A Taliban Of Our Very Own
Murder, rape and exile are routine punishments for these parallel Parliaments. NEHA DIXIT tracks Khap panchayats across north India. Photos by TARUN SEHRAWAT
JUST A few kilometres outside our capital, there exists a body that brazenly rejects our Constitution and our laws. It orders the assassination of couples who marry for love and snatches and sells the children of those who defy its rules. It has ordered the punitive gangrape and murder of mothers whose sons have eloped with anothers daughter. This body has even gone so far as to order that women should only give birth to sons. In yet another paradox in this land of paradoxes, our Prime Minister goes to the G8 Summit to lend his support towards fighting the Taliban, even as we refuse to acknowledge a Taliban huddling not in some foreign mountain redoubt but reigning rampant over millions of Indians just a short bus ride away from the halls of Parliament.
On July 23, the day our prime minister assured the G8 that India would fully cooperate towards ending oppression by the Taliban, a man was lynched on the orders of the Sarv Khap Panchayat in Haryanas Jind district because his bride was from the same gotra, a lineage assigned to a Hindu at birth. Some Hindus believe it is incestuous to marry within the gotra. According to various NGO and media reports, Khap panchayats have ordered the execution of at least four people every week for the last six months for marrying within the gotra. Doctrinally orthodox, yet radical in their rejection of the law, the Sarv Khap Panchayat is a cluster of several caste-based panchayats. Translated, it means the supreme Panchayat; and it behaves like a Parliament unto itself.
Khap panchayats have existed since 600 AD in India and have managed their affairs independent of the law of the land. Historically, they have had standing armies protecting the individual Khaps. A Khap is a unit of territory traditionally, 84 villages from the same caste. The Sarv Khap Panchayat has 300 subordinate Khaps, controlling roughly 25,000 villages in Haryana, Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Over the last five years, the Khap Panchayats have emerged as an extra-Constitutional body that has repeatedly issued extremely disturbing diktats. Khap Panchayats have been known to order killings, rapes, human trafficking, the seizure of the assets of their victims and arbitrary bans and restrictions based only on their whims and fancies. All this is done in the guise of maintaining the honour and pride of their community. In many cases, the local administration is all too ready to bow before the will of the Khap.
source: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp ... aliban.asp
Murder, rape and exile are routine punishments for these parallel Parliaments. NEHA DIXIT tracks Khap panchayats across north India. Photos by TARUN SEHRAWAT
JUST A few kilometres outside our capital, there exists a body that brazenly rejects our Constitution and our laws. It orders the assassination of couples who marry for love and snatches and sells the children of those who defy its rules. It has ordered the punitive gangrape and murder of mothers whose sons have eloped with anothers daughter. This body has even gone so far as to order that women should only give birth to sons. In yet another paradox in this land of paradoxes, our Prime Minister goes to the G8 Summit to lend his support towards fighting the Taliban, even as we refuse to acknowledge a Taliban huddling not in some foreign mountain redoubt but reigning rampant over millions of Indians just a short bus ride away from the halls of Parliament.
On July 23, the day our prime minister assured the G8 that India would fully cooperate towards ending oppression by the Taliban, a man was lynched on the orders of the Sarv Khap Panchayat in Haryanas Jind district because his bride was from the same gotra, a lineage assigned to a Hindu at birth. Some Hindus believe it is incestuous to marry within the gotra. According to various NGO and media reports, Khap panchayats have ordered the execution of at least four people every week for the last six months for marrying within the gotra. Doctrinally orthodox, yet radical in their rejection of the law, the Sarv Khap Panchayat is a cluster of several caste-based panchayats. Translated, it means the supreme Panchayat; and it behaves like a Parliament unto itself.
Khap panchayats have existed since 600 AD in India and have managed their affairs independent of the law of the land. Historically, they have had standing armies protecting the individual Khaps. A Khap is a unit of territory traditionally, 84 villages from the same caste. The Sarv Khap Panchayat has 300 subordinate Khaps, controlling roughly 25,000 villages in Haryana, Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Over the last five years, the Khap Panchayats have emerged as an extra-Constitutional body that has repeatedly issued extremely disturbing diktats. Khap Panchayats have been known to order killings, rapes, human trafficking, the seizure of the assets of their victims and arbitrary bans and restrictions based only on their whims and fancies. All this is done in the guise of maintaining the honour and pride of their community. In many cases, the local administration is all too ready to bow before the will of the Khap.
source: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp ... aliban.asp
