Vidya Bhushan Rawat
(SAMAJ WEEKLY UK)- Radhika Yadav, a young Tennis Player and now coaching young aspiring players at her home in Gurugram was killed by her father who as per reports suggest was being taunted by the villagers for living on the ‘earning’ of his daughter. It was not a secret that Yadav owned several houses in a posh locality of Gurugram and was earning more than an ordinary middle class family could afford in Delhi. He spent crores of rupees to get his daughter trained. So why could a person kill his own daughter merely because she was ‘successful’ and ‘independent’ ? It is reported that he was allegedly unhappy with Radhika’s ‘independent’ life. Was the media report about a father being upset with his daughter because of her ‘lifestyle’ planted to convert the entire debate into elsewhere. Whatever be the reason, it is a ‘dishonoured’ killing. Every year, girls and boys are being killed by their parents and relatives just because they are considered to have brought ‘shame’ to the family because of their act ? Sadly, no parent kills their children for their bad behaviour ? People even defend their ward even if they are accused of heinous crime like rapes and molestation but one ‘crime’ in India and South Asia is ‘like’ crossing the ‘redlines’ of our value system and only ‘death’ penalty bring ‘honour’ to the families. It is the choice of marriage beyond their confinement of caste identities.
In the Gurugram case, the fact now coming to light is that the ‘father’ was living a decent or can be termed as a luxurious life as he owned several houses in the posh locality and put them on rent. Secondly, when a father can educate his daughter and feel happy about coaching her then why would he be upset with her success ? And this comes to the most fundamental question which makes Indian fathers, brothers, husbands ‘upset’ or ‘angry’ with their daughters and that is the sense of ‘choice’ for her. I have said many times, the big malls, swanky cars, and five star buildings do not indicate that we have changed. We can still destroy a Dhaba because some body’s religion was ‘corrupted’ or lynch is person because our ‘feeling were hurt’. This sense of ‘hurt feeling’ makes Hindus hate even their own. For the last one decade, this code of hurt feeling has grown enormously. It comes with a sense of either betrayal or feeling of shame.
We are ultimately a ‘communitarian’ society built on ‘caste’ identity values. Challenging those notions is a strict no. While the liberals might start a campaign #justicetoradhika, the ground realities change once the Muslim angle enters into picture. Can you imagine how quickly our media runs the story of an affair of her allegedly with a Muslim person. Once this is ‘proven’ that she had an affair, I can bet you, all the crimes will be converted into sympathy for the father who killed his daughter.
If you analyse the social media trend on this story for two days then you will realise that as long as there was no ‘Muslim angle’ discovered in this story, everybody was condemning the father but as soon as a story started floating that she had made a video with a Muslim man, the murderer father has turned into a hero. The angle of #Lovejehad has been discovered and the Muslims in general and the boy in particular are being hounded. A number of twitter warriors are actually supporting the act of the father. It is extremely sad and shocking that a large number of Indians have been degenerated into such barbaric thoughts. This is nothing but justification of marriages within the confines of the caste hierarchy.
The fact is, we are a society who lives in our community identity and a couple of cases that happen challenging these notions survive but otherwise things are difficult. At of the day, you are not an individual whose choice matters. It is the family, the jaati, all that work.
The grim lesson for our youngsters is not to fall in love. They must follow the path their parents want them to follow as ultimately they care for them. Marriage in our part is a public function with little care for two individuals. Their choices don’t matter. And those who want to celebrate their choices must ensure they are not dependent on their families otherwise they will face the same fate as Radhika.
It is not about this caste or that caste, this religion or that religion. Honoured killings happen in South Asia and we take it offshore too including the UK and Canada. It is not a Hindu Muslim or Dalit, Bahujan or Swarna question. Frankly, in all our hatred and mischiefs we are surprisingly the same. The victim hood or shame is often linked to the side of the woman or girl. And if the boy is a Muslim then the crisis becomes more severe which would make it difficult for the family to socialise with their #jaatis. It is a dark reality. Even those families where such ‘inter-caste’ or ‘inter religious’ marriages are ‘accepted’, it has certain traits. Families avoid discussion on the issue. The boy or girl are avoided on important occasions. In many families, the boy or the girl avoid taking each other to their respective families during important functions. Frankly, such couples are ‘isolated’ in their families even if they pretend to be happier.
Secularisation has not become the way of our life. Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar said unless we respect the will of individuals, we won’t be able to build a society. We don’t respect individuals and hence feel offended with their action even if it is perfectly constitutional or legally acceptable. In our society, legal or constitutional is based on the cultural morality of our society and not the constitutional morality.
Young lives are being slaughtered to satisfy our ‘communal’ ethos and Radhika was not the first victim and she will not be the last. As a society, we continue to live in the past which believes in exclusivism within the confines of jaatis. Any individual choice which is seen as threatening to jaati pride or its acceptability will always be met with ruthless brutality by the society. It is a fragmented society which believes in graded inequality and both men and women are expected to fix in these boxes of norms by our respective jaatis and crossing those norms invites the crime committed by Radhika’s father.
The question is why can’t we be happy with our children and their choices ? And the answer is simple. an individual’s choices or assertion is a threat to our jaati identifies. A society that takes immense pride in our jaati identities will always respond violently to any one violating the ‘norms’. The Constitution is great only when to shout slogans for political purposes, otherwise our jaati constitutions are more powerful and brutal.
Can we think that good sense will prevail one day and such brutal and barbaric killings will not happen. Perhaps, people like me live in a utopian world but I think even if it is bad let us celebrate our utopia even if it isolates us.
