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  The Caste Councils

  Violence by the caste councils (called khap panchayats or katta panchayats) against inter-caste and same-gotra couples is probably the best-recognized form of organized violence against women’s autonomy. The khaps are known to order the murders of inter-caste (especially relationships in which a Dalit man marries a Jat woman) and same-gotra couples. In March 2018, a Supreme Court ruling holding khap interference in consensual marriages ‘absolutely illegal’, observed that the khap ‘behaves like a patriarchal monarch which treats the wives, sisters and daughters as subordinate, even servile or self-sacrificing, persons . . . having no individual autonomy, desire and identity’. The Supreme Court also noted that the perception of so-called ‘honour’ as defined by these caste panchayats was nothing but ‘a sense of masculine dominance’.1 The Supreme Court rejected arguments made by the Manushi Sangathan that attempted to clear the khap panchayats of the taint of honour crimes and killings. The judgment, however, is not an indictment of khap panchayats or of ‘honour killings’ alone, but of any curtailment of women’s autonomy and privacy by anyone, including, of course, family members: ‘[Any] kind of torture or torment or ill-treatment in the name of honour that tantamounts [sic] to atrophy of choice of an individual relating to love and marriage by any assembly, whatsoever nomenclature it assumes, is illegal and cannot be allowed a moment of existence.’

  The story of Manoj and Babli exposes any claims by organizations like the Manushi Sangathan that the khap panchayats are benign community councils that may oppose sagotra (same gotra) marriages but do not order, approve or propagate violence against such marriages.

  In April 2007, a young couple in Karora village, Kaithal, in Haryana, got married. Twenty-three-year-old Manoj and nineteen-year-old Babli had fallen in love. Knowing that Babli’s parents would object to the marriage because both were from the same gotra, they eloped. Babli’s family filed an FIR, accusing Manoj and his family of kidnapping Babli. Manoj and Babli appeared in Kaithal court and said that their relationship was consensual and that they were married. The court ordered the superintendent of police, Kaithal, ‘to ensure the safety of lives of Manoj and Babli’. Accompanied by five policemen, Manoj and Babli left Kaithal for Chandigarh. But the policemen abandoned them at Pipli (Kurukshetra). At least one of the policemen informed Babli’s family members exactly where to find the couple. Three men from their village stopped the bus they were in and forced the couple to deboard. They kidnapped the couple and took them away. Babli’s brother forced her to consume poison and watch her uncle strangle Manoj to death. The bodies of Manoj and Babli were thrown into a canal and found much later. When Manoj’s mother, Chanderpati, and his sister, Seema, pursued justice for the couple, they were first offered bribes to take back the case. When they refused, they received threats to themselves and their dependants. They, however, displayed great courage and refused to back down. The Banwala khap then imposed an economic and social boycott on them. Gangaraj, the leader of the Banwala khap and a prominent local leader of the Congress party, justified the boycott, saying, ‘The key reasons for the boycott are, firstly, we lost our girl, and the false charge filed against us and the girl’s family by the groom’s mother . . . Anyone who talks to them or trades anything with them will be fined Rs 25,000 and that person will be boycotted as well.’2

  The Banwala khap leaders organized a murder attempt on Seema too. The police continued to display its bias in favour of the accused Gangaraj. The Banwala khap also announced its intention to repeat the Manoj–Babli killing with another couple, Vedpal and Sonia, saying, ‘If disgraceful acts like these occur, then such incidents will obviously be repeated.’ Soon after, Vedpal was murdered.

  A sessions court convicted the accused in the Manoj–Babli case, offering some hope to those resisting the khaps in Haryana. The Punjab and Haryana High Court later acquitted the main accused, Gangaraj, and another convict, Satish, while commuting the death sentence that the sessions court had awarded to Babli’s brother and her uncles. Seema and Chanderpati continue to try to secure a conviction for Gangaraj in the Supreme Court.

  Babli, Manoj, Seema and Chanderpati refused to succumb to the threats, violence and boycotts imposed by the khaps. Babli and Manoj were killed for this, Seema survived murderous attacks and both Chanderpati, a widow, and Seema continue to fight and stand tall.3

  But for every Babli, every Seema, every Chanderpati, there are many women and girls whom the khaps succeed in intimidating and torturing into submission. Those are the stories we do not hear, because its survivors have been successfully muzzled.

  Political Appeasement of Khaps

  In India’s political discourse, the right wing has successfully associated the word ‘appeasement’ with any policies that recognize and seek to correct caste and religious inequalities and discrimination. When the oppressed or marginalized (the Dalits or Muslim minorities) make their presence felt in politics, they are labelled a ‘vote-bank’. But the political attempts to consolidate dominant castes and communities around the most regressive ideas and institutions are never called ‘appeasement’ or ‘vote-bank politics’.

  The support for khap panchayats across the political spectrum is one of the most glaring instances of appeasement of violent and regressive institutions. As we saw in the murders of Manoj, Babli and Vedpal, khap panchayats openly boast of their intention to kill couples who defy their diktats, carry out those killings, and then use social and economic boycotts to deter those who seek justice. These tactics are not limited to honour crimes. In 2010, two Dalits were burnt alive and the homes of eighteen Dalits burnt down in Mirchpur, Haryana.4 After the carnage, threats from the khap panchayats of dominant Jat communities forced 150 Dalit families to flee the village.5 As many as twelve khap panchayats held an eleven-day agitation against any move to arrest and prosecute those responsible for the Mirchpur carnage.6

  Yet, despite all the undeniable evidence of khap panchayats’ involvement in violence against women, couples and Dalits, there is considerable political support for them.

  The political defence of khaps takes two forms: one, to argue that khaps are basically benign community organizations doing valuable welfare and dispute-resolution work, with nothing to tie them to honour crimes; and two, to actively support the khaps’ regressive demands such as banning sagotra relationships and outlawing the right of daughters to inherit ancestral property.

  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manohar Lal Khattar (now Haryana’s chief minister) justified khap diktats against sagotra marriages, saying in October 2014, ‘Khaps maintain the tradition of a girl and boy being brother and sister. They are just making sure that a girl and boy do not see each other in the wrong way. These rulings help prevent rapes too.’7

  Just one year before Khattar’s statement, the then Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from the Congress party, said khap panchayats didn’t order ‘honour killings’, only girls’ parents did, advocating a change of mindset rather than action against the khaps. He also indicated that the khaps’ objection to sagotra marriages was justified, asking the reporter, ‘Tell me one thing: how many of you marry within the gotra. I am asking, do you marry within your gotras?’8 Hooda also compared khaps to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and resident welfare associations (RWAs).9

  Both the Texas-educated businessman and then Congress member of parliament (MP) Naveen Jindal, and the Indian National Lok Dal leader Om Prakash Chautala have supported the khap demand to ban sagotra marriages.10

  And it’s not only BJP and Congress leaders. Aam Aadmi Party convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, in his book Swaraj, makes the point that empowered gram sabhas need not turn into dictatorial khap panchayats. That point is fair enough—but he specifically expresses ambiguity on the khaps’ involvement in honour crimes, writing, ‘Whether khap panchayats had given such orders [to kill couples] or not is a debatable issue.’11 When we see khap leaders openly giving statements in newspapers and to TV channels t
hreatening sagotra couples with murder, is their role in such killings still ‘debatable’? Remember, Vedpal of Kaithal was killed after a leader of the Banwala khap openly said in a video-taped interview that he would be killed.

  A more sophisticated defence of khap panchayats has been offered by noted social scientist and leader of the Swaraj India party Yogendra Yadav. In a Facebook post on 31 January 2014 (he was at the time spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party), he wrote:

  Every community [caste, tribe, ethnic group] has its internal mechanisms for routine dispute resolution. Such communitarian systems are not only permissible but are healthy and indeed essential. Pushing any and every social dispute into courts of law is unhealthy, unaffordable and socially destructive. If this is what khap panchayats do and to the extent to which they do this, there is nothing wrong with khap panchayats or any other caste/community association. The trouble begins when this dispute resolution becomes coercive and violates the law of the land.12

  In an interview, he said, ‘[If] they [khaps] try to resolve disputes by listening to only one community or by coercion, then we as a party do not accept that . . . All castes and communities have social organizations for internal dispute-resolution but no coercion can be permitted. The law of the land is supreme and a murder is a murder.’13

  But Yadav’s argument is disingenuous and misleading. When a body is allowed to ‘represent’ a community, without taking special pains to overturn the caste, gender and other hierarchies that already exist within that community, it is bound to reflect and perpetuate those hierarchies. Moreover, khaps exercise power outside their communities too.

  Khaps seek to maintain the dominance of the Jats. They claim to speak for the ‘entire community’, but Dalits and women have no place within the khaps. Can institutions controlled by dominant-caste men be allowed the right to resolve ‘social disputes’ in a democracy, and can such a manner of dispute resolution be termed ‘healthy’ and ‘essential’? What kinds of ‘social disputes’ do khaps seek to ‘resolve’, after all? If there is a ‘dispute’ over Dalits’ occupancy of land, for instance, can a Jat-dominated khap have any right to ‘resolve’ such a dispute? Yadav says khaps should not resolve disputes by ‘listening to only one community’. But does that mean that Jat-dominated khaps can resolve disputes as long as they ‘listen’ to Dalits?

  Khap panchayats in Haryana command enough political clout to get laws passed by the assemblies in Punjab and Haryana against women’s right to inherit property (the laws were eventually denied presidential assent). What if there is a dispute between brothers and sisters over inheritance—can such openly patriarchal khaps be allowed to ‘resolve’ such a dispute?

  Can it really be acceptable for a khap to summon an intercaste or sagotra couple to its panchayat, to ‘hear’ its ‘opinion’ on a ‘dispute’ regarding their marriage? Can we really pretend that khaps do not command terror over such couples? Such couples cannot even count on the police to protect them, since the police, too, hold the khaps to be ‘healthier’ than the courts when it comes to ‘disputes’ over marriage, and consider it ‘socially disruptive’ for people to approach the courts to assert their rights as individuals. If khaps are allowed by the government to retain such unrestrained social power and legitimacy, is it not inevitable that the killings of couples and violence against Dalits will go on?

  In Haryana, it is only the Left and the women’s movement that have taken on the khap panchayats. The Janwadi Mahila Samiti (JMS), with Jagmati Sangwan as its leader, is known for its consistent struggle to support couples who defy the khaps, and bring perpetrators of honour crimes to justice. The JMS played a leading role in supporting Seema and Chanderpati in their struggle for justice for Manoj and Babli.14

  Khaps are often portrayed as medieval institutions, a ‘backward’ hangover that is out of place in ‘modern’ society. But the fact is that the power the khaps enjoy is kept in place and reproduced by economic and political structures that are all too modern.

  In the anti-rape movement in December 2012 in Delhi, women raised the slogan, ‘Khap se bhi azaadi, baap/bhai se bhi azaadi’ (freedom from khaps and freedom from fathers and brothers too). That slogan is rich in insight, reflecting a recognition that khaps are not just aberrant institutions found in Haryana or rural India. The women recognized ‘khaps’ all around them in various guises—in their own homes, their hostel administrations, their caste and community structures, their own parents and brothers—seeking to take away their freedom in the name of their safety. That slogan displayed an instinctive recognition of the fact that patriarchy doesn’t rest only in rapist strangers, but in structures of caste, class and community. By choosing ‘khap’ as the symbol for patriarchy, the slogan recognized that the same structures that oppress women oppress Dalits too. Men and women alike raised that slogan, recognizing that patriarchy, like khaps, seeks to discipline and control women’s sexuality by laying down moral diktats for women, and profiling, demonizing and even killing men of ‘other’ or ‘forbidden’ castes and communities. They recognized the ‘khap’ in the IPC Section 377 that profiled and criminalized gay and transgender people. The women recognized the khaps lurking in their discriminatory hostel curfews; and in their parents’ anxiety to get them married into the ‘right’ caste; in the daily, obsessive policing by their own loved ones, of their friendships, their movements, their sexuality, all in the name of their ‘safety’. So, they located the oppressiveness of ‘khaps’ in the normal and everyday patriarchal restrictions and codes—not simply in the shock of spectacular ‘honour killings’.

  When political parties support and perpetuate the power of the khaps, they are not only supporting the crimes committed by these specific institutions, but are also helping keep in place the entire web of patriarchal and caste power that strangulates the autonomy and dignity of women, Dalits and LGBTQ persons.

  ‘He Should Have Realized His Birth-based Limitations’

  In recent years, organized political violence against inter-caste marriages involving Dalit men has intensified in Tamil Nadu.

  Of course, the opposition to such marriages is nothing new in India, nor is violence against Dalit communities to avenge such marriages. In fact, violence against Dalit men and their communities on the pretext of avenging both ‘cow slaughter’ and ‘inter-caste marriage’ is what has provided the template for similar violence against Muslims and interfaith marriages involving Muslim men.

  The SARI (Social Attitudes Research for India) found in 2016 that 50 per cent of the non-Scheduled Caste respondents in Delhi and 70 per cent in Uttar Pradesh (UP) said that they would oppose a child or a close relative marrying a Dalit. It said:

  The survey asked respondents whether they thought there should be laws to stop marriages between upper castes and lower castes. About 40 per cent respondents in Delhi and more than 60 per cent in rural Uttar Pradesh said that such laws should exist! . . . In Delhi, about 25 per cent of highly educated people said there should be a law against such marriages; in Uttar Pradesh, it is about 45 per cent.15

  The essay ended with the question, ‘The government should be doing much more to promote inter-group marriages and to protect those who seek them . . . Will any political party have the courage to take up support for inter-caste marriages as an agenda item?’

  Unsurprisingly, most parties, barring the Left, lack this courage. And then there are parties that openly and aggressively mobilize against inter-caste marriages involving Dalit men. The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) of Tamil Nadu has, since 2012, sought to consolidate the intermediate Vanniyar caste (whose loyalties were scattered across various parties) and forge a broader ‘backward’ alliance, making inroads into the base of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) by mobilizing men of intermediary castes against marriages of Dalit men with women of their communities.

  In December 2012, PMK founder S. Ramadoss claimed that Dalit men ‘wear jeans, T-shirts and fancy sunglasses to lure
girls from other communities’.16 The PMK’s campaign began in October 2012 in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu when Ilavarasan, a young Dalit man, and Divya, a young woman from the Vanniyar caste, fell in love, eloped and got married.

  The story of Ilavarasan and Divya helps us clearly see the difference in impact between parental disapproval of inter-caste marriages and organized political mobilization against these marriages.

  In an interview, Ilavarasan said, ‘We thought they [Divya’s parents] would be angry initially but can be eventually reconciled. We simply did not expect these things to happen.’17 In fact, in a kangaroo court organized by the Vanniyars, Divya refused to return to her parents’ home and calmly stood by her marriage to Ilavarasan. What happened then was that the PMK cadre got into action to taunt Divya’s father. Instigated by them, he committed suicide (many have raised doubts about whether it was a suicide or a murder) and the PMK promptly used his suicide as a pretext to set three Dalit villages in Dharmapuri on fire. Divya was then separated from Ilavarasan. Eventually, she succumbed to the pressure exercised by the PMK on her mother and herself, and announced that she would not return to Ilavarasan, though she would always love him. Later, Ilavarasan’s body was found near a railway track and a CB–CID inquiry declared it to be a suicide, though Sampath Kumar, head of the forensic medicine department and vice-principal of the Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute in Chennai, who examined Ilavarasan’s body, said definitively that ‘even if we don’t have enough to prove that Ilavarasan was murdered, we have enough to show that he did not commit suicide’.18