Posted on 05/16/2008 1:28:55 PM PDT by Antioch
Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel.
They punched and kicked her stomach as she called out for her sleeping boyfriend "Jassa", 22-year-old Jasbir Singh, witnesses said. When he woke, both were dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled.
Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita's father's house for all to see, a sign that the family's "honor" had been restored by her cold-blooded murder.
A week later, the village of Balla, just a couple of hours drive from India's capital New Delhi, stands united behind the act, proud, defiant almost to a man.
Among the Jat caste of the conservative northern state of Haryana, it is taboo for a man and woman of the same village to marry. Although the couple were not related, they were seen in this deeply traditional society as brother and sister.
"From society's point of view, this is a very good thing," said 62-year-old farmer Balwan Arya, sitting smoking a hookah in the shade of a tree in a square with other elders from the village council or panchayat. "We have removed the blot."
Growing economic opportunities for young people and lower castes in Haryana have made "love marriages" more common, experts say, and the violent repression of them has risen in tandem as upper caste Jat men fight to hold on to power, status and property.
Sunita's father Om Prakash has confessed to murdering his pregnant daughter and her boyfriend, police told Reuters. An uncle and two cousins were among four others arrested.
But in Balla many people believe the father confessed merely to underline that he supported his daughter's killing, to satisfy honor and protect the real culprits among his family or village.
At their house, Sunita's mother did not emerge to talk. Instead, a young man on a motorbike tried to intimidate the Reuters team into leaving. It turned out he was another of Sunita's cousins, his father and brother held by police.
"We are not ashamed of it, absolutely not, we have the honor of doing the village proud," he said.
"We would not have had a face to show if we had not done this. It was the act of 'real men'."
THE POWER OF UPPER CASTE MEN
The relatively prosperous northern state of Haryana is one of India's most conservative when it comes to caste, marriage and the role of women. Deeply patriarchal, caste purity is paramount and marriages are arranged to sustain the status quo.
Men and women are still murdered across the villages of northern India for daring to marry outside their caste, but in Haryana the practice is widespread, and widely supported.
Here, women veil their faces with scarves in public. The illegal abortion of female fetuses is common, the ratio of women to men in Haryana just 861 to 1,000, the lowest in the country.
Anyone who transgresses social codes, by marrying across caste boundaries or within the same village, is liable to meet the same fate as Sunita and Jasbir.
Many such murders are never reported, hardly any result in prosecution, says Professor Javeed Alam, chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
"People from the same village are treated as siblings in Haryana," he said. "So this is treated as incest."
Without any law to prohibit this kind of marriage, "the only way you can punish it is by taking the law into your own hands. People believe people who commit incest should be killed".
Nor do politicians ever renounce the practice, Alam added, because if they did, "they would not win elections".
And the legalization of property rights for women in 1956 made love marriages within a village even more dangerous for this elite, as daughters living close to home could in theory claim a part of the family land, sociologist Prem Chowdhry says.
CHILDHOOD SWEETHEARTS
Sunita and Jasbir, sweethearts in the same class at school, had little chance. When he left school a couple of years before her to become an photographer's apprentice, he would often hang around at the school gates to collect her.
She was married off to another man, but left her husband to elope with Jasbir a year-and-a-half ago, and while the families tried to keep them apart, they realized it was a losing battle.
"They were madly in love even to the last day," said Jasbir's 16-year-old sister-in-law Lalita in the house where they lived in Machhroli village, around 35 km (20 miles) by road from Balla.
To make matters worse, Jasbir was from a lower sub-caste, and she was pregnant outside marriage. Sunita's parents in Balla found themselves virtually ostracized.
"Nobody would drink water in our house," Sunita's mother Roshni is reported to have said. "My daughter's action made us aliens in our own land. But we have managed to redeem our honor. She paid for her ill-gotten action."
But among Jasbir's family, split between Machhroli and Balla, grief is mixed with fear.
"Why are you talking to the media?" shouted a female family member at one point. "This will only bring more trouble."
At the small police post in Balla, a constable admitted the case was unlikely to ever reach prosecution, with the village putting enormous pressure on the police, and especially Jasbir's family, to quietly drop the case.
"We are being pressurized into reaching an agreement, a compromise, without even being given time to grieve," said Jasbir's 25-year-old sister Neelam. "We have been told that if we don't compromise, we will suffer the same fate."
In the narrow alleyway outside their tiny house, women wailed in grief. A few hundred yards away, the panchayat sat in quiet self-satisfaction.
"The people who have done this should get an award for it," said 48-year-old Satvir Singh. "This was a murder of morality."
Another reason to thank God I live in the US of A.
From “Haryana Travel Guide” at http://www.indiasite.com/haryana/religion.html
Religion & Culture
The People
Haryanavi People Haryana constitues about 2% of the total population of India. A major part of its people live in rural areas and are Hindus.
The Jats are the largest segment of the poulation and are concentrated in Rohtak, Bhiwani, Hisar, Karnal, Gurgaon and nearby areas.
The Ahirs, Rajputs, Gujjars, Bania, Khatris and Sikhs make up for the rest.
The Scheduled Castes are rare, while the artisan castes such as Sunars (goldsmiths), Lohars (blacksmiths), Telis (oil traders) Nais (barbers) and dhobis (launderers) are found throughout the state and especially in villages.
The Schedules castes, normally looked down by the higher castes like the Brahmins and the Rajputs, but in recent times they have been able to progress through reservation in jobs although the basic occupation is agriculture.
Religion
The majority of people in Haryana follow Hinduism and observe traditional Hindu beliefs. The main gods worshipped are Shiva, Vishnu, Rama, Krishna, Hanuman and Kali, apart from others.
Most of the temples are built for Vishnu and Shiva, with the former being more popular as Rama and Narayan.
Muslims make up about 5% of the total population. Although Islam does not preach casteism, there are three categories of Muslims in Haryana. The Asharf or Sharaf (noble) form the higher caste, and the Ajlaf (base or mean) is the middle with Arzal (lowest of all) coming at the end. There are Muslim Rajputs as well as converted Muslims. Christians, Jains and Buddhists are few and scattered across the state, while Sikhs are in large numbers in central and west Haryana.
¤ Rituals
Rituals abound in India, and consequently in Haryana. Simply because without rituals Hinduism would be a damp squib. Marriages, deaths, births, anything and everything – they’re all subjected to a thousand rituals.
¤ Languages
With Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu forming the main languages, there are numerous dialects which are spoken throughout the length and breadth of Haryana.
However, almost all of them have their base in Hindi with a smattering of Urdu and Punjabi thrown in for good measure. In towns and cities, English is still to be adopted as the household lingo, but is spoken in a hazy mixture of Hindi.
The most striking feature of Haryana is its language itself; or rather, the manner in which it is spoken. Popularly known as Haryanavi (also known as Bangru or Jutu).
Trying to speak Haryanavi can be fairly simple for those who speaks Hindi.
¤ Festivals & Fairs
Aah, talk about holidays (or festivals, as they are known in India). In India it seems festivals were invented so that people could stop working. Haryana follows the same principle.
There are the standard Indian festivals like Holi, Diwali, Id, Muharram, Baisakhi – and there is plenty of time left to arrange for fairs and all sorts of events.
Most well attended are the ones which revolve around cattle, or the cattle fairs. Everyone in rural Haryana seems to love cattle, and urban Haryana hates it, especially on their roads. Anyway, cattle fairs are the happening thing here, and if you’re anybody or nobody, you’ve just got to go to one. Remember to take along a nicely cologned handkerchief.
There’s entertainment for women and children too – they can take a ride in a huge circular contraption which goes around in circles with creaking protests. Or they can buy wooden things which only they can put to good use.
¤ The Suraj Kund Crafts Mela
This is one of the best in Haryana if you’re looking for local goodies, ranging from pottery to weaves to stone and wood work.
The standard is rather good, and if you’re here in early February (when the mela happens), you must buy.
The prices are relatively low compared to emporia, and some of the stuff can be amazing. The mela offers a huge variety and additional knowhow can be elicited from the real makers of the goodies instead of bored shopkeepers. Oh yes, the venue is Suraj Kund.
I’m not certain, but I’m leaning toward Hindu based on the “Jat caste” reference.
Interestingly, the caste system is actually still present among many Sikhs and Muslims of the region, tacitly at least. In Pakistan there is a lot of this in the villages, where high-caste families lord it over the low.
Real men kick pregnant women in the stomach and then strangle them to death?
The thing that boils my blood is that we all know that these people use their "religion" as the reason for committing murder.
The thing that REALLY angers me is the fact that Reuters makes no mention of their RELIGION being the primary motivator in the murder. Reuters only makes note of religion when it is connected to crimes committed by Judeo-Christian western folks.
Otherwise, it ain't gonna make the headlines because the b@st@rds at Reuters will forever run cover for Islamic terrorists and folks who are a cut from the same disgusting cloth.
Reuters is Josef Goebbels' dream come true.
Bet they would not take to kindly to a homosexual marriage.
“Then they reported to their jobs as Dell tech support specialists.”
That does it! I know that all cultures are of equal value but this is just about the limit that I can take. No more Dell products for me.
Celebrate Diversity!
Muslim!
The young man's name, "Singh," leads me to believe that he, at least, was Sikh rather than Hindu.
There is an old Thai saying (Buddhist people's - not religious saying), "If you see a snake and an 'Indian Hindu' quickly kill the Indian." Not very PC but aimed at the arrogance of the caste system.
Jats were originally an ethnic designation, they are a culturally distinct bunch, with somewhat different customs than other Indians, but interestingly they don’t seem to have a distinct language.
There are Hindu, Sikh and Muslim Jats.
“Singh” is not necessarily a Sikh name. There are Hindu Singh’s.
Hookah’s are common across Asia, and are not specific to Muslims.
no the names sound both Hindu and Sikh
LOL
In this case, and for most of them in fact, it is not religion that justifies the killing, but custom.
The driver is not some version of Leviticus that requires a rigid response to a specific sin, but social status and personal values independent of religion. The key to this one is the shame and ostracism of the girls family.
There is nothing in any variety of Hindu belief as such, that I know of, that calls for such murders. There is nothing in some holy book that requires it.
Now, the customs and the religion often get conflated as the whole thing comes as a package with a given culture (and a certain culture may be carried by a religion, as very strict Muslims impose medieval Arab culture as part of the religious package, in the form of the Sunnah), but there certainly are cultures where a given religion comes with a very different set of customs.
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