By Zohra Javed for TwoCircles.net,
Murderers have become bold. They are killing their own family members and loved ones in broad daylight, without any remorse and knowing fully well that no law or law-maker will dare touch them. The Khap Panchayats are in news yet again. And they are not the only ones we have to blame. Honour Killing is spreading fast. Killing is becoming so common in our civilised society, which is more often represented by a so called “urban India’, a “shining India” and such other fantastic and well-coined phrases.
Stop violence against women, says NISA on International Women’s Day 2010
And mind you we are said to be fortunate to be living in a democracy, which is being hailed far and wide. That is not all. The all-powerful USA is out to usher in democracy in every little nook-and-corner of the world through violent and bloody wars. And in our country, the largest democracy in the world, we hear of “honour killings” in addition to rape, murder, terrorist activity and so much violence under every possible pretext.
Is this the kind of world we have in mind when we talk of the future, when we plan to have children, when we talk of human rights?
Is this the kind of development and progress we think would take us forward?
Is it not time the youth get their freedom as a right, not as a favour…
What is still worse is when the community that they belong to seems to disown them, does not support them…treats them like outcast…and does not think twice before killing them???
Anyone in their right mind would feel very sorry for those young people who get a little ahead of society and find their own spouses…and then get badly beaten or lynched in the name of family ‘honour’…
Such cold-blooded killing is one of those unfortunate things that utterly crazy people undertake driven by fantastic ideas of honour and pride… but the problem is not just the Khap Panchayats…how many of us are ready for inter-cast/religion marriages?
Parents still take their duties of “finding-the-perfect-spouse-for-my-perfect-child”, very seriously. And many children still expect that to happen. To their minds, it’s just the way things happen, natural course of life.
At the tender age of eighteen we expect our children to be mature enough to choose their representative in the government, and also to choose their career, but at the age of twenty-five or more they cannot be trusted to choose their life partner… how much more idiotic can we possibly get…
There may be some young boys and girls who would prefer to go by what their parents decide. So be it. Let the parents do the “looking around” and take the decisions. But even then it should not be a blind-date kind of thing. Ample interaction and space must be allowed for the two people expected to enter the wedlock, to understand each other.
I strongly feel that marriages should be more out of love and understanding, rather than be associated with family honour and “national pride”…or some such stuff.
More and more people are trying to come out of the shackles and chains of dogmas and as someone said “change cometh, albeit slowly.”
Let us hope it will come sooner than we expect…
Parents always say that the happiness of their children is supreme for them and they can do anything for their children.
Hence it should only be a matter of time when the Ram Senes, Khap Panchyats or more such other outfits in the name of religion (all included) or family will become irrelevant.
Is this what makes the extremists and the dogmatic orthodox desperate as they see the winds of change unlocking their closed doors and disinfecting the termite-inflicted humanism? Do they see (and hence fear) the inevitable end to their tight hold over peoples’ conscience?