http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/keeping-caste-system-intact-1.649296
Keeping caste system intact
A visit through parts of Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh may tell
you that Khaps are most cruel when a boy from a lower caste or poor
family happens to fall for a girl from an upper caste or affluent
family as such alliances threaten to dissolve the prevalent caste and
social system.
By Narendra Kaushik, Correspondent Published: 00:00 July 3, 2010
Villagers after attending a panchayat, or village council meeting, at
Balla in Haryana. Growing economic opportunities have made 'love
marriages' more common. Image Credit: Reuters New Delhi: The Khap
panchayats are not just about medieval practices of the clans. They
are as much an attempt to perpetuate caste hierarchies, oppression of
the poor and disadvantaged and gender discrimination.
A visit through parts of Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh may tell
you that Khaps are most cruel when a boy from a lower caste or poor
family happens to fall for a girl from an upper caste or affluent
family as such alliances threaten to dissolve the prevalent caste and
social system.
There are villages where the panchayats have applied different
yardsticks for identical cases. In Sasrauli, a village in Jhajjar
district of Haryana State, the panchayat banished a blacksmith family
when its ward Sunil eloped with Santosh, daughter of Gonsais, an upper
caste in 2004. But it turned mute spectator to a similar match when a
Brahmin (high caste) boy Naresh married Mukesh, a backward caste
within the same village. Naresh belongs to an influential and educated
family. Similarly in Kamashpur, a scheduled caste man Om Parkash was
beaten up when he fell in love with a Punjabi girl from Sonepat even
as at least a couple of Brahmin boys in his neighbourhood are married
to the Punjabi girls.
Jagmati Sangwan, president of All India Democratic Women's Association
(AIDWA) in Haryana, agrees that opposition of khap panchayats to inter
caste marriages and honour killings are an attempt to keep the lower
castes and the deprived at the lowest rung of society and denying
freedom to women.
"The panchayats want to keep the caste system intact. The inter-caste
marriages particularly the ones involving a boy from a lower caste and
girl from a higher caste, will lead to an egalitarian structure which
is not acceptable to the upper castes," she argues. "Otherwise why is
there no opposition to matches where the boy is from a high caste and
the girl from a low caste?"
Sangwan also sees property rights to girls as behind the hullaballoo:
"If an upper caste girl marries a lower caste, she may demand her
share of land from her family."
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