A socio-legal reading of honour-based killings in India

So-called honour killings are still a reality in India. A stricter law is needed to curb such killings, so that the right to choose one's own partner, guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India, can be exercised without fear.

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THIS is a story from Madhya Pradesh.

In 2012, Rajkumar and Deepa fell in love with each other and decided to get married. Rajkumar was a Dalit while Deepa was a Thakur.

As the couple feared that their marriage may create conflict between their families and communities, they fled their home town and settled in Ludhiana.

Rajkumar took up the job of a mason, the couple birthed two children and were living happily.

However, the girl's family was not okay with this relationship. Even after several years had passed, they could not accept their love.

In a fake act to reestablish family bonds, men from Deepa's side started visiting the couple.

One fateful day, when Rajkumar was dropping off some visitors from Deepa's family, they stabbed him brutally and slit his throat on the way to the railway station.

Then they left him to die by the roadside.

Kaushalya and Shankar, both from Tamil Nadu, had a similar experience.

Kaushalya recalls a 'special day', when Shankar told her: "I like you a lot."

I said, "We can be friends but do not expect a love relationship from me."

He quietly said sorry and moved on. "I liked that about him," Kaushalya added.

After this day their love story took off with friendly conversation where they got to know more about each other. Very soon her mother came to know about their friendship. 

Kaushalya says, "Can you guess my mother's first question? 'What is Shankar's caste?'"

Kaushalya comes from an economically backward but sociopolitically dominant caste and Shankar was a Dalit man.

Despite opposition from Kaushalya's family the couple married in 2015. A year later, the girl's family attacked them in broad daylight.

Love, restrained

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly recognises that all human beings are born free and are equal in dignity and rights.

However, Indian society has a Brahmanical moral and social code that features a caste-based stratification which assigns inequal status to people on the basis of their caste and gender identity at birth.

Markers of identity are fixed, and if they are transcended, it upsets the social guidelines based on caste system within the Hindu society that has religious sanction as well.

This system helps to maintain caste relations in economic, social and moral terms.

Also read: SC issues notice on a petition challenging a Rajasthan HC Order refusing monitored inquiry into a possible case of 'honour' killing

As Gopal Guru, a public intellectual and scholar argues, "Everybody is so much arranged on this framework of hierarchy that Brahmanism has actually permeated, and has substantiated across castes, and it is not affecting people to an equal degree. It is affecting people to different degrees."

It is because of the intertwining of castes–gender norms that sexual and marital relationships have repercussions for social and property relations.

For this reason, women's sexuality and the identity of the father of her biological child becomes a matter of honour for the family as well as the entire caste community.

A publication by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, titled Gender Justice: Key to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, states that gender justice addresses ending inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, community, market and State.

India has made some progress in promoting gender equality, but there is still work to be done.

To conceptualise gender justice in a broader and nuanced context for the Indian social milieu, one has to look at it from within the framework of freedom to love or marry, scope of such freedom for the marginalised caste individuals, legal framework for crimes committed against such individuals for making such decisions.

A report titled Crimes in the Name of Honour: A National Shame examines the overarching principles of gender justice.

The report is the outcome of a collaboration between Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDNet) and National Council for Women Leaders (NCWL).

The report highlights cases related to honour-based crimes and interventions done by DRHRNet to provide families of victims of honour-based killings with justice and assist in maintaining a comprehensive legal framework.

The report also proposes a list of recommendations for prevention, protection, rehabilitation and redressal through legal and policy measures.

In the report by DHRDNet, qualitative and quantitative data was collected from eight states— Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

Accordingly, the report has come to a conclusion that crimes in the name of honour are committed specifically by parents and relatives belonging to the dominant caste.

The data covers 24 cases within a time range of 2012–21.

Targeted in the name of revenge and 'honour'

In Kodungallur Film Society versus Union of India ( 2018), the Supreme Court observed that honour killings are a work of mob violence where entire communities can be involved in honour-based crime.

To understand this, one has to understand the notion of honour and its relationship to caste-based communities of India.

Talking in respect of caste-based order, some castes believe that they hold greater 'honour' than the other(s). 

Also read: Bail granted to "honour" killing accused cancelled by SC

Gopal Guru notes, honour is not the same as self respect. In cases of violence done by a dominant caste on a marginalised caste, the dominant caste seeks moral compensation in humiliation of the other group. They restore their 'honour' by attacking the self respect of the former.

In the mind of 'guardians' of the dominant caste, honour of the family and the community are intertwined. The sexuality of dominant caste women is seen to be threatened by the desires and love of marginalised caste men in a heterosexual setup.

Punishment is meted out to marginalised caste men transgressing the boundaries of love and in many cases their families are also subjected to punishments.

The DHRDNet report mentions one such case in Haryana where the whole family of a marginalised caste partner in a relationship was wiped out.

In Madhya Pradesh, in 2017, the father of a Dalit man on his way to the market was attacked by the girl's family. His attackers left him bleeding on the road.

The alterations that a marginalised caste person's desire could bring to the Brahmanical order is viewed as a threat by those at the 'top' of the hierarchy.

It is due to the asymmetric power relationship between the caste groups that when the couple make a conscious decision to break the caste barriers and exercise their choice and agency, they have to face the consequences.

The DHRDNet report records 17 Scheduled Caste (SC) men, one SC woman, three Other Backward Class or Most Backward Class (MBC) women, one MBC man and one Denotified Tribes woman as victims or survivors.

Twenty male victims had either been killed or received serious injuries at the hands of the partner's family.

In many cases where a couple had eloped to save themselves from the dominant partner's family, the women of the marginalised caste partner's family had to face revengeful violence.

It is important to note that 14 men and 10 women who were the victims or survivors were educated to graduation and above.

"One couple in Tamil Nadu met while studying physiotherapy and were qualified [physiotherapists] when they married," the report states.

Manjula Pradeep, a human rights activist, DHRDNet campaign manager and national convenor of NCWL told The Leaflet, "A majority of the time the police have a negative bias towards SC individuals."

A similar example of 'epistemic injustice' is narrated by Nikita Sonavane, a Dalit feminist and lawyer in Anurag Minus Verma's podcast.

Sonavane mentions cases where police function with a negative bias towards SC groups, tagging them as 'habitual offenders' and how that affects their lives.

"This behaviour of the police underlines the prevalent epistemic injustice, testimony of a person from a marginalised group bearing less credibility," she added.

For this reason, honour-based crimes must be looked at from the angle of how power plays out in a relationship which involves different groups in the society.

Most often the victims from marginalised communities are from lower income groups.

Manjula Pradeep underlines that ideally it should be the duty of the police to inform the victims about their rights.

The victims do not necessarily have the knowledge and awareness about the law, such as immediate registering of a first information report (FIR) or anticipatory bail provisions.

In such situations, the role of police in ensuring justice to marginalised caste victims becomes very crucial.

Also read: 'Possible threat of honour killing', Allahabad HC orders immediate removal of girl from the custody of her parents

"Since these killings are committed with involvement of the family, many times they go unreported. It is commonly understood as a 'family matter'. Very few FIRs are registered in cases of honour-based crimes," Nazma, sub-inspector in Delhi Police told The Leaflet.

Centre for Law Policy and Research has drafted The Freedom of Marriage and Association and Prohibition of Crimes in the Name of 'Honour' Bill, 2022: A Draft.

Chapter 5 of this Bill makes it a duty of the State to make arrangements for the protection of the victims, their dependents and witnesses, in order to safeguard them from violence or threats of violence given by the family or community of the other partner.

In reference to the Dalit-queer perspective, anthropology research scholar at Cornell University Akhil Kang writes, "As the surveillance around the Dalit body and restricting Dalit love and mobility has been so heavily guarded by caste supremacy, it becomes equally crucial to pivot discussions about inter-caste relationships to questions of desire and intimacies."

Akhil Kang argues that dominant caste narrative and scholarship on inter-caste love results in erasing the 'Dalit lover'. Kang's position is important to understand in order to lead the discourse of violence against the Dalit individuals in inter-caste love.

Kang's position proposes an important intervention in the gender justice struggle in India with his reading of sexuality, desires and safety of the Dalit individuals in an inter-caste love.

Commenting on this position and importance of such research scholarships Manjula Pradeep said, "Majority of times, the Dalit woman is rejected by their non-Dalit lover, as chances of her getting accepted by the family of her non-Dalit partner is low. 

"The families of a non-Dalit person who falls in love with a Dalit man or woman are not able to accept that a Dalit person is trying to step out of his or her caste boundaries.

"In cases where a Dalit man falls in love with a non-Dalit person, his identity comes in the way of honour."

Pradeep adds, "We see that demands for same-sex marriage is appealed for in the court, however, in my personal experience I have observed very few or rare cases where a non-Dalit trans or queer person falls in love with the person outside there caste boundaries and stands up against their families for the rights of their partner.

"She adds that the honour killing of Shankar and his partner Kaushalya in Tamil Nadu came after the woman strongly stood and struggled against her own family, however, cases like these are very rare."

Need for a separate law on honour-based crimes

The United Nations General Assembly resolutions made in the year 2003 and in 2005 called on member states to take actions to eliminate honour-based violence.

In 2012, the Law Commission released its Report No. 242 titled Prevention of Interference with the freedom of Matrimonial Alliances (in the name of Honour and Tradition): A suggested Legal Framework.

The report suggested a legal framework to curb the social evil of caste councils and panchayats interfering with and endangering the life and liberty of young people marrying partners belonging to the same gotra or a different caste or religion.

The DHRDNet report points out the worrisome attitude of the 2012 Law Commission report towards honour killings.

The Law Commission report blames the changing cultural and economic status of  women and asserts that it is the acts of women going against male-dominated culture that is one of the causes of honour crimes.

Also read: Father of the victim of honour killing pleads for life imprisonment rather than death sentence for the convicts

As pointed out by DHRDNet, this position assumes honour killings as less serious than other murders because they arise from long-standing cultural traditions.

Secondly it takes us back to the argument made by Akhil Kang by neglecting the interplay of caste and gender within a single spatiotemporal frame.

In 2015, while answering questions raised by member of Parliament Mahesh Giri  on honour killings,  Nityanand Rai, minister of state of home affairs, stated that no survey has been conducted on honour killings.

In 2019, the Rajasthan assembly passed the Rajasthan Prohibition of Interference with the Freedom of Matrimonial Alliances in the Name of Honour and Tradition Bill, 2019, which, though limited in its scope, was an attempt by the state government to address crimes based on honour.

The DHRDNet report comments on the status of this Bill— it has not become an Act yet. Crimes of honour still fall under existing provisions of Sections 300 and 302 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Scheduled Castes And the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

Manjula Pradeep explains that killings done in the name of honour cannot be put under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, "There are cases of interfaith marriage and same sex marriage and inter-caste marriages and marriages that challenge any kind of social status quo, all the mentioned cases must be put under framework of one legal arch.

"For example, there exists no law to protect a consenting Hindu person and a Muslim person who decide to marry each other."

Sub-inspector in Delhi police Nazma told The Leaflet, "If you look at Delhi, most crimes of honour killings happen in the border areas, like Narula."

Talking about the investigation process, Nazma  adds, "Honour-based killings are investigated from a murder investigation angle under IPC 302. It is not viewed from the perspective needed to look at honour-based killings. Therefore, separate law for honour-based crimes is important."

Talking about the Prevention of Atrocities Act, Nazma states, "In order to ensure no misuse, it is compulsory for the victim to produce a valid caste certificate and other than blood relatives two more witnesses are needed to confirm the charges.

"The proof of burden lies on the victim. For honour-based crimes taking this procedural route is very discouraging and exhaustive for the victim's family, partner or the well wishers."

The DHRDNet report states that, "Since the crimes in the name of honour are committed specifically by parents and relatives belonging to dominant castes, there are specificities that need to be addressed by the law.

"These crimes cannot be treated as murders or attempt to murder as the impact is on entire communities and families."

While speaking to The Leaflet,  sub-inspector Nazma agrees that there is a need for a separate law to address honour-based crimes.