrocious cause for youngsters, mainly women, ending their lives. The suicide of Telugu TV anchor K Nirosha was reported a few days after Shankar’s murder. She ended her life by hanging herself in her hostel in Hyderabad. Police is investigating if a tiff with her Canada-based fiancé trigged such an unfortunate act.

On March 6, another young woman, 34-year-old Malleshwari, an IT employee in Hyderabad, ended her life by hanging herself. Her parents have alleged that this was due to harassment from her husband. She leaves behind a five-year-old daughter. There are other reports of women jumping in front of trains, swallowing sleeping pills, and so on… these leave you wondering at the frustrations and other causes that trigger such acts.

And, then of course, there are those who are done to death because they offend the perpetrators by what they eat. The Dadri lynching of a man who was suspected to have some beef in his fridge, which later turned out to be mutton, is only too well known.

But so blood thirsty have we become that this much shedding of blood is not enough for us. So now we’ve had two more cattle traders — trading in buffaloes — murdered… actually lynched. Mohammed Majloom (in Urdu Majloom means victim, helpless) and Inayatulah Khan, only 12, were first beaten and then hung from a tree. Five people have been arrested, one of them associated with the local gaurakshasamiti (cow protection brigade or vigilantes). Two more wanted by the police are missing.

Following the hysteria in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I remember a Time magazine commentator ruing an era “where women have to hide lipsticks in their bras”. Welcome to an era where the microscope is turned on those who either eat or market beef.

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