Chennai: The recent death of a 17-year-old Hindu girl in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu indicates that honor killing has become an under-reported social reality in the southern Indian state.
“The death of the Dalit youth Ilavarasan of Dharmapuri district, who married Divya, a Vanniyar girl, has emboldened casteist elements. Caste outfits masquerading as political parties are ready to go to any extent to break inter-caste marriages as they fear it will spell a death knell for casteism,” charges P. Sampath, president of the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front.
Divya’s parents had opposed her love affair with the Dalit youth.
Sampath alleged that Tamil Nadu has witnessed 98 honor killings in the past three years. However, most cases were covered up as suicides, thehindu.com reported.
In many parts of Tamil Nadu, inter-caste marriages, especially those involving a Dalit bride or groom, invariably spark trouble with members of the dominant Hindu community vetoing it. Activists blame political parties that seek to mobilize votes on the plank of casteism for perpetuating this social ill.
“Even if inter-caste marriages had the blessings of parents of the bride and groom, humiliations, social boycott and ostracism force them either to break the marriage or encourage them to eliminate the newly married in the name of honor killing,” he contends.
Caste pride and treating women as men’s possession are the prime factors behind such killings, say some activists. Often, these killings are committed because women are considered as preserver of the purity of progeny, a feudal concept. A ‘polluted’ progeny is unthinkable.
“Intermediate communities cannot stomach the idea of transferring their genes to other communities through their women. That is why they resort to violence when their women fall in love with Dalit men, but would not mind their men marrying a Dalit woman,” says Tamil writer Imayam.
Imayam’s acclaimed novella Pethavan captured how a father facing the threat of social boycott commits suicide after allowing his daughter to elope with her Dalit boy friend.
While Imayam feels that the Tamil society with very little tolerance was unlikely to change for better, Mr. Sampath was confident that enacting a separate law to deal with honor killing would end the social evil. “Existing laws including the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, have miserably failed in checkmating honor killings,” he points out.