Honour Killing : Do we still live in Eighteenth Century

Author- Manoj Kumar
Well Friends found a good topic today to discuss.. generally people don't have so much of time to discuss things like this... because they read it very often in the newspapers or Television channels, it is not the only one case of its kind... I have been witness to such things very often on the news channels. This practice is more prevalent in North India... mostly in Western UP, Haryana and the adjacent states to them. Not just me but I think most of the people would not support this sort of ghastly act being done in the name of honour.

In fact the person who mailed me for my views today morning on this topic is worth praise for at least he is still sensitive to these issues. Friends, it's a fact that in this world South Asia is lagging far behind in terms of human development and among all these countries India is the worst positioned state except a few like Pakistan and Bangladesh. We are worst in moral values and responsibility toward the society and towards the nation as a whole though we always be proud of our moral values, our rich traditions and our patriotism and boast off ourselves as the best people of the world all the time and often so become a part of laughter and joke for the western world.

Well education makes people conscious, opens up their mind to think about this world and broaden our views on various issues but despite all the truth is that unfortunately the shackles of caste, religion and sects have not yet been broken and our thought is still primitive on many issues and can't be compared with that of the people in the developed countries. I know some of the people will still disagree with me what I said but I have tried to be unbiased.

Well I try to restrict myself to the main topic - how many of us are allowed to marry someone of our own choice? There may be hardly five percent of families in these states I mentioned where they can allow their children to marry according to their own choice... most of the marriages are fixed or rather I should say they are tied with a person to whom they never even knew before: two completely unknown persons are compelled to live together for the rest of their lives making it a complete gamble for both of them… and in most of the cases that remains a mere adjustment for both of them even after two or three children of theirs. Earlier it was fine and people were ready to give in to their fates and they did adjustments in their lives but probably hardly enjoyed their lives specially the marital life.

But today’s youth is not ready to accept such restrictions, when they can have the choice to eat something, choice to wear trendy cloths, choice to have trendy bike, choice to choose their careers then why restrictions on choosing their life partners? It took a long time or better-say generations to believe that they are not prisoners and they can do what they want to do in their lives and they should have the freedom to choose the partners of their choice for marriage. Even then still only few dare to go for this… some of them succeed, some just wish but could not act and some become victim like the journalist my friend mentioned who was killed by her family members just because she dared to marry a man of her own choice. Just 23 years old, a journalist who belonged to a very good family, her father is a Class I officer, two brothers- one Income Tax Officer and other Bank Officer. She was from a Brahmin family and resided at Delhi. She is dead just because she married a person who was not from her own caste and she dared to challenge the dictates of her family members. Imagine how cruel the people can be, those who hail from the so-called very well to do educated high-class civil society. We are fully aware of this fact that nothing much will happen after this… there would be some investigations, some demonstrations for two three days, media will use it like a hot masala for their ratings but ultimately after few days everybody will forget this issue… because we are habituated to this.

In brief for me the whole world is one. We are humans made by the mother nature and we divided ourselves in various groups as castes, religion, sects… which needs to be forgotten by us whole heartedly… keep the religion of humanity as the supreme and let us take our decisions ourselves and allow our children to take their decisions independently in such matters in future when our children reach that age. Let us be a guide to them and not the implementers. There is no quick fix solution to such problems; this takes ages to change the complete mindset of people in mass. And yes as far as possible we should come in support of the youths who take such decisions to go against their families’ wish and give them social and emotional security as far as possible so that such ghastly acts could be minimized and their families could think hundred times before going for such honour killings. Government and NGOs role is also very important in this… I am not going on to that but they can play a very important role but probably they would never like to do so specially the governments because they want to pocket their votes using divide and rule policy- the legacy given by the Britishers.

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मित्रों यदि मेरा यह पोस्ट आपके दिल को जरा भी छू कर गुजरा हो तो मुझे विश्वास है कि आप मेरे इस प्रयास को लाइक दे कर मुझे और भी अच्छा लिखने की प्रेरणा, स्नेह और आशीर्वाद देंगे। आप अगर मुझे मेरे फेसबुक प्रोफाइल पर फॉलो करते हैं तो आपको मेरे शेयर किये सारे पोस्ट्स आपके नोटिफिकेशन्स में मिलते रहेंगे।