Khap panchayats flex muscle as shifting social dynamics threaten their relevance

Now that the courts are cracking down on honour killings, the aggressive khap panchayats of Haryana are demanding a legal ban on marriages between those belonging to the same sub-caste. What drives this violent opposition to same-gotra marriages in Jat land?

If you are an eligible jat bachelor living in a Haryana village, landing a suitable bride could be a nightmarish experience. As traditions go, you could not marry another woman from the same village because some time in remote history her ancestors and yours may have been siblings. You cannot hunt for brides in villages that border yours or even distant ones where other clans living in your village have bhaichara. Break the rules and you are guilty of ‘incest’.

Add to that the skewed sex ratio of Haryana and you have a situation that sociologists call a male marriage squeeze: a severe shortage of eligible women. Hardly surprising then, says sociologist Ravinder Kaur, that a whopping 37 per cent of men in their prime remain bachelors in the state. Not just that, as her studies in rural districts of the state show, wives have to be imported into Haryana from as far off as Assam, West Bengal, and Kerala. In Hisar itself, 150 Haryana men have married impoverished Malayalee women.

And in the middle of this messy matrimonial crunch, youngsters were suddenly beginning to assert their right to find partners. Their concerns were more contemporary, not the impossible rules of bhaichara. There was only one way the patriarchs in a highly chauvinistic society could hit back: brute force.

“Those who were not fortunate enough to find good employment or the confidence to find their own partners became anxious about the pool of women they could marry shrinking further. So the older men and these frustrated young ones came together to make common cause,” says Kaur.

For as long as much of the jatland can remember the aggressive khap panchayats have been around, lording it over the villages, fixing disputes, sorting land issues, setting rules of social behaviour and caste interaction. They ruled with an iron hand and made sure no one violated the rules of exogamy. Those who did were quickly and ruthlessly killed, both husband and wife, sometimes with family members colluding. Or they were harassed into leaving the village, their lands confiscated. No one in the village dare oppose.

Today the khaps are not content to go let the ‘rules’ remain unwritten. The mahapanchayat of several khaps held at Kurukshetra and headed by jat honcho Mahendra Singh Tikait last week and demanded that the Hindu Marriage Act be amended to same-gotra marriages. The clan cliques asserted their right to hold kangaroo courts.

This flexing of muscles incidentally came after a court announced death sentence for the five killers of Manoj and Babli, a couple who defied khap rules. The mahapanchayat swore to defend those who carried out the summary executions.

“The introduction of democratically elected panchayats, the socio-economic changes brought about by the Green Revolution and the new economy have rendered these panchayats redundant. The younger generation has different concerns, education and employment, lifestyle for instance. The disaffected men of the khaps are trying to reassert themselves using the same gotra marriage issue,” reasons historian Prem Choudhary who has authored Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples.

The one issue that could mobilise a society that is strongly patriarchical of course is women and the control over their lives and sexuality. The buzz now, says Choudhary, is that the culture of the pure dehat is being ruined by westernisation, that the young men are anyway out of hand, so let us now make sure the women stay untainted by the perils of modernity.

Women, matrimony and kinship together make a strong cocktail of issues to appeal to a community that is very strongly moored to and proud of its caste identity. And now with rural demography changing where you had to first avoid two or three subcastes, youth ready for marriage have to avoid 20. The young are left feeling the pressured into eloping.

The khap concept of ‘incest’ is so tough to toe that it has become deeply intrusive. It seeks to interfere into the intimate space of the individual, seeking to control marriages.

“These khaps are extra constitutional bodies and they go against democracy by intruding into the private sphere of the individual. Not just that it is nullifying all the gains made by the feminist movement,” points out Ravinder Kaur.

The reason why this grouping has managed to hold sway without any hindrance from the establishment is that it enjoys tremendous clout as a vote bank. Besides it knows its power to cripple Delhi — the state is surrounded on three sides by Haryana and any effort to blockade the highways brings the capital to its knees. This is something that jat protests over various issues has often shown in the past.

Jagmati Sangwan a leftist activist who has been working extensively on these issues out of Rohtak believes that political parties lack the will to stem their growth. “The demand for protection from couples on the run has tripled in the recent times.

The police are part of the same thinking that sustains the khaps. The elected panchayats may not sign these fatwas but will support them,” she says.

The khaps basically represent the rich landowners and mostly exclude the women, the dalits and the other marginalised folk from their ambit. It valourises the culture of masculinity. One of the convoluted reasons trotted out recently by them for seeking a ban on same gotra marriages goes thus: if we knew that our daughters would never marry within the clan or village, we could never commit female foeticide. So amend the marriage act and stem the killing of female infants.

“They cannot handle the fact that women are today being educated and choose their partners. The fragmentation of the society has left them totally rudderless. The dalits refuse to be slapped around. Who else can they tyrannise?” asks Surindher Jodhka, professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University.