http://www.freeindiamedia.com/women/18_oct_04_women.htm
Community condones 'honour killing' of
Rajasthan teenager
The evils of caste prejudice and the
treatment of women as mere keepers of the family honour surface once
again in
rural Rajasthan, where a young upper caste girl who dared marry a dalit
man was
killed by her own family
On September 22,
members of the Gujjar community in Rajasthan’s Dausa district called a
‘maha
panchayat’ (special meeting of caste elders) to protest the arrest of
the
killers of a young Gujjar girl who had been murdered, allegedly, to
protect her
family’s ‘honour’.
Fifteen-year-old
Neelam’s father, uncle and grandfather are alleged to have murdered the
teenager to avenge the slight to their honour by the girl’s elopement
with a
dalit (lower caste) boy.
The Gujjars belong
to the category ‘other backward castes’ (OBC), which is higher in the
country’s
caste hierarchy than the Bairwa caste to which her dalit husband
belonged.
Although members of
Neelam’s family reportedly confessed, during police interrogation, that
it had
been an ‘honour killing’, the community panchayat says they will launch
an
agitation against the arrests. Indeed, in the teenager’s
“This panchayat has
been called because the FIR (first information report) was filed under
pressure. Without concrete proof two innocent people have been arrested
and
women’s organisations are behind it,” says Gajendra Singh Khatana,
convenor of
the Gujjar panchayat.
Meanwhile, women’s
organisations in the state blame the government for allowing the crime
to be
politicised along caste lines. And, while no political party has taken
an
official stand on the issue, many prominent politicians, including
members of
the state legislature, are known to have attended the caste panchayat
meeting.
“We have seen it
earlier in Rajasthan. We have seen it on the sati matter, in the Roop
Kanwar
case, in the Bhanwari Devi case, and we have seen it even otherwise
where caste
panchayats are used against women to put pressure on the government,”
says
Kavita Srivastava, a women’s rights activist.
A week after the
incident, women’s groups met Rajasthan’s chief minister Vasundhara Raje
to urge
government action against the killers. Representatives from the
People’s Union
for Civil Liberties, the National Federation of Indian Women, Vishaka,
Women’s
Education and Resource Group, Vividha, Women’s Documentation and
Resource
Centre and the Rajasthan University Women’s Association, among others,
were
taken aback to find that Raje had not even been properly briefed about
the
incident.
Meanwhile, the case
has heightened caste tensions in Shahadpur, with dalits fearing
reprisals from
the Gujjars fleeing their homes despite the strong police presence in
the
village. “When those two ran away there was a great sense of fear among
us. Now
that the girl is dead we are even more afraid,” says Gulab Bairwa.
Source: NDTV, October 3,
The
Hindu, September 28, 2004