Honour Killing still lurking in India and who knows till when!

It’s pretty hard to imagine that even though both the sex of the human race were created or born at the same time but you go to any corner of the world right now and announce that “I am here to talk about women empowerment or uplifting of women” you would perhaps become a recipient of accolades and medals. The question is why though? Why women empowerment still looms and not the other way around. What’s more harder is to imagine that in a country where women are worshipped in majority of the nation something horrendous and abhorrent honour killing could exist. The Human Rights Watch defines honour killings as the acts of vengeance, usually death, committed by family members against female family members, who are held to brought dishonour to the family. Women account for 93% percent of all victims of honour killings and average age is 23. Stats based on available worldwide data. So is it restricted to religion and the country? Let’s analyse both the facets.

Going by the history books honour killings have been known since ancient roman times when patriarchal rulers would kill their unmarried but sexually active daughters or adulterous wives. Even in early Europe honour based crimes were foreseen when Jewish law mandated death by stoning to partners. In the recent times the practice is most common in the north Africa, south asia and middle east, so clearly lt’s not about the nation what about religion? Let’s see.

Most of the honour killings of women occur in Muslim countries and communities and receive little and no punishment at all. Every year more than 1000 killings are reported in India and Pakistan. The number of cases of “honour” based violence, forced marriage reported to the police in the UK has increased by 53% since 2014. There have been more than 300 honour killing cases in India between 2015 to 2018. So where’s the problem and what’s causing them to be this horrifying result yielding. In both the major class of societies women are considered as the flag bearer of the family “honour” they are not considered as the human with their own will and choices to live a life.
In 2016, a 19 year girl dropped out of college and decided to marry her lover Ramesh(name changed) a few months later, Ramesh was brutally murdered in broad daylight by the attackers sent by the girl’s father as he thought she brought a disrepute to their caste. It’s quite disheartening to see where some people are heading. It’s not limited to caste only as in 2018, Kevin Joseph converted his religion just to marry a Christian girl he loved, the couple got married despite the opposition from the girl’s family and few days later Joseph's body was found at the nearby dam. This shows it’s not always the caste and the religion but it’s always about one sick mindset of the people involved who are blind enough to unsee the religious and caste slurs. The belief is such poor that women who becomes the victims of crimes like rape too are killed despite the already trauma they went through.

Laws and policies

The constitution of India has ample provisions allowing an individual to exercise his/her choice independent of caste, religion or gender and protection from honour related crimes including honour killings.

• Indian penal code(IPC) section 209 takes honour killings as the cases of homicide and murder crimes, while IPC 301 deals with homicide not culpable to murder.
• The family members or accused can also be treated under the section 302 of IPC for instigating the suicide.
• These killings violate the articles 14, 15(1)&(3), 17, 18, 19, and 21 of the constitution of india.
• Article 14 of the indian constitution guarantees to every person the right to equality before the law.
• It is only in 2014 that honour killings were included as the cause of murder in the already reason list of N.C.R.B.
• On international level too there are laws which governs the right of women across the world.

It’s very strange that even after the national and internationals laws against these activities the full stop is never coming really soon. Even though the laws are there but the implementation and adequate functionality is missing or maybe it’s not about the laws it’s the mindset or approach that needs to be changed through education and awareness. There have been demands in the recent past of making a separate law for honour crime as according to the demanders the police or current team treats this as just another crime of murder but it’s more than that and need a big time retrospection. Even the supreme court in 2006 ruled that inter-caste and inter-religious marriage are in favour of the country as they promote equality and unbiased judgmental perspective among the individuals of the nation.

It’s 2019 yet the honour killing is still lurking around us, it never actually disappeared at first place and who knows when and will ever be this curbed completely or not.

-Suraj Pandey