By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Very much against the expectation Indian metros and their vicinity have much larger presence of myopic, narrow-minded and backward-looking men and women than the rural hinterland. We have large number of honour-killers living around cities like Delhi and Chandigarh.
They seem to be living in Stone Age ordering the lynching and burning alive of anyone who marries against the wish of their Khap Panchayats (Caste Councils). Not only that, they even order physical punishment to the father and gang-rape or naked-parade to the mother of the boy who dare to marry by breaking the caste-barriers.
In the same way there are hell lot of Sainiks living in and around our commercial capital Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur who think it is their birth right to attack, kill and maim any citizen of the country who does not sound ‘Maha-rashtrian’. They can go to terrorize those who have come from all over to make these cities.
Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat have their own quota of Rashtriyawadis who relish in massacring Muslims and parading their women-folk naked on the streets. As if that is not enough they get them videographed as it happened in Surat in the riots which rocked the city after the demolition of Babri Masjid. They are barbarians of great order who can even put to shame the ancient tribes of north Europe.
We have Senas of a different regiment wreaking havoc in the name of Ram in Bangalore and indulging in all sorts of nonsensical acts.
Mind it, if any metro lacks the presence of such human species be sure that it is not developing or is on the verge of declining.
There are deep sociological reasons behind the presence of such forces. Since the places where they are living have progressed because of their geographical advantage––close to capital or coastal belt etc––they have prospered by default. As the prices and rents of land, houses and other properties, are constantly going up many of the original inhabitants have little to bother about their livelihood. In contrast people, who have migrated and settled from other places have to slog, labour hard and assert for their existence. New to the place they do not have so much time and wherewithal to evoke ancient tradition and organize caste councils. It is not that they are totally devoid of old and outdated customs and rituals but there is certainly lack of such organized institutions like Khap Panchayats, which by its very name sounds rather nauseating.
The farming communities of West UP, Haryana and Punjab are the beneficiaries of such development. Geography has been generous to them. The entire belt of Haryana, West UP and Punjab have the advantage of very good fertile land––thanks to a chain of rivers and canals and good irrigation network.
Besides, being close to the national capital, Haryana and West UP in particular got the opportunity to get industrialized, which increased the value of land and property. The farmers of these states get cheap labourers from densely populated states like Bihar, West Bengal and East UP.
Since a sizeable section of such population remains stagnant as everything is available to them, it was natural for them to acquire a kind of complex. While the local people of Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, or even Bangalore, Surat, Ahmeadabad and Baroda etc were benefited by only industrialization those around Delhi and Chandigarh saw both Industrial and Green Revolutions. Much more than the local people, who possess land and property, it is the labourers from outside, who make all this possible. They just get some wage as well as humiliation for their work.
The situation is always ripe for the nefarious and negative tendencies to grow among these neo-rich local population. The advent of electronic gadgets such as mobile phones, TVs, internet brought a sort of modernity. In such a situation the number of cases of inter-caste, intra-village, intra-gotra marriages was bound to rise. But a large chunk of feudal-minded people are not prepared to tolerate such changes. So there is a vast difference in approach towards such marriages in Haryana, West UP belt in comparison to rest of India. While in rest of India such marriages are generally disapproved and even cases of individual violence are reported, in Haryana and West UP they have taken an organized form.
Here the whole society is mobilized to oppose it. Thousands gather in such panchayats to order ‘execution’ of young couples and banishment of their parents. From Om Prakash Chautala to Baba Ramdev all started demanding change in Hindu Marriage Act. These panchayats are not only opposed to intra-clan marriages but also inter-caste and intra-village ones.
But they are mostly targeting the lesser mortals. They do not have courage to pass diktats on––or punish––politicians, bureaucrats, academics, journalists etc who have broken even much difficult barrier––that is of religion––while marrying.
The tragedy is that when the backward journey to the Stone Age was going on in full pace the academic, the media and the corporate world were patting the people and the states for bringing about such fantastic growth rate. They have all praise for Chandigarh for having one of the highest per capita income in the country, but no word to say when reminded that it is the same place where 65 per cent respondents in a recent survey said that they are opposed to intra-gotra marriages.
While bride burning do not make news any more, even though on an average 25,000 such cases take place annually, the honour killings continue to go under-reported till it was too late. It is only in the recent months when such incidents crossed all the limits that the media started giving more space to these 21st century barbarism. In all these years our champion feminists were busy expressing concern over the women in burqa in Afghanistan or Belgium or debating any so-called fatwa.
They have every right to do so, but why are their voices so meek when panchayat, an institution for arbitration and amicable settlement have turned into kangaroo courts pronouncing extra-constitutional rulings?
No comments:
Post a Comment