Khap:

Perceptions and Perspectives

GIAN SINGH
RURAL INDIA UNDER SIEGE
Save Family, Community And Khap
Khap
Published by:
Tehrik Publications
383/6 Fatehpuri Colony
Rohtak-124001, India
Rohtak, India: 2013/2014
Circulation is the best price
Acknowledgement will be
appreciated, if used in any manner.
Perceptions and Perspectives
gekjh rgthc gekjh rgthc gekjh rgthc gekjh rgthc gekjh rgthc
Part of our culture
A village conclave
Khap
Any such change that props individualism
and destroys family, community and its
neighbourhood Bhaichara with resource-
less existence is bound to affect the future
of a nation, destroying its rhythm irretriev-
ably. No sensible person can support such
a path to ruin and degradation unbound.
- from the book
Perceptions and Perspectives
CONTENTS
Sn. Sn. Sn. Sn. Sn. Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Page Page Page Page Page
Introductory Note i - vii
1. The Problem 1 - 18
2. The Strange World Of Myths 19 - 24
3. The Adversary Note 25 - 26
4. Rural India :
A Different Landscape 27- 36
5. Rural-Urban Divide 37 - 42
6. Cultural Divide 43 - 52
A Story in History
7. Khap system 53 - 62
8. Myths Analysed 63 - 86
i. CA Debate
ii. Emerginng Issues
9. Charges Examined 87 - 122
10. Education As Tool 123 -128
11. Role of Political Parties 129 -144
12. Media As Crusader 145 - 148
13. Rural India under Siege 149 - 152
14. Sum-Up and Lessons 153 - 165
References, Annex. 166 - 168
Khap
The Present Is Stinking:
Let Us Dream About Future
Perceptions and Perspectives
Rural India is facing a tragedy of sorts at present. First
it used to be an object of pity; for its hard labour and poverty
from the urban high-brow. None cared to tell about the level
of expropriation rural economy went through. Now it is
under siege unmistakably for all the absurd reasons along
with Khap, as its way of collective thought and action. The
tragic aspect is that urban educated class, which directly or
indirectly benefitted from this loot in Indian history, has
come to be the pall-bearer of this cultural assault on this
population that is simple and straight in conduct but
harbours a good sense of self dignity born of honest labour.
May not be mistaken; it is the education, manipulated
and designed basically by the British colonialists, which has
bred this hostility to keep the system of expropriation going.
Urban-rural divide is a boiling pot now.
The attack on the very values of village life is done on
one pretext or the other and the media, bred and tutored on
British traditions, is on seventh sky for the achievements
gained so far. None can describe better the absurdity of
pretexts than an Englishman of letters like George Bernard
Shaw who spoke of such souls of virtues, as he did about
his own countrymen. Let us hear him:
There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not
find Englishman doing it; but you will never find
Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on
principles: he fights you on patriotic principles, he robs
you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial
principles, but he bullies you on manly principles; he
supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his
kings head on republican principles.
Introductory Note
i
Khap
To summarise in few words, with our past experience
of the elite class of independent India, it is safe to say that
the country is truly following this English tradition as past
rulers desired us to do. What this class has been doing with
our own rural population for over past six decades so
laboriously, it is being done on one puerile principle or the
other and is proud enough to do it with little mind to its
victims. Nothing surprising about the fine tradition this class
is proud of; it is the grammar of exploitation unlimited.
Educated and trained on British traditions, Indian
hunters are as past-masters in the game of greed and deceit
to overpower adversaries. The siege is undertaken, despite
egalitarian principle in the promise book; development as
the swan song in this case. At the threshold of independence
India was promised a bliss, but now it stands betrayed for
wrong reasons with motives that are not honourable. None
could have predicted it in 1949 when Constitution took shape
though few souls were worried over how events went.
Events however went by design: Country was led on
the rocky path of ruin by pushing rural economy, mostly
dependent on family farming, to a death-trap. It makes a
tragic story of manipulation and deceit. Now final blows
are planned for its phased strangulation. The current
campaign against Khap is meant to facilitate this clearance
operation as per script to the benefit of money bags.
It is a well recognised principle in Political Thought that
self-management of their life by the people is the best form
of governance. No benevolent ruler or welfare state can beat
self-governance by the people themselves in satisfaction
the ultimate litmus test of any good management universally.
Khap practice or its like had provided that level of satisfaction
and gave cohesive stability to the village community in its
long history of survival which no ruler at top, elected or
hereditary, could provide in India. It is history.
ii
Perceptions and Perspectives
However, corporate media in India has gone highly
creative with Khap / Gotra Khap question
1
and has taken to
itself the task of cleansing rural India of feudal moss making
it fit for modern times of its own make resorting to lies, half
truths, make beliefs and abuses with little care for probity.
It is a different media, notably different from the one
which had its roots in the freedom struggle as a vibrating
instrument of people. Present media is no champion of
human rights in general: it cares a hoot for these rights of
the people when they are fighting against oppression and
exploitation for survival. In this era of Liberalisation,
Privatisation, Globalisation (LPG henceforth) since 1991, the
transformation of media as a powerful instrument in the
hands of Corporate Capital usurping a constitutional right
of the people has made the situation much worse for rural
masses to comprehend and combat effectively.
Please note the health of present day media: there are
1500 newspapers, 1100 magazines, 9000 radio stations, 1500
TV stations, 2400 publishers, owned only by 3 powerful
corporations in the world as enterprises like any other to
earn profit as also to act as its instrument in controlling
thought of the ruled masses. Please also note: Ambani of
Reliance purchased 27 channels for 4000 crores rupees in
one go the very day its pal, Narender Modi led BJP was
declared winner in general elections to Lok Sabha on 16th.
May, 2014, to add to its fleet of media already in its possession
Truly, common people are living in a different world,
as once Mr. Chris Hedges said where:
doctors destroy health,
lawyers destroy justice,
universities destroy knowledge,
governments destroy freedom,
the Press destroys information,
Religion destroys morals,
And our banks destroy the economy.
iii
Khap
Result is that rural India now stands prejudiced against
as never before. Khap is made a red-rag by this media on
behalf of these vested interests. The purpose behind this
planned and co-ordinated tirade is truly sinister in nature
for Indian society as a whole. It casts a duty on incumbents
to clean their dirt in its conduct which is beyond the basic
characteristics of this community practice.
In response to the current controversy regarding Khap,
inflamed by the powerful media duly assisted by a good
section of political leadership, academia and so-called
intelligentsia as part of neo-rich middle class around
questions of free sex, love, marriage, this exercise is taken
up to answer few skewed arguments of this campaign. It
seems these gentlemen got up with jerk from their long
slumber of six decades to turn extra-conscious of human
rights all of a sudden claiming a fight against feudal elements
and patriarchy in Indian society at a time when more serious
questions of social life are crying for attention. Khap became
their question of concern with ridicule and abused it for a
period. However, when the concept of Bhaichara got a
flogging, the contours of the campaign emerged in clear
terms and the response became essential.
To give substance to the attack on mores of rural life,
charge is made that Khaps kill, or incite to kill young lovers
who go for their own choice. Media went creative and
invented a new term honour killing to depict it more
atrocious than a usual murder as rural barbarity of Stone
Age genre. A fictitious documentary by that name sought to
provide colour for the jihad. Whole rural population stood
charged for harbouring age-old prejudices on matters Gotra
and sticking to its conservative past that have the potentiality
to frighten FDI which is so essential now to come here for
rapid capitalist development! This charge, however, made
the object of tirade amply transparent and its real target too
bare and stark to ignore any more.
iv
Perceptions and Perspectives
With this picture emerging, response could not be
delayed. We are constrained to keep it as sharp.
We first watched. Initially, the media as carrier of this
tirade dutifully manufactured requisite opinion before real
directors of the campaign came on stage out of dark corners
ready for the hunt and start throwing tantrums in concert.
Rural rustics were asked to go out of their way. Starting from
the then blue-eyed boy of corporate world, as Home Minister,
P. Chidambaram, with National Commission for Women to
the Law Commission and stalwarts from opposition parties
like Marxist duo Vrinda, Prakash Karat, socialist Sharad
Yadav to luminaries like J. S. Verma and many other second-
rung sundries of consequence duly supplemented by NGOs
sector cried foul to demand heads in tandem on the strength
of this contrived opinion forgetting all pretences about their
democratic faith. The snaring cat was out in the field
immediately with its sharp paws ready.
The whole campaign against Khap and village life style
in the country is based on the philosophy of Individualism
the life saviour of capitalist mode, dutifully fortified by its
international bodies like UNO and later WTO after coming
into being in 1994 through various conventions/declarations
and agreements in a chain to keep the contrived system on
move, continuously taking every aspect of social life in fold
so that individualism is kept alive and kicking.
Keep note: all these institutions under the benign
benevolence of state etablishments are forged basically not
to help the distressed masses to live but to keep its industrial-
commercial mode of production-distribution floating and
safeguard their sectarian interests. NGO sector was adopted
by IMF and WTO as a matter of additional task sponsored
by America to assist them in pursuing larger interests of
corporate world in a minesweeping job. On fighting Khaps
in this campaign, NGOs in India proved their worth. We
were not amused and took due notice.
v
Khap
When the matter reached at the door of Supreme Count
through a sponsored PIL, the issues came out in sharp
contrast and all the dark faces working so far in cloudy
chambers became visible in sufficient light. We marked them
and all essential ingredients of the shaddy story became
bared. It will be dealt with at appropriate place.
We hope it is the time to strike at roots of this evil. First
it is imperative to start with clearing the conceptual mix up
on the question of family itself which in fact is the target of
this tirade to demolish. Khap came in between as its defence
mechanism and so its immediate target.
The intention of this exercise on our part is not to
present an academic treatise on rural economy as such or
the Khap; this exercise is to explore and defend the rural
characteristics at their pristine best that have emerged in
course of social interaction in the interest of better future.
These socially useful characteristics of village life are still
relevant for a collective way of existence with much to
contribute for a better mode in modern times. None can
reasonably refute the logic of the communitarian mode of
existence provided one does not see the issues from highly
tinted glasses of a self-centred urban life.
At its peak, the crusade against Khap was led by
corporate media like Times of India, Indian Express and
Frontline, EPW to name a few, including a Hindi daily Jansatta.
Chandigarh based The Tribune marvelled with one or two
among the leftist enthusiasts taking chunk of its space. It is
by now a pet theme with one and all in both print and
electronic media, behaving more like robots to pursue a given
task rather than critical and objective investigations for
honest presenters of news in public interest.
To test their objectivity, on our part a rebuttal in Hindi
and English was tried first. None of these publications
though gave space to it. It was not even touched perhaps. It
vi
Perceptions and Perspectives
was perhaps too inflamable and out of synic to their scheme
of things! However, attack became more virulent.
This exposed their intent and the feeling got
strengthened that media, with its perceived freedom, is being
used as a convenient tool to serve sectarian interests rather
than remain honest to public purpose. This media is taking
its own views on this issue final as gospel truth in search of
modernity of dubious nature while making it convenient
for the administration to act in the service of corporate
capital. The exercise made it explicit.
This presentation is intended to treat the issue in a bit
more detail systematically and pin down the falsehood.
Previously, a booklet on similar lines had appeared in Hindi.
Later it appeared in English. It was not a translation from
Hindi version. The present one is the revised 2
nd
edition.
Hope this exercise will be of use to dispel many cobwebs
and clarify issues concerning our rural society.
Though the subject is treated here in Indian context but
it remains essentially focussed on the basic question of a
natural right with the people to manage their own life and
follow their mores without external pressure. It has a
universal relevance for all those who are in struggle for an
viable alternative to the present exploitative set up.
Please bear repetition with us of some formulations that
appear in different contexts to maintain continuity of logic
for better clarity. Many friends and adversaries both have
contributed in concretising the issues. Gratitude to all of
them. Resposibility for inaccuracies if any however remain
with the undersigned.
Gian Singh
vii
Khap
Perceptions and Perspectives
Let us begin with first underlining the nature of the
problem in its various dimensions, which this study had to
concentrate on quite in urgency.
All of a sudden one fine morning Indian newspapers
of standing informed the nation about a murder giving it
new brand as honour killing of a daughter by an outraged
mother of rural origin over choosing her lover beyond
normal limits of social prohibitions.
The story of murder was not the first of its kind. The
striking point was its newly invented adjective given by
media and the vehemency in slant given to the description.
Another aspect of this vehemency was also striking when
media took it up by one-sided tirade as a matter of regular
campaign in zeal hitting the rural way of life itself branding
it anti-national and anti-development later.
It soon was clear that the campaign is confined to a
particular object to achieve which has nothing to do with
any larger social context like community harmony.
My interlocutor that heavy forenoon was aggressive
and out to corner rustic and uncouth villagers in their worst
form of barbarity in killing innocent youths for the sake of
outdated traditions and leaking customs. He vehemently
spurned any plea at that moment for dispassionate study,
neither was prepared to calm down his passions for a
friendly help to provide clippings which he was referring to
for a better understanding of his version. In rage, he forgot
to be at his place of work that day and asked me too to spare
the day in honour of the deceased!
(1)
1 1 1 1 1
The Problem
Khap
II
Talibani khap was the new enemy with neo-rich middle
class. In their hatred of anything of Pakistani origin (even if
of American fatherhood) was a heady tool to berate logic
and media in its crafty best for good service to its masters
used talibani word to kill khap in hatred with. My grudging
interlocutor was hyper-active and in later days his ranks of
faith swelled and I was left with no choice but to start from
basics for a strong foundation of consciousness to fight
prejudices and myths, more so because I was faced with these
coloured voices from friendly circles.
With the entry of state as an armed authority over
society, the problem started taking a different shape. It was
no longer an internal agency of society itself to manage its
own affairs. Rather, the situation has gone upside down; state
is there to manage society itself on behalf of some external
interests that go to cut at roots of social life. it seeks to reshape
social relations to confirm to a new set.
In its course, the state has reached a stage today as an
active armed instrument in the hands of corporate capital.
Its genereal characteristic has gone drastic change. It is not a
neutral body to govern for the sake of people as is claimed
by its protogonists; it governs over them. Armed with such
powers of state corporate forces are labouring to control
society tied to its apron to assure compliance.
With active supportof this coercive instrument, the
corporate interests are out to opt for drastic change in social
and cultural relations to bring the present society in
consonance with the capital based industrial-commercial
production and distribution relations to speed up its wheel
of expropriation made easy. In this context its target is to
dissolve family as an institution of social cohesion or convert
it into a meningless appendix.
(2)
Perceptions and Perspectives
III
In this context, it is important to answer why institution
of family is important to stay for society? Before proceeding
further to answer, it will be appropriate if first it is underlined
what family in fact denotes so that there remains no scope
for ambiguity in pursuing the matter further objectively. It
need be accepted that present day family is not that family it
grew to maintain social cohesion. Capitalist relations have
made inroads and turn it seriously sick to a large extent by
now, loosing in consequence some of its vibratory features
duly forgotten by young inheritors to the sheer disadvantage
of rural life. Selfish approach to life is eating its vitals.
Despite the present stage of decay reached, we assert
that it is the family as an institution of social cohesion that
hold future for us; the institution that our forefathers
laboured it to grow. It may help if right here we go into the
question of family as a social institution of value as it needs
to be in its pristine best in order to underline its importance
as a dependable institution of social reorganisation
Yes, for the present capital based economic-social-
cultural set up the institution of family is incongruous. It is a
serious liability and a needless hurdle for furthering its
objects of expropriatory journey that grinds common masses
well into fine dust and leave a trail of misery for them while
a minority reels in luxurious riches. In the interest of masses
thus family has to be resurrected for a better furture society
of peace and contentment. Alternate models so far
experimented to replace family have proved disastrous
mainly for the reason that such creations were formal in
character while family has come as an informal growth.
The basic question remains: Why then family is
important and how to define it, reflecting its essential
features leaving least scope for misinterpretation?
(3)
Khap
To answer this question, it is imperative to understand
here first the intentions of both adversaries and protagonists
of family to reach assessment of its relevance for modern day
world of bright intentions and its future:
(1) The adversaries hail from a definite set of people
who stand by an industrial-commercial mode of
development-distribution for a nation which they call it
modern. This set of people starts by depicting family as a
feudal remnant where patriarch rules to the detriment of a
fundamental right to individual liberty and state cannot be
a silent spectator of this violation. Hence, the institution is
irrelevant for modern times and must go away to clear the
path of modern day world and development.
The leftists, both socialists and communists, among the
adversaries of family argue on the strength of F. Engels in
Origin of Family, Private Property and the State that since stable
property gave birth to the institution of family as its
safeguard, for the socialist/communist dispensation this
institution is retrogressive in nature and a unnecessary
hurdle for onward march of human history.
There is no mind here to challenge what Engels said on
the origin of family. Regret is to the intelligence of 21
st
century
communists. They also believe the official data that proclaims
that in India 70-80% of the population are bereft of any
worthwhile property and nearly 77% survive on rupees 20
per day or less, while all these people do have working
families of their own. This tells a tale which these gentlemen
want us to forget. In twenty-first century, now is the time
when property does not form the basis of a family; it is
property that destroys the family instead.
In fact, it is industrial-commercial mode of production
which feels threatened by family and socialists/communists
too, like followers of status quo, work as minesweepers for
the smooth progress of this mode in the fallacious hope that
it will usher in socialism/communism. There is no logically
(4)
Perceptions and Perspectives
any material basis to believe in such fallacy. Soviet experience
fully destroys this hope. What industrial-commercial mode
of development-distribution contributed has resulted into a
badly structured society where man/woman stands
alienated and survive in constant tension, wants and wars.
(2) Humanity has to reject industrial-commercial mode
outright for a better alternative where man/woman can
return to a state of dignity, mutual cooperation, equity, peace
and contentment without expropriation and indignity where
human (with ones labour-power) and not the capital/
property is a master key of relationships. The set of people
who subscribe to this goal are good protagonists of family as
the feasible core unit of society and a viable alternative to
the present atomised one. For this alternative, property or
muscle power cannot be the basis of a unit, neither the
pursuits catering to self or selfish ends.
Family
Presently, even while passing through the sponsored
spell of capital based mode of industrial-commercial
pursuits, for the common masses family is a core unit of at
least in Indian society. It is family as its essential unit that
has helped to maintain cohesion and bonds to sustain for a
meaningful life weathering the onslaught of present day
indidividualistic way of life advancing at its cost. We can
define its essential features thus:
a. where a web of blood relationships governs having a
common pursuit in production and consumption in
family farming to enjoy commonality of interest in a
settled community setting with its distinct culture.
b. where unity of purpose scores common way of life
c. where common way of thinking and action pervades
Family is the anti-dot to alienation all because of its
essential and core characteristics that govern it. Given its
basic characteristics family is the building block of social life
(5)
Khap
and not dependent on state structure for its internal
functioning and highly sensitive to social/human values. It
does not brook any external interference except by choice
and is ferociously jealous of its autonomy.
As the next circle to family is the kutumb with common
habitat that works as a unit of a settled biradari/community of
the same genre with common or without common habitat
and a common pursuit where closeness of blood bonds
pervade sharing in common grief and joy.
Gotra khap is the practice with particular biradari/
community for common issues on familial/marital issues to
hear, discuss and settle on demand with all involved. There
is no judgment or adjudication in the process. In practice,
Gotra khap also has no original jurisdiction at village level, it
is the kutumb and/or close relations that performs this task
to help the concerned family at issue.
Khap on the other hand is a system basically
geographical in concept and execution with common
bhaichara having a common heritage. In the scheme of things,
the concept of Bhaichara is the lifeline of rural life and its
economy developed in course of social-economic interaction.
It maintains social cohesion and peace, consisting of
subsistence agriculture of Family Farming mode, animal
husbandry and other allied occupations in rural setting of
mutual cooperation and inter-dependence, while Khap is the
social tool of families, and community at need to safeguard
its ethos, mores and culture like an umbrella.
It is also important to understand that after almost six
decades of native rule, both bhaichara and its tool, Khap have
come under ferocious attack on fictitious counts, labelling
Bhaichara as conservative relic and Khap charged to be Talibani
tool of feudal forces
2
. This provides substance to the feeling
that the tirade aims at something bigger and sinister as its
objective in sight to hunt as its hidden agenda.
(6)
,
Perceptions and Perspectives
This tirade against bhaichara and the Khaps is not for
trivial points to score, neither the forces on offensive have a
history of social reforms. If looked into its lineage and time
selected for hallabole, the crusade clearly is part of a larger
game which makes the task of safeguarding core concern of
rural life in India more daunting and important than hitherto.
Any decent man of normal prudence as an observer of
current affairs may recount that a coterie of powerful forces
had emerged here in the early hours after British left, which
was keen to usurp national assets. It has a strong streak of
Brahmanical
3
mind to beat everything for shaping it in its
own image of social, cultural and moral identity despite the
fact that it is a country of unity in diversity where peasantry,
with its own distinct cultural, social and ethical mode, has
never been its follower for reasons of its avocation.
In the new circumstances after 1991 particularly, this
club of rich with such traits of a wild beast has developed a
hunger to go globalised for imperial interests in cooperation
with foreign corporate capital. The chain of events ever since
that year does testify unmistakeably to such a scenario that
has gripped the nation. The attack on rural way of life and
its practices have come in this context to give it a specific
meaning after consolidation of its own ground.
Apart from turning rural India upside down - socially,
culturally, economically and morally into this cesspool of
consumerism with alcoholism and care-free individualism of
existential pedigree, capturing its vast resources, including
agriculture is the coveted agenda now of this globalised
corporate capital both native and foreign. The current
campaign of a concerted attack on Khap and bhaichara is not
entirely against an extra-constitutional growth emitting foul
smell all of a sudden, but is part of the larger plan.
There is another dimension to this campaign. The
immediate target of current tirade may be to demolish Khap
or at least turn it to a useless position, but the corporate
(7)
Khap
capital - both Indian and foreign has in fact grown uneasy
with the institution of family, its biradari / bhaichara and
neighbourhood community for a wider kill and Khap is
viewed as its saviour. So, the immediate attack on it.
Corporate capital knows well that rural India survives
till the institution of family, Kutumb and its community remain
vibrant. For them Khap is the first target currently all because
it is a system of support for rural India to pulsate. It is like
its umbrella in need; use it when required and place it folded
in a corner when climate is normal. If umbrella is gone, the
inimical forces will find the real target closer to shoot. Such
is the logic of these hunters by profession.
In course of long haul in history, peasants and their
other compatriots have evolved this practice to assemble,
discuss, hear and decide issues of common interests, later
called Khap in northern part of the country. It became its
supportive mechanism for collective way of life and thought.
It is now anathema to these forces who, happen to dominate
the scene with power in hand. Reasons are stark and harsh.
IV
The zeal of jihad like crusade presently against rural
way of life is unprecedented and resembles more like a
campaign that is bound to bite hard. The arguments
advanced in support of this campaign are well formulated
and sharp that need forthright rebuttal, lest it be taken as a
victory uncontested on behalf of the people.
Now, going through the charge-sheet from these
jehadis against rural India in general and its Khap practice
in particular, one strong feeling has emerged: what Macaulay
intended to achieve out of his proposals on colonial aim of
education policy for the British regime, more so in the
aftermath of 1857, the mindset of the urbanite highbrow in
India even after six decades of transfer of power to native
hands remains deeply embedded for neo-colonial pursuits;
(8)
Perceptions and Perspectives
highly ingrained as it is with aspirations and cultural mores,
patterned on the western way of thought and its economic
structures for brutal expropriation of others for self. It is very
zealous to pursue it whatever be the cost to victim(s).
Finding our rulers too of the same pedigree, we may
feel pained over this signal achievement of Mr. Macaulay,
but are least surprised. British colonialists were meticulous
in planning and execution, we know. Despite native rule,
colonial pattern is pervading all over in thought and action
to the cruel disadvantage of majority that reels under its rule.
Commanding high degree of resources, the media first
served its master well in conditioning society by projecting
female sex as central to human thought and action on
Freudian teachings without any mind to social reality and is
now bent upon projecting a contrived right of choice as the
final bliss, taking for granted that sex is an object of
entertainment in human society and make quite a normal right
for the rich what ever be the cost to dignity of women.
In its zeal to upheld this freedom of choice for deviant
youngsters to indulge in unfettered sexual misconduct
brashly and with almost no-bar of any legal or social kind,
has raised issues that have a bearing larger than what it
concedes in the battle of one-sided debate on such matters
at core that are very personal in nature.
Clearly, this campaign does not allow rural India its
right to live its own life, in its own way; even if democratic
norms go to pieces. It will be an interesting exercise to know
the reason why such a brazen venture is undertaken by this
elite club at this juncture of Indias march to power. It seems
keen to alienate this 77% portion of the population, with dire
poverty looming large due to high level of deprivation
during these years of independent existence with no regret.
Rural India clearly is under siege. It does not require extra-
ordinary intelligence to understand it.
(9)
Khap
The target of this campaign is to demolish the institution
of family of Indian characteristics, thereby turning an
individual disarmed, helpless and totally dependent on a
state structure that is coercive and formal by nature so that
there remains no possibility of challenge to its authority from
any corner. The list of so-called human rights advanced by a
nation state as well as international bodies like UNO or
Commissions are advanced to keep such hapless individuals
continuously assured of good intentions of this coercive
instrument- the state in the hands of corporate capital.
V
Khap comes in for attack now only because it is essential
to demolish this defence mechanism first by demonising and
ban it if possible for making the family worthless.
Almost a Talibani zeal is evident in putting parents as
violators of human rights if they happen to advice siblings
on such make-belief freedoms and check depraved elements
in society that go rogue on sexual misconduct; notably at a
time when formal institutions of state have lost steam
shedding confidence of the people and almost gone bust to
maintain social equilibrium. State is not now the instrument
of justice, neither neutral body to govern. It is only its
coercive power that is keeping it float amidst chaos when it
has aligned completely with corporate capital to serve.
In its zeal to hit, this campaign is virulent in temper,
but totally unmindful of bare facts in the case, even while
the difference between khap and Gotra/community Khap is
easily ignored to have an easy prey. It is difficult to digest
that know-all intelligentsia engaged in this tirade is unaware
of the difference so vital in debate on the subject.
Another notable feature of this campaign is the attitude
of our entire political establishment. This sweating exercise
has been lapped up dutifully by the leadership at all levels
that matters for political, administrative, judicial and legal
(10)
Perceptions and Perspectives
measures against the errant Khap system in their zeal for
modernity they are keen to thrust upon unsuspecting people.
The campaign is well designed and orchestrated on
command. Home Minister and the Law Minister of the
country chipping in at appropriate moments to declare khap
unconstitutional was a spectacle never seen before as if
everything else is constitutional on earth and merely their
announcement can make or mar anything legal and
legitimate. They presume to be masters of social life as well.
One could see the strange or not so strange coincidence:
Law Commission on its part submits a report damning the
Khaps on honour killings at bidding of the Home Minister
suggesting a frame of law dutifully to curb this practice,
while simultaneously an NGO, claiming to work in
collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs, approaches
Supreme Court with a PIL seeking directions to implement
Law Commission report and mobilises political class
accordingly. While this process is under way to mature, a
grave incident of rape is taken up by the media and J S Verma
Committee constituted to suggest changes in criminal law.
Mercifully the Committee was on a mission. It decides
to focus on two accounts: to damn political/executive class
for its leisurely ways in governance and providing a forum
to civil (educated!) society to come up for suggestions. Verma
Committee submits a report of nearly 600 pages in record
time of one month caring less of its duty to investigate facts
and damns Khaps on honour killings; of course without
hearing their representatives, denying a natural right to the
wronged and with no regret to his last days.
Soon it also became clear that the self-styled leadership
of Khaps presently in command lacks understanding of very
intent of the adversary. In many cases it was also apparent
that many among such upstarts were not fully aware about
the true nature of Khap system itself as it had emerged
(11)
Khap
historically, its essential characteristics and how it works on
the ground keeping its vital aspects intact. This provided
ample ammunition to its detractors.
Essential elements under attack
One impression has gained ground though and not
without reason that the media in service to its masters has
turned pathetically partisan as never before in coverage and
presentation of incidents, giving extra-ordinary prominence
to untested facts and intemperate tenor to generate hatred
against one whole community in particular, during the
current tirade against Khap, forgetting conveniently its own
code of conduct that bars airing views which fan caste
feelings. Such partisan character of mainline media has come
out in sharp contrast this time with no sense of shame.
This media has painted the system of Khap in deep
colours of choice by using derogatory words like feudal,
Talibani, Kangaroo Courts and the like, inviting equally
strong reactions among adherents of this customary practice
in rural belt. Media is justifying each and every case of family
defiance by youngsters as a new standard for social conduct,
inviting in bargain a serious accusation that it is encouraging
and abetting anti-social behaviour for some ulterior motives.
The media carried ill-informed reports and expressed views
that were biased and hostile. Most of the time in zeal, it is
completely carried over by one track arguments of its own
against the institutions of family, community and Khaps,
denting its credibility to a new low.
The activist role of media as preacher, on behalf of
urbanite arrogance towards rural uncouth is sharp with no
mind for to its own principles. This campaign has left
unattached readers gasping, when they wish media to
remain impartial courier of news, while enjoying freedom
on its behalf. But it forgot all sense of proportion for pushing
vested interest, with no bar perhaps to follow!
(12)
Perceptions and Perspectives
However, by using such terms as above in denouncing
the age-old rural practice of self-management as Khap on
issues of marriage and dispute resolution left nothing
ambiguous. It also was clear that almost all political parties
from right to the left and centrists were equally one in
denouncing rural way of life on this account virtually
pleading for an atomised society in bargain that so brilliantly
suites a thoroughly exploitative regime in place of a
communitarian mode. How it will cut at the roots of social
life, it was not its concern.
VI
Of late, more specifically since 1991, there are again
concerted efforts bulldozing the country of accepted
diversity in creed, traditions and customs for forging it into
a nation of conformity according to the political concept of
Hindutva of Brahmanical order. For example: whenever there
is resistance from scheduled areas against encroachment on
their lands and resources, shrill voices start clamouring for
bringing those (Adivasies) to the mainstream by introducing
reforms of choice or converting them to rituals of Sanatan
Dharma and forcibly industrialise their areas.
Constitution of India assured tribal communities and
minorities to respect their identities of culture, creeds and
faiths, mode of life and safeguarding their resources. Specific
provisions were made forbidding purchase of land by
unscrupulous outsiders. Article 19(1)(e) provides a right to
citizens to reside and settle in any part of India while a bit
ahead Article 19(5) specifies that nothing in sub-clause (e)
shall prevent the state from making any law imposing
reasonable restrictions on exercise of any right conferred by
the said sub-clause either in the interests of the general public
or the protection of the interests of any scheduled tribe.
To advance the cause of uniformity reference is made
to Article 19(1)(e) but article 19(5) is allowed to sleep
conveniently and the tribal areas are made to crawl.
(13)
Khap
At present, Article 19(1)(a) and 21 are much in use to
tell youths, especially the girls to enjoy freedom of choice,
wear what and how they like, while very conveniently
Article 19(2) is kept dormant that tells them to enjoy this
right subject to decency or morality, defamation, or
incitement of an offence. This is how this nation is being
governed as per rule of law by choice and talking with tongue
in cheek according to their need of the hour!
Take another example: while intending to push youths
away from their families and denounce parental care,
reference is made currently to a provision of Article 16 under
Universal declaration of Human Rights which states the
following:
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free
and full consent of the intending spouses.
But by convenient choice following provision of the
same article is withheld from them:
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit
of society and is entitled to protection by society and State.
The subtle message of this present campaign is
Brahmanical conformity on mores and culture. They want to
deny the right of diversity to the peasant communities. When
the Law Commission in its report on honour killings
suggested for counselling these communities through elected
representative to explain that sagotra marriages are not
opposed to law, religion, sadachar or medical science
intention is clear how efforts are afoot to turn Indian society
to conformity with this Brahmanical order by law.
Let us recollect that in the early phase of independence,
these elements in power were very keen to forge this type of
conformity. It is no coincidence that many laws were enacted
in tearing hurry on marriage affairs inserting practises for
pan India application with little mind for diverse mores
(14)
Perceptions and Perspectives
prevalent in the country and so early after the new
Constitution came into effect; some even before it.
Speaking in the Provisional Parliament on Hindu Code
Bill one member from Haryana region complained about the
imposition of this Hindu Code Bill from the backdoor upon
those people in this country who were free from it till now,
as an act of abuse of power. Name any person from Punjab
may be a Hindu or a Sikh or a Muslim who has raised his
voice that their customary law should be abolished and in
place they should have the law of Manu or Yajnavalkya or
of anybody else ...it should apply to those only who wanted
to be governed by it Even in such time when such
Brahmanical rule ...were being enforced rigidly the Jats did
not yield to the Brahmanical rules and it has not done so
even now. We have never been governed by the Hindu Code
and I doubt that you can govern by the backdoor policy those
whom you could not enslave mentally. ( CA Proceedings,
22 Sept. 1951, p. 3142-3150)
Thereafter, one of such law came as the Hindu Marriage
Act, 1955 that opens gate for sagotra marriage. It remained
dormant since and did not force sagotra marriages in peasant
communities till recently. In the row over honour killings
when some Khaps proposed amendments to this law of
conformity these very elements went wild on the issue. It stems
from the same object of integration by outlawing diversity, while
media dutifully rammed Khaps on the question.
There is a strong sense of smugness that pervades media
and the corporate world over its kill by swaying public
opinion on issues of its choice colouring the faculty for
judgement, while political leaders, executives and even
judicial officials happily start referring to this type of
contrived opinion for taking decisions of importance. A
strange case of governance by manipulation!
It should not be forgotten that India is a country of
(15)
Khap
diversity and its unity resides in this peaceful co-existence
of modes with due respect to such diversity. It is forgotten
conveniently in this campaign that the issues at stake affect
the mores of a population that still constitutes nearly 70
percent of its part and none have the right whatsoever to
thrust the opinion of a hopeless minority on a deprived
majority without their consent in a democratic set up of their
own make, by utilising sheer power of money and state.
Currently, an undeclared war like situation within the
confines of families in rural India is raging for almost two
decades where conflicting interests of culture are in contest
one on behalf of corporate capital and the other that feels a
danger in alien mode and want the institution of family,
kutumb, biradari and community to survive.
The forces of alien mode have taken decades of
preparation subtle in form normally and brash when it is
needed for this war on culture to win. Problem however is
that this is done in the name of freedom of speech - a right of
the people where people are absent!
The ongoing strife is affecting the normal life of villages
and disrupting their rhythm. The open defiance of parental
supervision by mostly indoctrinated young boys and girls,
conditioned by Freudian concept through Macaulay script
of education, on matters so close to the family code of conduct
as sex, love and marriage having deep bearing on its social
standing and obligation to community behaviour has put it
on turmoil, resulting in many violent incidents that have
put social harmony at stake.
Nonetheless, the real abettors of incidents accuse the
victims for murders for honour to cunningly shift the blame
that is atrocious and amusing too. Media on its part, regularly
sensationalise such crimes as honour killing by Khap on
hearsay without verification and investigation and
editorially takes a position to continuously ham rural India.
(16)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Whenever and wherever the project to extinguish Khap
materialises as per design, the family will stand to loose its
support mechanism and remain dependent at the sole mercy
of a thoroughly corrupt formal structure under the state
patronage. This will lead to break up of social institutions
into atomised individuals a sure way undoubtedly for
industrial culture to flourish and urbanise India with no one
to regret for the vanquished! A sure tragedy of sorts. India is
in virtual turmoil. And, literally. Efforts are on to turn it
upside down in the interest of few.
There is nothing wrong in change if the future is
reassuring though. However, trappings are foreboding. And
it disturbs the conscience. The Supreme Court on lesbian
relationship and the then central Home Minister on Khap
recently pose the problem in sharp contrast as to its objective
that is intended to fulfil. It surprised many what made the
Supreme Court to interpret law that sanctifies lesbian and
free sex with a legal system that professes otherwise.
When nearly sixty years after the country is free from
British slavery, the Supreme Court of India found it necessary
to interpret law on homosexuality and live-in relationship
afresh as a basic right of citizens to act anarchist and when
the then Home Minister P. Chidambaram simultaneously
chooses to declare Khap as obnoxious as terrorism, objective
of both may not be as un-related and as innocent as it looks
in first instance. Both hit at roots of the family as an
institution, relying on the strength of individualism of
existential variety.
A word of caution seems necessary for those who take
pleasure in western thought and practice: pleading for
depravity and support to wayward behaviour among
youngsters in the name of sexual freedom is no better than a
crime against humanity even in existential dispensation,
what to talk of Indian ethos. Every settled society, barring
societies of immigrants, have ever cherished, and for good
(17)
Khap
reason, a rational conduct for social harmony. To work for
otherwise is a social crime that may help few to get richer
but society poorer by legions that no healthy nation can
afford to bear for long. It is not for intellectuals as a class to
be carrier of such nefarious game and help make the nation
crippled by providing a bankrupt philosophy to base upon.
After Independence, at least during its first phase of
nationalist fervour, the opinion prevailed not to tinker with
social customs and traditions with various social groups to
the extent of autonomy that was acceded to scheduled areas
under Fifth and Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, though
only in theory. Still it is not repudiated; rather it has been
strengthened under a new law, namely PESA, 1996 of a
constitutional frame. This law recognises the competence of
people at the level of Gram Sabha to conduct its affairs
according to traditions and customs. The provision was
found acceptable for extension to even general areas in MP.
If this is true for scheduled areas what is hell there if it is
recognised for all?
Khap is the embodiment of participative democracy.
Representative democracy, as its replacement to serve
minority rule, has become quite intolerant of democracy of
the people, by the people and for the people. Let the wise
men of the western mode think afresh about Indian
characteristics and then evaluate things de nova to take the
society ahead from the present moss.
(18)
Perceptions and Perspectives
India lives in its villages where still 70% of the countrys
population resides for subsistence and a compatible culture
based on affinity. The rest are urban centred who by now
dominate the national scene. At the dawn of freedom the
country had a choice to go agrarian or industrialised. The
new elites opted in deceit for industrial-commercial mode
for its future. Rural India lost the race. Once it was bubbling
with creative energy and grit to live with nature. But it stands
now at the edge of a precipice after half a century of lost
hope without knowing the contours of a rising tide against
it since independence. The adverse forces are on offence for
a final battle to conquer. The reason basically is economic
behind the operation and the timing chosen with care.
The story begins at the start of our new journey in 1947.
India had little to rely upon when it took initial steps for
regeneration; self reliance was the option left. It had to import
food grains under PL 480 from America initially to feed its
population and embarked to refurbish agriculture in the First
Five Year Plan. Second World War had left the countries in
all continents gasping. Britain had lost the energy to keep
its empire. America planned to replace Britain to lead the
imperialist world but had to face its rival in Soviet Union
which was pushing a different dream, while India choose to
remain non-aligned with any of these rivals in the
circumstances to take advantage from both, though it had
opted for individualism at its philosophy in the Constitution.
America rightly sensed the situation and felt the danger for
future if India developed its potentiality in agriculture;
2 22 22
The Strange World
of Myths
(19)
Khap
advised it to concentrate first on industrialisation instead,
laying the trap for it. Indian leadership fell to the bait.
It was a decisive shift too soon. America punished it
for its non-alignment but kept her for itself in future if
industrialisation continues. Industrial spree will bind India
to the world of capital and constant loans for which America
will ultimately be the master in the game. Scheme worked
to the plan and America had the last laugh.
Over six decades of its journey and the future
projection make the story for India depressing and virtually
painful. Rural India stands robbed of its resources and
culture. Its future is in jeopardy and makes a distressing
reading. Industrial spree for development in the country had
assured capitalisation which produced a strong class of
money bags who are harbingers of urban culture and a ticket
of death for the village life. Currently an assault on rural
economy and the Khap is in full steam as part of the game.
Country side is facing virtually a barrage of accusations
and ground is being prepared for the final kick. It is
interesting to read the list of charges against rural folks in
the tirade and the grounds these are based upon. There is a
chain of myths that are craftily built around to make the
accusations look reasonable and sound.
Myths Galore
The power of myths is stupendous if made to appear
as truth, especially when used by the powerful against the
deprived sections of society repeatedly. One well known
thinker of past summed it by saying:
The first principle of rulers, observed David Hume is
ultimately to rely on controlling the thoughts.... this maxim
extends to the most despotic and most military
governments as well as to the most free and most popular.
The blue-eyed boy once of the educated class, Mr.
(20)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Churchill, had expounded that the truth is so precious it must
be protected by a body of lies, damn lies. Similarly, engendering
fear and hatred is a standard method of controlling the population
as aptly described to the advantage of rule over the
disadvantage of the ruled, in history world over. This is
exactly what Indian rulers are doing with rural people.
It is recognised that myths alone allow hidden agendas
of the minority to translate without fuss, since state is never
neutral nor an instrument of even and just development.
Has never been so in history, despite some good individuals.
Not even in Soviet era. India is no exception.
As usual with all manipulators and those who live by
dishonest means, the campaign against rural way of life too,
including the functioning of Khap practice is based upon
certain well cultivated myths to make it palatable for the
gullible. Rulers of all hues in history are known to have
survived by this intelligent strategy more than by direct arm-
twisting. After closely watching the recent tirade on Khap
on incidents of honour killings, it became evident that a set
of myths form the basis of this propaganda blitz to hoodwink
the public consciousness. These need to be patiently analysed
For the present, one can look at the set of myths floated
around in context of war that the political establishment has
waged against rural way of life and its Khap practice.
The first myth created deliberately is that this world is
dominated by man (called patriarchy) and that woman is
slave to man in the web of relationships and marriage is hell
with controlled sex; she is a human being more than a woman
and she is not destined to procreate. that she has the freedom
of choice in selecting her partner in sex. Her sexuality is her
asset, she is sole arbiter of her body and social pressure of
any type on her freedom is not acceptable, they say.
In human history the Capital and Sex as entertainment
are two most mischievous creations of those men who love
(21)
Khap
to live by sin and make the society sick of this incurable
disease to exploit others on armed strength.
As a corollary, the female sex particularly is made a
source of huge income through cultivating sex-based
industries including pornography and indiscriminate
promiscuity with no mind of its cost to social stability and
peace. Slogans from feminist enthusiasts like freedom from
controlled sexuality, woman is master of her body,
freedom of choice are coined. To make the fight easy against
patriarchy is resurrected from past history as a handy tool.
The other most devastating premise of this feminist
philosophy so created to demolish family was devised telling
women to be free from dependence syndrome in relation
to her family and made a litmus test of her liberation from
despised patriarchy, no matter what wage slavery does in
course to her body and mind.
To save their tottering system, by launching its
campaign for Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation
phase of its onward march the ruling elites turned the capital
/property as masterkey to all relations replacing human
beings and simultaneously through media raised its pitch
to remove the taboo of social code of conduct by fighting the
concept of bhaichara in society to make it sick by promoting
sex entertainment unchecked so that their profits rise high.
Result: rising graph of sex crime even among urchins at
tender age, degrading the whole social fabric for the sake of
selfish ends of a class that live in sin and expropriation.
The Second cultivated myth views rural India as a
cesspool of caste prejudices, conservatism, ignorance, feudal
arrogance and pathetic love for poverty.
Third myth takes Khap as an organisation and an
anachronism to Constitution of India, defiling rule of Law,
though it sanctifies right of association. Anything associated
with Khap is feudal, evil and not worth appreciation.
(22)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Fourth myth about Khap says that it is caste organisation
of Jats and limited to Jat heartland of Haryana, Punjab, West
UP, Rajasthan states of North India. The myth takes
agriculture, ipso facto, feudal and Jats as conservatives.
Fifth important premise says that Khap/ Gotra Khap is a
relic of the good old past of feudal vintage and has no
relevance in modern day world. It is regressive and an
unnecessary hurdle to development and progress.
It is made out that modern state is virtuous and symbol
of justice worthy of unquestioned respect with no reservation
from any since it derives authority from people themselves
to rule, underlined by law and due process. It is held that
society cannot do without following leadership endowed
with authority to guide and direct.
It is also made out that everything coming from officials
and courts is superior in wisdom and just while traditional
and customary institutions are rubbish. What state decides
is democratic and what elders do is arbitrary, they hold.
They allege that Khap is an institution of rural rich to
dominate over weaker sections, having no place for women
and Harijans/down-trodden in its scheme and that it is
thoroughly undemocratic and autocratic, having no
relevance today, that it survives on killings of lovelorn
couples, having false sense of honour in a fast moving world
with norms of sexual freedom.
Next built up myth is that modernity is synonymous to
industrial culture and that it is a sure path of plenty with
FDI as a sure lever to bliss. Industry is presented as an
unquestionable future of humanity and that everything that
goes contrary to this goal is worth demolishing. It is also
presumed that the State establishment has a mandate to push
society to prosperity and hence it is within its right to remove
hurdles in its path of modernity, even under coercion.
(23)
Khap
It is also claimed that Western education and its
products are epitome of superior wisdom and virtue with
universal application beyond reproach. The bold culture of
flaunting sexuality with semi-nude or nude postures to
attract eye-balls as a liberating force is taken as higher form
of culture, while rural India is supposed to be deep in moral
morass where women decay because they do not bare.
Again, it is claimed that rural folks are an uncouth lot,
who flex their muscle power over reason with an in-built
mode of caste prejudice whereas the urbanites are symbols
of equity, justice, living in virtue and surviving on honest
labour! And watch! When the then Prime Minister and now
its new icon of corporate capital in Mr. Modi of BJP set a
date for converting rural India into a flourishing urban
paradise, the presumption turns truth beyond doubting
question. The media immediately is hilarious about the target
with 100 super cities for the rich. No questions are raised as
to its financial and social cost, especially to rural India.
The world of myths is a strange world. It survives on
faith and blind faith so created on false logic where
irrationality rules supreme with an air of sublime superiority
and selfsame righteousness.
When the time was ripe for the elite to strike, myths so
assiduously built from day one of the plan were resurrected
from the stables to assert with force. This is the spectacle
curiously presented with vehemence now about rural India
and its practice like Khap. Myths are myths and these may
need not work according to the script. That is its flimsy side.
(24)
Perceptions and Perspectives
It is a curious world of charges based on such built up
myths that rural people are facing. The disdain against these
rustics is infectious and vituperative. In fact, the Khap system
is maligned without opportunity to explain and rebut.
Despite superior mass support, communities that practise
Khap stand disarmed. The balance is heavily tilted at present
with help from rulers in favour of the pampered minority.
Let us see the catalogue of lies:
It is alleged that rural India is a drag on the fast
moving economy in the country and that it enjoys
disproportionate weight due to its numbers and not for its
economic strength; numbers give undue electoral advantage.
It is alleged that Khap as a caste organisation enjoys
disproportionate mass support and for reasons of vote bank
politics commands undue backing from the political
establishment and has no merit.
Being a Jat institution confined to north India, Khap
is a political instrument of feudal rich to lord over lower
castes for keeping its power structure intact.
Another allegation says Khap to be conservative
whereas world has moved on to embrace liberation on
matters sexuality and freedom of choice, that rural India is
too slow to change and a drag on onward march of history.
And if the country is made to miss the present golden
opportunity by opening to West, train will move on, without
India riding the wagon. This will entail a heavy toll in trail
with no option of survival in this world of competition.
3 33 33 The Adversary Note
(25)
Khap
First Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is projected as
sine quo non for development and then country is asked to
change to suit the tastes of rich foreigners.
The rural sector of economy is sluggish enough and
it needs overhauling from A to Z.
Khaps violate human rights of the individual, more
so of woman to live her own life.
It is also made out that:
(i) Khap Panchayat functions illegally when there are
official Gram Panchayats functioning legally. They are
parallel bodies to these and have no business to exist.
(ii) Khap Panchayat is invariably conservative, casteist,
exclusive, communal and feudal-patriarchal in character and
behaviour to the disadvantage of progress.
(iii) Being a Jat institution, Khap system is confined to
Rajasthan, few districts of Haryana, Delhi Dehat, Punjab and
U.P and hence carries no big risk to manage legally.
(iv) Khap system has no history; it is a tell-tale of make-
belief; but now resurrected by Jats for domination over other
castes, more so women and scheduled castes.
(v) Khaps are arbitrary in operation and anachronism
on the body polity of a fast moving India with high
potentiality in growth.
(vi) Khap Panchayat is anti-national and a pack of brutes
having murderous propensity as a past-time. Conceding
though lately in the day, elites club have accepted that the
raison d etre (reason for the existence of a thing or concept)
of Khap in rural India is the outdated concept of Bhaichara
(brotherhood) which has no place in modern times.
This is what rural India is faced to.
(26)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Rural India is different from the Urban India despite
the fact that a good portion of its population now forms part
of urban slums for reasons of livelihood. Village life is
basically opposite to city life for reasons of its nature and
cuture with distinct characteristics that contribute to its style
and mores. Rural economy and its mode of existence go
against what is available in city life. Despite inroads made
by capital-centred industrial-cum-commercial mode in rural
sector by now, it has its distinct entity worth preservation
for a new India of hope. Proper appreciation of these
characteristics however, has been made a difficult task now;
rural India stands so strongly prejudiced through a system
of myths and lies deliberately built and craftily cultivated.
In the circumstances, before the charge-sheet against
rural India in general and Khap in particular is examined of
its worth, it is important to recount in short what in fact rural
landscape presently is all about and how myths have created
a wall against it for the besiege to succeed. It needs patience
to ponder over what is in store. This will be a reasonable
way open to us for the study, if myths are taken up for
scrutiny first and see the charges these are worth.
What Rural India stands for
First, let it be reiterated what rural categories essentially
mean, otherwise these myths might cloud the vision time
and again leading to a blind alley in return. It will help to
defeat the mischief inherent in the game of deceit and
deception built assiduously.
4 44 44
Rural India:
A Different Landscape
(27)
Khap
Basically village has been and still is to a large extent
the abode of honest labour with a strong sense of affinity,
working through bhaichara wherein principle of equality
predominates, despite inroads of alien features it is lately
infected due to a process assiduously released here since
the new Constitution became operational in the year 1950.
These characteristics of rural economy are not due to some
inherent goodness of a ruralite, but because of its principal
avocation of a settled life. Subsistence agriculture cannot do
without these. Its active social life contains features that go
to make the mode of existence special as its way to live.
Mutual dependence, cooperation and sense of sharing
trials and tribulations of daily shores here make agriculture,
animal husbandry and other allied occupations reasonably
workable to sustain in a difficult terrain and hostile system
around with uncertain climate to bear. It is different from
those professions of easy gain in urban and semi-urban
centres of money which flourish on expropriation,
manipulations, cheating, black-marketing/hoarding and
adultery, where money begets money and cooperation/
dependence go by selfish ends to garner maximum profit in
a cut-throat market. So is its culture.
The basic unit of a village life is the family as an organic
whole with common economic interests, pursuits and
resources to share collectively, consisting of individuals as
its essential limbs in blood relationship with a sense of
relative equity, collective way of life and aspirations.
Likewise, family is simultaneously the basic unit also of a
community with common interest and culture residing in a
particular habitat at a time and beyond with oneness of
bhaichara. The Kutumb is a next circle of family in blood
relationship within the biradari (with no english version).
Community/biradari in a rural setting is lineal neighbour-
hood, with common culture, traditions and customs
belonging to a particular Gotra within a caste / clan that had
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Perceptions and Perspectives
developed in history as an institution of a social category on
the strength of characteristics gained habitually through
professional pursuits, residing in a village and beyond. The
running thread within a neighbourhood Bhaichara that keeps
it within one unit is its cultural and social affinity. Beyond it
there runs the boundary of another entity of cultural affinity,
though somewhere there is a link to keep it larger in context,
with several threads to unite the chain. It has units but united
intrinsically enjoying the culture of a settled life.
Family, Kutumb and its immediate neighbourhood
community with settled habitation i.e. village and the Khap
with constituent Tapas and without the burden of leadership
and authority on shoulders, for self-governance of its own
affairs, mediate or hear appeals are the basic ingredients one
within the other in as-centric circles having supplementary
roles to discharge that go to make the Indian society, bereft
of hierarchy, developed so simply because the principle of
equality rules its life to guard it ferociously.
Universally, it is with the people to combine, discuss,
mediate and resolve their problems of family and community
life. The practice was prior to emergence of formal institution
of State and is primary as a natural right. It cannot be
superseded by a formal structure, except through brute force.
Later, this practice came to be known as Khap in northern zone
of the country.
Nowhere people like it that State institutions interfere
in their lives beyond a point. Autonomy in family and
community life has been a cherished value people have
safeguarded in Indian history all through and those who
dared to transgress this unwritten law had to face their
wrath. The continuity of revolts against British rule here were
fired by this fierce sense of autonomy as one of the primary
factors, which historians have ignored to look at for good
reasons in the service of elites. The state earlier had
developed here with such restrictions and never endowed
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Khap
with absolute authority getting 1/6 of the produce for its
expenses like other services, while Western history saw state
authority as divinely ordained and absolute as colonial India
had to experience in defining difference between the two.
It is beyond Indian ethos to take authority of state in
absolute terms. To assemble and interact between themselves
is a natural right with the people all over, requiring no
recognition from anyone ever except themselves. This
autonomy is sacred and Khap symbolises this truth. It is
unjust to force an alien concept of state authority on the
unwilling masses in rural India particularly. The colonial
vestige must go for good reasons.
Corporate India, relying on the support of pliant State
and a middle class of constantly fluctuating philosophy of
life, is not prepared however to concede this right to this
section of people lest their economic interests suffer. The
Indian State on its part is now keen to the level of desperation
to intrude and invade the hearth and homes, including the
private lives of the people more than British did. This conflict
of interests between the ethos of autonomy with rural India
and the desire on part of the state to intrude in the life of
citizens is a fresh reason of present day turmoil.
State is ever keen to preside over even the relations
between parents and their siblings. It loves to keep the
colonial traditions of state intact to serve the corporate world,
while denying a natural right to citizens on the spacious plea
of safeguarding freedom of individual from family
attachments, though once freedom of individual was deemed
against the state. Historically speaking, the state has usurped
this right without any tangible mandate from its citizens.
This situation is a net result of not challenging the
principle of eminent domain which British rulers here had
propounded first to consolidate their hold on economic loot
and later Indian Constitution adopted it, despite opposition,
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Perceptions and Perspectives
for pursuing a beaten path of grabbing natural resources in
the name of development. This played havoc with the life of
Indian people and must be repudiated if country is to move
forward with confidence. It is the biggest hurdle in tapping
potential of the country to new heights, while Khap is charged
instead to be anti-development falsely.
Rural life with Khap practice is non hierarchical in concept.
Collective way of thinking and collective style in function, having
no concept of authority or leadership, except conventions and
traditions to guide its work are its hallmark. Khap functions at
several nodes like waves in a pond keeping the community
and village as its epicentre; having inner and outer frames
in order, with no concept of small or big, powerful and weak,
rich or poor. Ones weight in social standing is earned by
experience in handling common issues in line with the basic
principles of honesty, relative neutrality and forthrightness, where
right of a resident to participate and express freely, fearlessly
cannot be extinguished by anyone. One can go out on choice,
but retains the right to return as a normal part.
The family is not a collection of individuals for
convenience. It is something more than that. Members in
the family are not by choice, but by birth or relationship with
common inseparable interests. A free individual stands for
self, separate from the collective; the famil symbolises
collectivity. When individual starts harbouring individual
rights and interests within the confines of a family, it no
longer remains a family. Individuals in a family are within
the ambit of a joint family interest as its core; it is an organic
whole to survive in ambience with community and its
habitation having similarity of interests.
Similarly, village is not a mere collection of its units. It is
an organic entity with certain collective interests of higher
level and having characteristics in affinity to survive by
collective wisdom, within a common geographic entity
while, Gauhand is the immediate neighbourhood of village
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Khap
affinity and communality in action born of common
avocation in agriculture. This chain of Gauhand or
neighbourhood affinity moves to make it a wider circle of
cultural oneness for mutual benefit.
Cardinals of rural society
To summarise, the rural life may not be ideal today but
still five essential and basic characteristics of its own lace it
to make it work and pull to new horizons on way to progress
infinite. One is functional Bhaichara laced with a strong sense
of equality. Second, strong sense of oneness, cohesiveness or
Samuhik way of existence. Third, cooperation or Sehbhagita.
Fourth, tolerance (sahensheelta) or accommodation and fifth,
openness or transparency in dealings. With any one of these
essentials missing, village life looses substance to its
detriment. The whole formation of village life revolves
around on these basics in the web of relationships.
Bhaichara is central to rural life
Yes, raison d etre, the very basis of rural life is Bhaichara
(Brotherhood). It is the very strength of its life. Bhaichara is a
creation of its socio-economic life and is bound to remain
relevant till the traditional Kisani persists. It did surprise
many why Bhaichara became such a red rag all of a sudden
with the current jihad against Khap. There is a reason for the
corporate world to be uneasy with the concept of bhaichara
with village life. It is a big roadblock to its present ambition
of demolishing family farming to give way for corporate
farming and subduing rural sector in accordance with its
intent to go for the kill as propounded by Government of
India through its New Agriculture Policy floated in the year
2000 on spurious pleas and contrived concepts.
Finding bhaichara as antithetic to individualism, the
protagonists of market economy are annoyed too that this
concept still goes on to regulate village life; perhaps finding
this as an insurmountable hurdle in exercising freedom of
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Perceptions and Perspectives
choice in matters of sexual extravaganza and more. As the
masters of state have a declared agenda to dispense with
traditional agriculture to make way for corporate agriculture
in India ostensibly to feed teeming millions, while relying
on imports as a matter of policy bound to division of labour
as an essential component under WTO bhaichara must be
banished. (See: New Agriculture Policy-2000)
On the other side, Bhaichara or family like relationship
of mutual trust and confidence is a mere not sentimentality
with the villagers; it is born out of definite working
conditions in hearth and fields. Agriculture economy of rural
India, including animal husbandry, will collapse the day this
concept of Bhaichara vanishes, especially in those parts of
rural India where women are an indispensable component
of family labour in agriculture.
This is the reason why neighbouring village (Gauhand)
is essentially a part of Bhaichara where respective
boundaries merge for odd hours of day and night labour in
agriculture operations. If the concept of Brotherhood is
gone, female labour specially will be vulnerable and cannot
venture freely in the fields alone and at odd hours. The
working conditions here demand the type of relationship
Bhaichara represents. The corporate media either does not
understand this dynamics of subsistence agriculture or
purposely wants to demolish it for ulterior reasons of
corporate benefit of its easy take over by denouncing this
concept of bhaichara as superstition rooted in its past. But
none of the two reasons is honourable.
Bhaichara gives substance to one of the five basic
characteristics of rural existence in sharing the joys and
pangs, collectively in the process of its productive life style.
Cohesive life style is one cardinal norm of rural India and
Khap maintains and safeguards this Bhaichara, which
essentially provides substance to this collective way of
thinking and collective way of functioning in rural ambience.
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Khap
Secondly, country side without its Khap system of
collective wisdom and cooperative spirit will be a situation
of wilderness without its support system for a man/woman
in need. If one does not want to disarm rural society
completely, Khap system is indispensible for any sensible
person to support and support strongly. That is the reason
why there is so much angry reaction from rural India when
Khap is made the target of attack by elites; they feel and
rightly that rural population is being forcefully disarmed to
wild forces of greed and disharmony.
Individualism is a curse
The significant difference between two contending
cultures associated with agriculture along with its allied
occupations on the one hand and the industrial-commercial
complex on the other side lies between collective way of life
and individualism respectively. Individualism is the lifeline of
production and distribution mode which has essentially the
individual as it labour-unit with selfish ends in front, while
agriculture mode rests on family-labour as its unit of
collective production and consumption in focus. This lays
the philosophical base of both and underlines respective
values of life and thought to essentially shape mode of
existence for each. Admixture of both will produce cocktail
in sin largely due to the vicious nature of money.
Individualism since necessarily breeds clash of interests
at the cost of cohesion in social relations, it is as philosophy
a curse for rural way of life and cannot but remain harmful
to its social mores and values. It is bound to break the family
and community relations to the advantage of capital-centred
mode of existence and to the detriment of subsistence
agriculture based on collective labour of family. It is its law.
Unfortunately, the insidious influence of individualism
has made serious inroads in rural sector and is being injected
assiduously of late by an invading culture sponsored by
industrial-commercial combine to win. It is a war of attrition
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Perceptions and Perspectives
between the two, which has sharpened during last two
decades of LPG era unleashed by the capitalist class after it
had gained sufficient strength due to its earlier planned
efforts of economic developement since 1947.
One thing needs to be emphasised that any and every
individual is valuable for the society to thrive. Sense of equity
needs to pervade social pursuits without any sort of
discrimination for a just society. With collective way as its
lifeline, society/community/family does not, and cannot,
exclude interest of individual to flower; rather it provides
better environment/ambience for ones growth. Human
female as well as male can remain one only in a social context.
Individuals are there in the families but no individual
interests other than collective family interests to work for.
However, individualism is a different category altogether alien
to its way of life which dissolves the family first into micro
families and later essentially into crass individuals of
heterogeneous interests working at cross purposes.
Let us remember one lesson of history: Individualism as
a philosophy and practice is a curse to social progress and
social harmony as such. It is the product of industrial
revolution that has harmed social march to peace and
harmony while wealth it created through competitive
interest went to benefit few and misery to over-whelming
majority. Zeal is not the characteristic of individualism to excel;
it has a different lineage. The unexceptional zeal in Second
World War shown by Russians against Hitlers aggression
had a different source than individual gain to accrue. They
worked for collective interests, and not under duress, which
is impossible to sustain in war conditions. The theory of
competitive market to excel needs to be revisited for its anti-
social content and thrust.
The camaraderie of family and settled village life
instead is duly infectious and magnetic in effect. The past
and present provide ample instances to have confidence on
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Khap
collective way of life. To ascribe human progress on
individual interest as a defining element is to belie history
in favour of some vested interests.
In recent cases of disputes, including some with fall
out of honour killings it sharply came out that among Jats,
which is a farming community largely with deep
characteristics of its profession in its culture, mode and mores
of life, a change is visible of a wrong variety; it is afflicted
with some of the worst characteristics essentially associated
with the industrial -cum- commercial mode that are eroding
deeply its original traits with irreparable damage to its future
as a dynamic community.
The afflictions coming from different professions may
signal conversion to a new type but it necessarily may not
always mean a better option either to choose from cultural
point of view. Let it be remembered that property mind,
jealousy and fierce cut-throat race for grabbing at the cost of
others that this commercial culture breeds every moment,
every hour without fail, are some such symptoms of a
different profession than agriculture, which constantly go
to erode community life and feelings of oneness with each
other. To reconcile with this transformation on the basis of
the myth that it represents progress to modernity is not
always a happy choice.
Read on....
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Before proceeding on the subject of this study let it be
made clear what India stands for and what it is passing
through presently. India is a country with vast natural and
human resources who had had a dream; with a potentiality
when British rulers left its shores in 1947 after a pitched
battle to stay on. They left reluctantly and with vengeance.
In vengeance of a trader with a long experience of the ruler
too, they bled it and did what they could to sow seeds of
distrust among different sections of its population fanning
division of various. At the same time, they were cunning
enough to extract assurances from inheritors of Raj for safe-
guarding their economic interests in the changed equations
with thr new dispensation here.
Though history stood against the colonialists, they
could play upon the aspirations of the new rulers. They
could not stay any longer, but ensured whispering influence
with them. People here, however, were up for their natural
right to manage their own affairs. Enough was enough; they
had suffered too long. British colonialists had given a bloody
nose and ravaged this nation without mercy and with no
sense of regret for sins to its history. Indians were not
prepared to bear further. The day came. And it was the
midnight hour of 14-15th. August 1947. Amidst agony, they
rejoiced to win freedom at last and remembered their valiant
ancestors of 1857-58 with tears of joy. It was a day to
remember with no regret for the failures the nation had
suffered on the way to freedom after a long journey of
sacrifices. The nation paid tributes to the fallen soldiers of
the long struggle for emancipation.
5 55 55
Rural-Urban Divide
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Khap
It is a country of vast land mass, endowed with rich
forest and mineral wealth and varied climatic zones to enjoy
where a laborious but simple hearted labouring force has
sufficient grit to live and live with dignity that many others
wish to possess. With such a legacy behind its dreams of
hope, India arose from the ashes virtually in 1947. India and
Pakistan were born on the day as two independent nations
out of one, much due to the machinations of a colonial master.
It was a newly born nation in India that had cultivated
a sense of bright sunrise on that midnight hour to look to
the future. It had inherited nothing substantial from the old
regime to rely upon for its onward journey on that hour of
hope and despair but a steely structure as a liability, which
knew only to rule. The grit of its population was the asset.
But again, history seems to have played truant to its
future and cheated this nation for not being vigilant of its
crafty leaders. By 1991 they could muster enough courage
to declare this nation again open to all those who had ravaged
its past and blinded the future to loot and share. The pace is
astounding this time and the dissent not tolerated. The rush
to obtain peculiar uniformity during these six decades is both
unprecedented and ruthless at the same time. It debased the
morale and mores more than anything else this time by
contrived consent. The level of the divide between rural and
urban India is astounding. Rural India is under complete
siege it experienced so acutely never before.
Urban India now represents a new face on this land
mass. It is rich and arrogant. It is malicious towards its
working population, its future, its dream of peace and
prosperity with justice to all. The urban dream is to dominate
the world as East India Company once did it to India with
ruthlessness and cunningness where need arise.
On the other side of the divide, rural India stands deeply
mauled and badly expropriated by the time this declaration
of 1991 came on the scene. It did not suspect the intentions
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Perceptions and Perspectives
of its leadership when they embarked upon the game right
in 1950s in the name of development. The pinch started to
bite slowly. Rural people simple by nature and honest in
dealings could not understand the contours of the game that
was laid primarily to rob them off their labour and resources.
The crafted electoral system also started unfolding so
as to hoodwink them, which they were hardly capable to
understand its side effects. It was a completely new game
for them to catch the mischief. This rural-urban divide soon
started turning the balance in favour of the rich and
powerful. The die was cast for the takeover in their favour.
The stage of development made it easy to work
decisively in providing commanding position to the urban
sector by the time liberalisation policy was declared as an
official policy to enrich the rich and rob the poor in service
of the powerful. Presently, it has launched a movement to
grab land, mines, forest and water with furious speed and
simultaneously making rural population docile enough to
merge its cultural identity too so that the desired uniformity
is attained for further adventures in the region.
The 2011 Census captures only the tip in terms of the
crisis rural sector is facing for these deliberate policy
measures. Between 1991 and 2001 over seventy lakh people
quit farming for whom cultivation was the main livelihood
i.e. on average close to 2000 farmers a day were made to
abandon it in the country through deliberate policy
decisions. Where do they go? Nothing in employment data
suggests they are absorbed in decent work, except perhaps
doing menial jobs for the rich and sleeping on footpaths of
shining cities or adding numbers in slums. In between 2001
and 2011 the speed has quickened fast. Nearly 42% are ready
to quit now under pressure of looming hunger.
None could have bargained for this fate when the
mandarins had defined development for them in 1991 in
their eloquence best. It was done all in the name of a paradise.
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Khap
The future of young generation was placed virtually at stake,
despite a few getting into the bandwagon of the new masters.
Remember, many had chance likewise to ride the British
wagon too during slavery period. Same unmistakeable
reality stares now in the eyes to every ones despair. Situation,
however, is much complex for redemption. Countrymen
stand much more divided and divided crosswise than what
they were in pre-independence period due to deep and crafty
machinations of the new native rulers.
The growth rate of cities was 10.07 % during 1991-01
and it has increased to 53.75 % in the current decade of 2001-
11. It is not for nothing. One senior journalist has succinctly
put it: From late 1990s, as the agrarian crisis began to bite,
communities started to migrate. The crisis however was
contrived and without mandate, describing the hollowness
of our democratic pretentions. Let us watch the growth:
Year Total Rural Rural Urban Rural Urban
increase increase increase
over previous overprevious minus
1901 238.4 212.5 - 25.9 - -
1911 252.1 226.2 13.7 25.9 0.0 13.7
1921 251.3 223.2 -3.0 28.1 2.2 -5.2
1931 279.0 245.5 22.3 33.5 5.4 16.9
1941 318.7 274.5 29.0 44.2 10.7 18.4
1951 361.1 298.6 24.1 62.4 18.3 5.8
1961 439.2 360.3 61.7 78. 16.5 45.2
1971 548.2 439.0 18.7 109.1 30.2 48.5
1981 683.3 523.9 84.8 159.5 50.3 34.5
1991 846.3 628.7 104.8 217.6 58.1 46.7
2001 1028.7 742.5 113.8 286.1 68.5 45.3
2011 1210.2 833.1 90.6 377.1 91.0 -0.4
(Figures rounded off and in millions)
At a time when Vidarbha was reeling with agony due
to ever rising number of farmers suicides and when former
Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh assured Mumbaikars to
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Perceptions and Perspectives
elevate their city of pride to the status of Indian Shanghai
soon while his ministry is taking steps to urbanise India to
the extent of 44% by 2020 (as per recommendations of
Mackenzie report) one with a conscious sympathy for rural
India shuddered. Not many, though. Many more rejoiced
when project 100 smart cities was unfolded by BJP. Others
remained sceptical or ignorant of the events to come alive.
Some were, however, not amused over the emerging events.
Let us not mistake in judgement. When the new
announcement came of this intent, it was merely a statement
of fact; official efforts so far made have paid rich dividends
while the government is making frantic efforts in converting
rural economy as a sure adjunct to serve the industrial-
commercial complex for long to take ground.
Rural India thus is officially put on the sacrificing block
with glee. The spine shivered only of those who knew the
pace of ruin rural India is forced to embrace. On its debris,
the urban India is destined to shine! This realisation is still
to sink even with those who love their abode in the country
side with hope to share a moment of peace and tranquillity
among their own brethren at a time of need to detoxify/
de-stress their nerves strained while serving city masters.
But there are still few souls who know for almost six
decades now that the country is destined to be taken over
by forces that are inimical to the very existence of peasants.
Its roadmap was laid with introduction of the draft
Constitution in the Constituent Assembly on November 04,
1948 when the then Law Minister gave a clarion call to throw
away village outside as a cesspool of conservatism,
ignorance and lethargy in order to wish a bright future for
an urban India.
Earlier, forces wishing demise for rural India were weak
and consolidating. By 1991 they had grown bold enough.
Now, they feel empowered to take over. The ground is
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Khap
prepared meticulously for final plunge. The results are there
to see and feel. The pauperised multitude is at its knee in
obedience and walk out. The scheme has worked to the script.
By the year 1991 Indian establishment found the
situation much congenial for the kill. The collapse by then
of the Soviet bloc had paved way for the American bloc to
lay down ground rules and dictate economic prescriptions
in international relations. New agreements were charted for
trade and tariff taking agriculture in its ambit under WTO.
The outright robbery committed against the agricultural
economy in India is unprecedented during these decades.
The only other example perhaps is found in America of late
nineteenth and early twentieth century when Red Indians
and later, the settler peasants were uprooted and vanquished.
The expropriation of Indian peasantry, however, is truly
tragic in scale and depth. Last two decades wrecked it. Land
and minerals are open for grab. Nowhere the ever optimist
peasant by profession is put to a situation of such desperation
when suicide remains the only option to him, except in
independent India. Survival is closed as an option.
This crusade on behalf of super rich - both native and
foreign in India has left nearly 3 lakh desperate peasants
committing suicides in its trail, besides making rural sector
as a whole pauper and begging. A minuscule minority has
come up as the beneficiary like the British did, to act as shock
absorbers for the system. This is the current story.
The entire political establishment in the country is in
good celebration. It is gaga. Rural India is a vast territory as a
prized possession for it.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
The rural-urban divide is not confined between two
economic narratives. The very basis of existence of both is
different. While urban life is woven around capital based
way to produce by wage labour for consumption through
market mechanism on price valuation, while the rural life is
based on family labour system of production, consumption
and exchange giving rise to two different set of social-cultural
mode of existence with corresponding web of relationships.
The wage-labour in trade and industries is tied with
the interest of these professions despite antagonism between
masters and their servants in terms of wages, while the
independent family labour is the unit in rural sector.
Trade-commerce and industry with corresponding web
of social-cultural relations form the firm foundation of urban
life when agriculture-animal husbandry along with allied
avocations is the principal mode of production for rural India
with its own social-cultural web of relations to sustain. Urban
centres represent capital, while villages broadly are centres
of labour. Despite efforts in convergence, this is a clear
division between the two. And this makes a lot of difference.
All because of their respective avocations, city life
reverberates with sparkling individualism working in self
interest often colliding with each other in competition, while
villages are for collective way of life surviving on mutual
dependence. This is how both sectors of economy operate to
give substance to their respective social-cultural life. The
conflict between the two is sharp, though with the
intervention of state rural economy is sought to be
6 66 66
Cultural Divide
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Khap
subordinated to the interests of capital-based mode
destroying its pristine life and relations more and more
releasing a chain of turmoil in consequence. This conflict is
a reflection of unreconcilable incompatibility between the
two sets of life under two modes of production.
Another aspect of problem need be explained. India is
a country largely of settled life, despite pockets of migrant
labour in seasons who keep rooted to their parental places
with ethnic pride intact. Still this migrant labour is the carrier
of cocktail cultural as per rule. With rising pace of industrial
and commercial enterprises this section of migrants in
population loose slowly but surely the quality of a settled
life and is a dangerous mix.
Thus these pivots, the fulcrums in both cases are two
different categories that provide cultural frames quite
different to each other.
Before the issue of culture is taken up for this study,
firstly, let one point be clear that India is faced with two types
of cultures that are in contest for supremacy at this time for
reasons of two sets of avocations; largely one centred in cities
and the other in villages.
Village life with family, as its unit celebrates its culture
based on relationship. It is its mode of existence. In family it
is blood relationships that shapes it to a living organism with
a common way of life, while the web of relationships shapes
the life in a given community. Despite, presently, rural India
is grappling with a peculiar situation that has been thrust
upon it. It is facing a war like situation in every rural family
between two sets of cultures for dominance since the day
globalisation of its national economy was made the central
agenda and hectic efforts were made to overturn its social
as well as juridical texture, tagging its future with American
dream of imperial aspirations having a corresponding
culture that flowers only within the ambit of market forces.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
The native culture based on mores of a neighbourhood
community weaving around a web of relationships is under
serious threat of take over for extinction.
What is being touted by the offensive crusaders of
modernity for rural India to adopt in fact is a way of life that
has emerged with rootless immigrants/ dislocated
population harbouring a different milieu of aspiration, in
contrast to what settled communities worldwide have been
living with their own cultural mores corresponding to their
settled ways of subsistence, gaining ground through a long
process of assimilation and generalisation.
Two sets of Culture
It is a known fact that culture of settled communities
with family-farming as their main occupation had provided
peace and stability to social life, while culture of immigrants
with industrial-commercial activities as hub of productive-
distributive system is crafted to support an exploitative
regime that creates constant conflict and war of interests.
Both these sets of cultures are two distinct categories
incompatibles to each other because of their respective
character. To make cocktail of the two is to invite heady
disaster of an unbearable burst for nearly 70 per cent of the
population here a tragedy of colossal magnitude, laying
the path for takeover by rapacious corporate capital through
the collateral cost in human sufferings.
There is a question: what is wrong or right with the
cultural mode of immigrants which our elites are hell bent
to thrust upon unwilling rural folks in India, with and
without the help of state power, whereas earlier it had
remained busy to instil a sense of pride in its own ancient
culture and propagate it world over with much zeal.
Conversely then, what is so cherishing about the culture that
had grown with the settled communities in its past having
cultivation as avocation for subsistence living in villages?
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Khap
The question assumes significance since Indian elites,
including the ruling upper class have come to see everything
American as panacea to fulfil its own global aspirations of
an emerging imperialist country today while around 70 per
cent of its population is facing a future of ruin, if agriculture
with all natural resources shift to corporate sector and this
population is turned to serve the new masters sitting at their
feet in wage-slavery for survival, which it now feverishly
seeks to convert with the help of state power and money.
Indian corporate capital finds itself in a dominating
position to achieve what it aspires. It has the strength for a
leap; six decades of unchallenged pursuit to come up in age
with the requisite agility coupled with gathered mass has
given it that confidence after managing state establishment
to serve it. In a changed situation after the collapse of its
strong ally, the Soviet camp, in pursuit of the base to takeoff
and cherishing an imperialist object after gaining sufficient
maturity in the earlier phase of so-called socialistic pattern,
Indian corporate capital immediately took a turn and decided
in 1991 to tag itself to American imperialists for further
consolidation, like China did at the close of Mao period and
take a leap. It is doing now since 1991.
There is hardly any difference of opinion that the
scheme of economic structure needs a corresponding cultural
change to succeed, apart from a corresponding shift in
political, social and legal frame to sustain. This is what is
being attempted feverishly now by it to make the scheme
irretrievable, as was declared so by the then Finance
Minister while embarking on this charted course in 1991 on
the floor of Lok Sabha. It was not a brag either.
Past two decades of feverish attempts to over-turn the
whole texture testifies the determination of the ruling circles
in this respect. By now while economic policies are charted
to fleece the people and enriching the big cats, the
educational and cultural modes too are being redesigned to
(46)
Perceptions and Perspectives
serve this policy of liberalisation, privatisation and
globalisation. New education policyin 1986 served it.
It is worth remembering that American economy has
reached a plateau; it seeks fresh avenues to maintain its level
of profitability and consumption having high production
capacity with the rise in technological levels, keeping a good
number in penury as its reserve army. It cannot add further
real wealth to its national kitty. Apart from cheap female
lanour-power, sex has been added to the list of business to
provide much needed oxygen to a gasping economy, just
after II World War. The change over was easy there in a
country of immigrants with the result that whole American
society by now stands indoctrinated as ardent supporters of
this make over. By turning individuals as sex addicts helped
the system for a period, like other drugs, and youth energy
was diverted to unproductive use.
Culture of immigrants
To follow American type of economy will need an
American type of culture, which is the culture of immigrants
in the nation of immigrants where sex is turned as a
commodity freely available at the call of market with no
inhibitions attached, turning it as an object of entertainment.
Women Liberation Movement there made the shift easy for
females to convert. This is recent history and well rehearsed.
It is currently being touted for India too and feverishly its
settled character changed to suit the requirements of
commercial-industrial enterprises on American model. The
NGO sector in India is vigorously engaged to do the job.
Immigrants are a rootless lot always, having no ground
of their own to stand firmly upon and no neighbourhood
community to care about. Survival of the individual becomes
the law that governs relations with adjustments here and
there to iron out patently divisive edges. Cooperation
between them is like those of marketeers, governed by the
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Khap
rule of convenience of merchants to the command of money
power where men and women are made slaves to the rule
of money-wage with little or no emotional relationship in
between, every one is for self. Self interest guides their
relationship with others. Freedom is to be free for sale and/
or purchase of their capabilities as per rule of market or
dictation of the powerful master. Other fringe apps are
decoration pieces to turn living a bit easy in midst of frenzy.
Immigrants, unless they are given chance to settle for
taking roots for a community to emerge, are a difficult lot to
assimilate and are generally not permitted universally to mix
with regular settlements. But in America, economy took over
rapidly giving no chance for them to emerge as settled
communities with a web of relationships, grow into defined
neighbourhood communities and consequently the culture
also took a different course which now defines an altogether
different category with its fangs to fear.
The culture, likewise, in a settled neighbourhood
community corresponds to its way of subsistence that is
characteristic of family-farming, duly supported by a well
groomed web of relationships for stability and peace. India
is still largely a nation of villages with such settled
communities that gave it a culture of its own, as seperate to
immigrants culture. It is different thus from American
culture on this account.
The concepts of brotherhood (bhaichara), cooperation,
inter-dependence, openness in dealings and mutual trust are
traits that keep agriculture operations running smoothly in
a community setting here. To denounce these traits, in the
name of fighting old (feudal) traditions and customs in
favour of industrial-commercial customs, virtually is a war
cry against agriculture based economy of rural India and its
way of life that caters nearly 68 per cent of population with
no capacity of the present state to provide better occupation
for a stable society to build upon. To convert this population
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Perceptions and Perspectives
to a life of immigrants is virtually a criminal act.
The culture of immigrants and culture of settled
communities are at war fiercely being fought in every family
presently in rural India for domination. For one the
repository is individual while for the other it is family and its
neighbourhood community where family sustains in common.
This tussle between these two sets of cultures is thus
being forced to take final shape without first analysing which
one goes in favour of society, taking for granted that
industrial-commercial mode is a sure path for peace and
prosperity while world wide it is in cyclic crisis to the
detriment of majority and breeding constantly deleterious
strife in trail. What is there so progressive about it?
If one is not conditioned to repeat clichs, ad nauseam,
industrial-commercial mode under corporate capital or
under the so-called socialist dispensation, so experimented
during twentieth century, does not provide confidence in
its favour. The underlying reason is its floating labour-unit
in the individual who is free for hire, necessarily having no
attachment to any other institution other than his/her master
in the enterprise and wage that is the firm ground for giving
rise to individualism as a philosophy of life at the cost of social
relations and its culture.
In larger part, like Haryana, western UP, Rajasthan,
Punjab, Delhi Dehat, MP, villages are mostly settlements of
kinsmen forming a neighbourhood community of
relationships. Large number of them developed as habitat
of blood or fostered relations. This relationship never dies
with age. One cannot renounce it at will. It is sustained
through mutual dependence. Take an example: If one
member goes out to as a sanyasi with no connection for years
thereafter and opts to return, say fifty years, the doors of the
family are not closed on him. He resumes his relationship.
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Khap
The force in relationship in a settled community is not
transitory, adopted for fancy and to be changed with the fall
of a hat. The foster mother or sister remains so and does not
change at sweet will, if it is not fake or deceptive in intent.
Such relationship remains as good as between biologically
valid relationships, provided it is not set in mischief.
The culture so developed is ingrained with customs and
traditions that act like code of conduct for smooth
functioning between families having distinct traits of their
ancestors. Villages are thus clusters of kinsmen with a web
of relationships that cannot be wished away at will. If
disturbed forcefully it will invite uncalled disaster in trail.
Agriculture being their mainstay, villages in India in
general and northern zone in particular have been free from
Brahmanical order to the annoyance of protagonists from
sanatanist mythology. This area has been nurturing a way of
life which is more secular and mundane with its own
customs and traditions to regulate its social life. For some
period, a sort of truce worked that made this area fiercely
independent in self governance; interference in community,
family affairs was never accepted from outside forces and
remained free from theological oppression, inviting a
scornful attention later from the powerful and resourceful
brahmanical orthodoxy.
This is the background of a running prejudice against
farming communities, like Jats and its way of life since long
in such circles that clouds judgement on issues like khap,
since media was able to project it deliberately in its recent
campaign as a practice with the Jats alone, which is far away
from ground reality. Caste divisions apart, in cultural mode
there is striking commonality of traditions and customs here
among all non-brahmanical sections of population.
Take an example: Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 has many
provisions that cross customary laws of many regions and
(50)
Perceptions and Perspectives
invite scorn from unwilling communities in a country of
much diversity. It seems many things were sought to be
stream-rolled by back door politics in the early period of
independence through legislations of this kind. One such
provision in the said Act ordains that no one will be allowed
to marry a widow of his brother. The provision is there in
this piece since 1955 but who cares?
A few legislators/parliamentarians of that time feared
this type of dichotomy to work against harmony and invite
trouble later. See a case in point: While speaking on Hindu
Code Bill in the Provisional Parliament on 22 September,
1951 one member representing Punjab (from Haryana
region) cautioned against such disasters. He objected to
efforts imposing Manu or Yajnavalkya law when none from
his region, whether Hindu, Sikh or Muslim has not asked to
over ride their customary law. I cannot help saying that this
attempt is nothing but an act of abuse of power because we
should have applied this Hindu Code Bill to those only who
wanted to be governed by it....our race did not yield to the
Brahmanic rules...and I am opposed to the back-door method
through which it has developed. I disagree with regard to
the rules and regulations which you are enacting in respect
of marriage and divorce without caring for the prevailing
customs. You can differentiate between the mode of life in a
town and that of a village and see how much difference is
there between them but still you want to enact a common
law for both. Having such a vast difference between their
social customs at hand, to enact a law which will be against
their customs and usages, would be a great injustice to them,
he had cautioned (emphasis added). The rulers did not care.
In the present controversy developing around honour
killings, if someone or some group of people happens to ask
for change in such Hindu Marriage laws cannot be a sin,
unless one is prejudiced that the demand has come from
some people of Jat community, though such killings are not
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Khap
confined to any one caste or community. Laws cannot be
made sacrosanct at the cost of social cohesion.
There are few pockets of immigrants here or forcefully
displaced persons who are also taking cultural shift akin to
immigrants. The rapid urbanisation is giving rise to a class
of people who feel easy more with culture of immigrants,
though Indian towns and cities in general, barring few
metropolitan urban centres, had enjoyed community
settlements which now are threatened to an alien
atmosphere more akin to immigrants.
The question then arises: what are the reasons this
change in the mode of subsistence and culture of a settled
way of life is being sought to that of a vagabond life for these
rural folks? Why freedom of sex, sexuality and marriage are
touted so forcefully these days and who stands to gain from
such nefarious change? Why this time is selected for such
issues by this campaign and who stands to loose by this
choice i.e. what are the motives behind this tirade
So, let us grapple with the khap.
(52)
Perceptions and Perspectives
In such a grim setting, the question of Khap became
hot at a time of choosing by its adversary. So, it has to be
studied in this context to know its strength and weakness.
One thing needs to be stressed in the beginning: the
so-called history of Khap so far dished out is a misleading
treasure to believe in, whether available on internet or
provided by the print media, including many academic
exercises so far done mostly from conditioned perceptions
drawn from education bequeathed by colonial past.
At best, these surmises in the name of khap history are
estimates of individuals mainly guided by the very same
education system to look upon India as ordained by British
Macaulay with a colonial object that unfortunately is shaping
still largely the very thinking faculty of independent India.
The drawback with such type of research lies in the
stereotype pattern that is habitually followed giving no scope
for understanding the problem freely, with reason to its
specific context. The prescriptions from authorities, designed
as these are to kill freshness in thought, have added nothing
to objective history. This method cannot elicit credibility.
The written accounts then in different periods by
different people of variant viewpoints can at best be taken
as mere scholarly exercises. The logical reading of human
history of its development compels us to be unconventional.
To keep the interests of a moving society ahead, the results
of such narratives have to be taken with precaution, since
these may or may not be a guide to the future.
Khap System:
A Story in History
7 77 77
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Khap
To know Khaps from Harsh Wardhan times alone or
from ancient written scriptures is merely a leaf from written
history that is so far so good. May be, it is named as such at
that time. But it cannot be reduced to this span of community
life. It has a much earlier system with wider connotation.
For objectivity, Khap thus first has to be explained,
defined and understood in its perspective. It needs to be
remembered first that Khap is not an institution but a
community practice with the people. Being a regulated
practice through conventions that had emerged through a
long process of experience and generalisation it is given a
name but called differently in different areas and regional
zones throughout the country and even beyond.
What Khap signifies
The community practice, later called Khap or Khap
Panchayat in one zone and named differently in other, is a
system of self-management having no hierarchy and no
exclusion within its jurisdiction. The concept of equality is
fiercely in practice, so there is no concept of regular/
permanent office bearers in authority or structure. It is the
best form of direct democracy, so it does not have standing
representatives. It has no fixed or permanent form. Khap is
informal in style and content, so there is no constitution; a
universal practice throughout. Through centuries of practice
it has certain conventions, traditions and customs to go by.
Panchayat word here means assembly and not a body
of Panches which is the meaning given to the sarkari
Panchayat. Khap subscribes to panch parmeshwar concept in
its dealings; after deliberation in open at least five elders are
choosen to evaluate and announce their opinion on the issue
for accptance in the preliminary. Hence panchayat.
One of its defining features is exceptional: it rejects the
very concept of Authority in the sense what F. Engels
described essential for orderly conduct of affairs in society.
(54)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Khap belies the inevitability of authority since its inception
with success. It is a marvellous innovation in the history of
self-governance and democracy that assures a vista opening
for a healthy practice in social management and a
dependable alternate to the presence of a coercive state and
coterie emerging. The present distortions are not its making.
As said earlier, Khap or Khap Panchayat, in short, is a
voluntary assembly of people in rural areas at different
centres, where village does not make a Khap. Village is a
distinct entity in itself. Khap goes without any discrimination
and inclusive of all castes, communities, religions and
genders at different centres according to demand of the
issues at hand, having a common bond of Bhaichara to help
resolve disputes and/or decide on issues of interest for
common action. It comes into operation on demand when
concerned village or community fails to resolve issue at hand.
Khap is a system of collective wisdom and collective decision
for self-governance; regulate, resolve and settle issues within
the confines of a defined area of bhaichara. And Bhaichara
has a basis in definite relationships being observed therein.
It is absurd or just canard to say that women are not
part of Khap. Khap is a name given to a practice in an area
where women are part of the productive process in all walks
of life, then none can exclude them from khap, if they choose
to attend. It is not a male affair. In areas this practice is known
as Khap, identity of individuals is taken along with the family
concerned. Women generally do not take part by choice when
their elders on behalf of family are there. Their interests are
habitually taken care of by other family member in the meet.
Gotra Khap is also a universal practice but confined to
particular Biradari/community/ caste, when it goes into
family/marital issues within the extended Kutumbh and
concerned community. It has a Biradari connotation.
Assembly of elders belonging to the concerned biradari are
called for help taking them as guardians, which has also been
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Khap
named recently as Gotra Khap to differentiate it from Khap,
while Sarv Khap is an assembly of all the Khaps to handle
issues of wider implications.
In India, what is known as Gram Sabha was once called
Little Republics or say Village Assembly to underline its
essence of an effective method of self-governance under
direct democracy of its own make and characteristics, as
distinct from the representative form of democracy devised
under a constitutional frame for industrial-commercial
dispensation to serve the minority in power. Khap consists
of more than one village in immediate Bhaichara area with
common cultural affinity linked with others of similar
traditions and customs, totally informal but fiercely
independent in operation.
British for the first time had sensed the strength of Khaps
during the mass rebellion against their rule in 1857-58 and
took concerted administrative/legal steps for demolishing
its strength to avert any future disaster to their exploitative
rule. The correspondence from Bahadurshah Zaffar to
Haryana Sarvkhap with headquarter at Sauram in
Muzaffarnagar district of UP during the events of 1857 had
in fact alerted British rulers about its functioning and were
quite alarmed about its resilience. They cunningly turned it
into a formal institution of local-self administration under
direct official supervision and dictation by enacting
Panchayat laws. Since then it is still the practice with all state
governments and the centre.
Sufficient official reports, including that of an
investigating commission, concerning this turbulent period
testify to this alarm and the way they later designed to face
it. The universal term, Panchayat was hijacked and utilised
for the official structure. In common parlance, it is called
sarkari (official) Panchayat in place of Bhaichara Panchayat and
Khap Panchayat that enjoy voluntary support.
(56)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Community spans two formats. One bhaichara is
denoted in extended Kutumbh. It is also called Biradari (caste
Khap for the media) may be living apart and at different
places (with no proximate word for both Kutumbh and
Biradari in English) while, the other form of Bhaichara denotes
a communality of socio-economic interests settled down
within a village or beyond long enough to generate a bond
of oneness. The common Gotras among many Castes,
including SCs and religions is an eloquent testimony.
The first category generally is charged with issues
relating to marital disputes or problems that arise in course
of an active family life or resolve/settle problems arising
between families of the same Kutumbh or Biradari. The second
form is normally called upon to resolve /settle issues arising
within Bhaichara villages of common aims and culture.
Later, with the intervention of alien forces like trade
and commerce to start with and the industrial mode of
production with capital as its driving force, a different form
of governance took shape that came into conflict with
participative democracy embodied into Khap and found
expression in the form of modern state to cater to the interests
of a minority which assumed the role of ruler.
Khap: a distinct system
Khap is a different and distinct system with no parallel
in urban setting. It rests with inalienable characteristics that
are born with its principle avocation having a settled way of
life. It evolved into a definite system of self-governance
through a long period of practice in its struggle with nature
to co-exist, guarding its cardinal principles of bond against
transgression zealously from outside or within.
Khap/Gotra Khap has also no fixed tenure or structure. It
meets at need, resolves and dissolves. Any family dispute is
first tackled by Kutumbh that goes to Gotra Khap at a level
concerned parties prefer. If the dispute persists and parties
to dispute prefer they can go for Gotra Khap to settle.
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Khap
Khap is not a local mechanism for dispute resolution
alone. It is more than that. It evolved as a peoples own
mechanism for self-governance and designed to work
informally, guided by customary principles of democratic
norms and with a solid belief in collective. As a matter of
practice, the assembly after hearing views propose ukasa of
few to go for in-depth deliberation before proposal is
announced in the open assembly by them for approval.
Such elders of repute and respect, normally emerging
by consent and confidence of all present in the assembly,
including the confidants of parties to the dispute are chosen.
This assures just discharge of the job. After discharging the
assigned duty group dissolves as easily as the assembly
concludes and there remains no claim to leadership.
Another assuring feature with Khap is its inherent
tendency for self-correction, having communitarian wisdom
to keep itself fresh and clean with a jealous eye against
stagnation every moment like flowing stream of water.
Otherwise, no such practice can continue for centuries with
vigour and vitality that Khap system represents even now.
Khap: not a pack of brutes
When charges are levied that honour killings are
common where Khaps are prevalent, some facts of history are
set aside. First, it is wrong to assert that honour killings are
confined only to areas where the system prevails by the name
of Khap. So-called honour killings are as common against
deviants in human history as wars are for greed or possession.
In both cases, solution lies with removing the cause.
Mere idealistic appeals, sermons or threats of stringent
laws do not solve either. It has never. Find a country where
both evils do not exist. Honour killings do occur in other
countries where formal structures prevail. Simply to lay the
blame for honour killings on Khaps or enraged family
members will not vanish this violence in thin air.
(58)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Sexual crimes are associated since the times when
human sexuality was converted into an object for enjoyment
and efforts made to condition humans being to fall for it.
Who did it? Not the common man indeed. These were the
rulers who did it, having some motives to gain. Presently,
question arises: why glamorise sexual vagrancy, in the first
instance among youths and propagate banal individual right
of free sex just to make a fertile ground for sex-based
industries to flourish, but blame Khaps to divert attention
from the real culprits? It does not serve any beneficial
purpose except to turn social norms upside down.
Secondly, when fighting Khaps the concept of honour is
made a subject of ridicule, it benefits none in bargain; rather
it devalues the importance of honour in society. The war of
independence could never have been fought without any
sense of honour among the young generation, neither a
generation of such valiant fighters as Bhagat Singh,
Chandershekhar Azad or Neta ji could ever come up carrying
the highest sense of dignity and honour. Yes, depravity
sexual too by a male or female is dishonourable for any
civilised society where cultured conduct is valued.
The concept of honour is prevalent not only in India
but in all the societies world over, except where feeling of
shame or honour has yielded place to money or have lost
any sense of pride or grief in the wild world of money grab
or domination and have no family or Kutumbh /community
bonds to worry about. And unless one finds in wretched
way of American Wall Street a life style model to be modern
and search satisfaction, the sense of pride or shame is likely
to prevail. India is part of such universe, which takes pride
in its history of thought and practice that family or Khap
denotes without regret, except Dalal Street followers.
Thirdly, Khap is not a pack of brutes revelling to kill. It
has a fine sense of belonging with an unmatched record of
kinship having deep sensibilities to human relations. If one
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Khap
does not ignore its history, basic tenet of Khap for punishment
is Ha, Maa, Dhik with no capital punishment. It is a taboo.
Principle of Ha, Maa, Dhik
The principle can be defined thus: for the first violation,
the community expresses its disapproval i.e. Ha. If the
transgression is repeated second time, the community
collectively notifies its disgust against the failure in Maa.
Only on grave violation repeatedly, the community
denounces i.e. Dhik rules its disassociation with the culprit,
always with option to join ranks on reform. Killing is no
option in this doctrine and scheme of code. This is the
principle for khaps to follow, while dealing deviants.
Dynamism unsurpassed
Khap is as dynamic a system as any intelligent society
can have with its functions and operations. It should not be
allowed to be usurped by any one and used for fulfilling
selfish purposes. Unfortunately, danger for such efforts is
greater when politics has taken to only one principle in front;
disbelieve the people, believe the system.
Let us not ignore the fact of its history that Khap could
survive despite the parallel state structure that the British
colonialists enacted to make the population docile by
inaugurating legal Panchayats with a provision that only
official Panchayats would exist in a village. In addition, they
tried to tighten their grip by enacting Registration of
Societies Act in 1860 (remember within just three years of
1857) with British craftiness at its best.
In rural India, the people do have faith more in their
own practice than what a legal or official structure offers
them to depend upon in times of need. This tells volumes
about what and why Khap is so dear to the masses than what
elite club describes it to be. But why today elites so
vehemently are out to banish Khap like the colonial master
did? This closeness with the people that elites fear most.
(60)
Perceptions and Perspectives
The strength of Khap lies in its informal character with
no fixtures to chain the future, where everything goes public
in open assembly. Underhand dealings and manipulated
deliberations do not deliver. Contrived decisions do not
translate on the ground. Upstart leadership goes bust just
the moment it faces wisdom of the assembly on issues for
deliberation and without blinkers of individual interests.
It is a common experience that official Panchayat, on
the other hand, is a government institution to rule at village
level. Mere choosing few by election periodically does not
change this basic character and its official stature in practice.
Official Panchayat is no self-governing body of people
as is claimed by its wise proponents. People use it for the
limited purpose it is there. For rest of the agenda, Khap is
there for them. At its worst, Khap is much better democratic
than an elected Panchayat Samiti with BDPO/DM to rule as
lord or a local court presided over by a professional to
adjudicate, with least vitality of any of these! These formal
institutions of state, despite claim to the contrary, have
nothing to do with aspirations of the masses; neither have
the potentiality to fulfil any.
Official Panchayats co-exist with Khap/ Gotra Khap
system in villages, without much conflict. These serve them
in respective fields with ease. The trouble with official
Panchayats is its strait-jacket format as with any other
bureaucratic department to deliver, having an assigned role
under a particular law. Khap system is not bound by any
such restriction, except its own conventions to guide. It is its
vitality which no formal and/or official institution can attain.
Yes, people do kill on matters of antagonism. None kills
for fun, except the lunatic. Killing a person and a kin is
different. Unless man is taken by extreme hatred for a kin
due to some unbearable provocation killing is not an easy
affair. But, honour killing is different. It is heinous more
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Khap
(62)
than a murder, simply because some enterprising journalist
has labelled it such? In fact, pen-pushers have choosen a
word of their liking for such murders. These killings occur
only on grave provocation when there is repudiation of
family relationship by persistent deviation.
Moreover, dignity and honour are not petty affairs to
be ridiculed by small time upstarts. It defies logic. For honour
there have been wars, but none has described these as honour
wars. By any logic honour killing cannot be a different
category of murder than what it is.
In the present case, tirade in fact aims to rouse hatred
among unsuspecting people against Khap truly to the age
old saying: give a bad name to the dog and kill it. Since Khap
today does not suit a certain hidden agenda to be fulfilled
so efforts are to have a nice kill. It is no better than a game of
urban high-brow being played with rural people.
Simply because its adversaries decry, this community
practice in rural areas, called Khap does not loose importance.
The charges by this elite group are motivated and have
distinct mala fide as are analysed henceforth in following
pages of this treatise.
One thing is sure, rural India has a role to play in the
life of this nation and if delivered of its ills, it can open a
new vista for it.
Go on to ponder......
Perceptions and Perspectives
The problem of fighting myths in a wider field of
peoples life is of much more importance than relating merely
to Khap. Myths blind the society but help again to build more
myths to serve sectarian interests to the disadvantage of saner
elements. It creates a vicious circle of sin.
Constitutional Test
The myth about Constitution of India as the litmus test
of fidelity for anything and everything must be analysed for
what it is worth first, as also its biblical nature that seems to
be the intent of creating it when representative democracy
in practice stands bust world over, without exception .
Khap is asked to clear the constitutional test in free India
for the first time after over 65 years of independence! It was
a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice M. Katju that
expressed such an opinion when Khap was not the issue
before the Bench, without examination and going beyond
the due process and without hearing Khap that it is
unconstitutional and illegal, merely on hearsay from the
corporate media or personal predilection. The opinion
cannot have any legal force; unless legislature enacts.
Later, when the then Home Minister choose to repeat
it, as media does, ad nauseam question will arise: was it ever
conceived that Constitution has to record everything to be
legitimate? The right to assemble is duly part of that very
Constitution to which reference is made by such pundits on
hire to denounce Khap only to hit rural India.
8 88 88
Myths Analysed
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Khap
It does not lie with a Home Minister to interpret
Constitution neither with the media. They are not the arbiter
of Indian nation either; legitimately only the people of India
are. These derogators are simply arrogating to themselves
what is not their right to do. True, khap and family/
community, like so many other things do not find any place
in the Indian Constitution. These are pre-constitution
creations. Their existence is not subject to Constitution;
neither can it extinguish their presence. Only certain social-
economic processes may do the job surreptitiously.
Philosophically, the term constitution refers to the idea
that a government should be legally limited in its powers
and that its authority or legitimacy depends on it observing
such limitations. Constitution or the state cannot limit the
society to which it is answerable.
It is amusing to watch one variety among crusaders
who once were hyper active denouncing Indian Constitution
as a bourgeois document in content and openly used to
declare their intent to sabotage it from within to bring about
a social change of their liking. Now these gentlemen have
grown more loyal than the king himself by making it a litmus
test of fidelity for others! It is their ideological fantasy or
sheer opportunism in politics, one does not know for sure.
By now, both the state and its system of representative
democracy, as institutions of governance, have come to be
associated with a philosophy which has the individual as its
corner-stone, debunking family and its community as
worthless in matters governance; and not without reason.
The basic unit of governance in Indian Constitution is the
individual while in Khap it is the family/ community. This core
feature of conflict between the two permeates their respective
field of operation. It gives to much of the conflict at times.
Constitution of India is powerful for its coercive nature,
while Khap has voluntary support system with the people
for its strength, designed to protect these social practices.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
It will benefit to remember that the ethos of governance
before advent of modern state in India was with self-
governance having community/village as its cornerstone
where the family used to work as a constituent part, with an
inherent advantage. Family has an informal structure.
The abrupt change brought by a foreign power here to
a system based on individual as its subject on the strength of
its armed power proved disastrous to the social cohesion
which was not the concern of British colonisers. They were
here for loot. For a period the dual structure worked and
the state gained momentum of its own with adoption of the
new Constitution on 26 November, 1949.
Another facet of history is important to recollect. With
the emergence of modern state in the era of industrial mode
having capital as its driving force, democracy came to be
linked only with individual citizen as its subject of concern.
This process took him/her away from the family with its
protective cover, making the citizen solely dependent on the
mercy of a repressive state instead.
Later, with introduction of representative form of
democracy the process alienated an individualised citizens
from the governing process itself by instituting the
representatives as amenable material for various intents and
purposes, leading to further alienation from political process.
The inherent potential of peoples power in direct
democracy was in conflict of interests with the state and
industrial capital. The dynamics of this situation has led to
the present stage when state and representative democracy
both have combined into an exploitative system to serve the
interests of corporate capital as against interests of the
people, more so against the interests of productive labour
power. The State and Democracy (executive, legislature,
judiciary, political parties and media) presently cannot work
simultaneously for all. Ground reality is too obstinate.
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Khap
Since Indian rural economy largely represents labour
power and industrial-commercial sector located in urban
centres, the state establishment has an agenda to takeover
rural sector completely in the interest of corporate capital.
Legal and Constitutional frame makes it easy. This gives a
reason for the corporate sector going ecstasy over it and
through corporate lovely media sings songs and asks others
to follow about the biblical image of the Constitution
whenever it has to win any battle for it. This happened also
when it was to strike hard at Khap.
It is true that a concerted effort was made to eulogise
Indian Constitution as a document of governance like
something sacred just after the day it was signed to make it
operational; though before its adoption the talk was different.
The nation was assured that the Constitution that was
adopted in hurry will be improved upon to accommodate
rural India later. The need had arisen for ruling establishment
to offset in fact the side effect of a stinging criticism that the
draft had encountered from a good number of members and
create a sense of faith on its health. This was the position in
the Constituent Assembly when leadership of free India had
embarked upon its journey in 1947 .
The virtual masters of Indian Constitution on their part
knew what is required of them by the forces that were to
become their main pillars of strength. And they did their
best to satisfy the future requirements of these forces in a
legal frame. They also knew that the Constitution cannot
outlaw everything this class does not like. They did, like the
British, to make these institutions of the people irrelevant
with disuse or legally taming them despite Gandhis litmus
test on the subject; they however could not declare these as
illegal entities. They tried but on stiff opposition in
Constituent Assembly wriggled out with slight concessions
and promises galore. Neither, Khap practice was declared as
illegal and unconstitutional concept despite their common
dislike for everything rural except the votes in the elections.
(See CA proceedings for details)
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Perceptions and Perspectives
A. Constitution, State and Khap
Reverting back to framers of Constitution may provide
a perspective to measure the scenario when foundation was
being laid for future of the country. To dispel this notion out
of the way for a proper evaluation of the first charge
regarding constitutionality of Khap, the proper context may
be placed here to remind what had actually transpired when
the present constitution was being given a shape in the hope
that it will work to the good of all. But it did not
Let us recount a bit or two facts of the Constitution
making process to understand the basic cause and how it
started. It will be rewarding to recollect some of the lost
moments to know why there is now so loud a clamour for
judging traditional Khap practice on the touchstone of
Constitution. It will reasonably explain the reason behind
the demand to discard family and its relevant community.
Unfortunately for those who aspire for an orderly and
reasonable way of social life, tragedy started with the
adoption of the Constitution itself. The provisional Cabinet
had pleaded for a Constitution that sanctified individualism
as its core philosophy on the strength of which there is a
claim loud enough now to turn India upside down on matters
as emotional as sex, love and marriage with individual right
of choice, more sacred than the right of family collective and
its community to supervise its members on social behaviour.
First, let us understand that there is no valid ground to
consider Constitution as sacrosanct as the demand is in the
debate. In accordance with the general rule of governance,
commitment to democracy was expressed when Jawaharlal
Nehru presented a resolution of faith on 13.12.1946, laying
down the fundamental principles for Constituent Assembly
in framing the document and affirmed that We stand for
democracy. It will be for this house to determine what shape
to give to that democracy. (ibid, vol.1 Book1. p.57-65)
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Khap
One member wryly commented on the resolution thus:
M.R. Masani (Bombay: General) I welcome this Resolution
in spite of the fact that neither the word Democracy nor
the word Socialist finds place in its Preamble. It is perhaps
just as well that those words have been avoided because as
one of us here put it in his Presidential Address at the Meerut
Congress, terms like socialism or democracy can be made to
cover a multitude of sins. The fog of words often covers
realities.(ibid. page 92) Mohammed Sheriff warned: after
150 years of turmoil, after 150 years of sacrifices undergone
by the people of India ..we have uprooted British
imperialism.. let not imperialism be perpetuated in another
form.(ibid, p.69-70)
These veterans, who had happened to preside over the
destiny of a free nation and who sat down to craft the Indian
Constitution, were not a homogenous lot. In fact they were
of three distinct categories:
One was the ruling section in a hurry. Remember the
day a draft was introduced in the Constituent Assembly by
the Law Minister on behalf of the Cabinet for approval and
adoption. The day was 4th. November, 1948 and what he
said was categorical in one respect while narrating the salient
features of his draft. There is a fine quote:
I hold that these village republics have been the
ruination of India. I am, therefore, surprised that those
who condemn provincialism and communalism should
come forward as champions of the village. What is the
village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow
mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft
Constitution has discarded the village and adopts the
individual as its unit..(CA Debates, Book No. 2, Vol. No.VII 4
Nov. 1948, Fifth Reprint, 2009, LS Sect. New Delhi, page39)
(emphasis added)
Conceding that members in the First Provisional
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Cabinet and its Law Minister, as individuals had the right
to hold opinion on matters of such importance as the
character of village in India, but had no legitimate public
authority to thrust their opinion on the country through a
Drafting Committee, though this opinion later became
official and legal view after adoption of the Constitution.
And like them, Indians have a right to hold otherwise
because everything legal may or may not be legitimate and correct
while anything legitimate may not be legal. This has been the
recognised wisdom of jurisprudence.
Indian village is as dynamic as living organism can be,
despite many ills it is now suffering were not always of its
own make. By discarding village, Draft Constitution had
discarded both the family and community for the individual
as its unit for governance. The Law Minister then on behalf
of the First Cabinet after Independence was opting for
individualism as philosophy for the proposed Constitution
instead of community ethos, without public mandate as fait
accompli to pre-empt its future. This proved disastrous.
Quoting the British bureaucrat Metcalfe, the Law
Minister on behalf of Cabinet did nothing fresh than what
colonialist viewed the Indian social structure for its need in
governance and later implanted it in academic field to colour
the thinking faculty of Indians. Since then the quote is a
philosophy of almost all westernised wise men about Indian
village despite history to the contrary and repeating it ad
nauseam as modern wisdom! Here was the first basic mischief
with native people that laid the foundation for demolishing
family and values propounded on the basis of crass
individualism, with shameless arrogance.
The reaction to this bold and bald statement was equally
sharp. The first member to speak on the next day Shri
Damodar Swarup Seth (UP-Gen), while scathing
representative character of CA, said inter alia, ..our struggle
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Khap
for freedom reached the villages and it was because of the
villages and because of their might that India became free. I
want to ask whether there is any mention of the villages
and any place for them in the structure of this great
Constitution. No, nowhere, he replied himself.. had there
been such autonomous republics, neither the question of
linguistic provinces nor of communal majorities or minorities
or of backward classes would have arisen.. (Draft) is not in
harmony with our present conditions, our culture and our
customs. (ibid, page 212 dated 5
th
Nov.1948)
Shri H.V. Kamath (CPB, Gen.) corrected the Law
Minister by saying that the pathetic faith in village
communities was not due to any Metcalfe, but our faith in
the village republics and our rural communities has grown
and we have cherished it with all our heart. His (law
minister) attitude yesterday was typical of the urban
highbrow; and if that is going to be our attitude towards our
rural folks, I can only say, God save us.... Perhaps the fault
lies with the composition of the Drafting Committee, among
the members of which no one, with the exception of Sri
Munshi, has taken any active part in the struggle for our
countrys freedom... We learn how our polity in ancient
times was securely built on village communities which were
autonomous and self-contained; and that is why our
civilisation has survived through all these ages. He went
on The entire ethos of the proposed system was different
from what was expected by the people We demanded the
music of Veena or Sitar, but here we have the music of an
English Band. That was because our Constitution makers
were educated that way. I do not blame them rather, I would
blame those people, or those of us, who entrusted them with
this kind of work. (ibid, p.219)
Dr. P.S. Deshmukh said that I do not share the view
that the past or our ancient civilisation is not worth utilising
for the future building up of the Indian nation.(ibid, p252)
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Another retorted in spite of all that had been done
(to village republics by the British rulers for their
suppression, they have survived.. Therefore, village
Panchayats (republics) is not to be condemned on that basis.
Another prominent member, A C Guha said that I am afraid
the Drafting committee has gone beyond the terms. I am
afraid the whole Constitution that has been laid before us
has gone beyond the main principles laid down by the CA
and demanded that the village should be the real basis of
(governing) machinery. (ibid, p 255-56)
Prof. S.L Saxena I am certain that a very large majority
of the House do not agree with this view of village republics.
..I personally feel that, if we bring these village Panchayats
all the light and all the knowledge which the country and
the world have gathered, they will become the most potent
force for holding the country together..can become models
of good self-government...the Constitution should provide
for establishment of village republics (ibid, p285)
Shri G.B. Bhatt (Bombay) considering it as a whole I
doubt seriously if it can at all be considered a Constitution
which is Indian in spirit and in character. To forget or spurn
the system of village Panchayats, which has lifted us up and
which has sustained us so far and to declare boldly it has
been deliberately spurned..well in all humility I lodge my
protest against it. .If the village is to be discarded, someone
can also boldly demand that this Constitution be discarded,
declared the member equally loud in protest (Vol. VII, p. 316).
K. Santhanam opined: in the long run local autonomy
for each village must constitute the basic framework for the
future freedom of this country (p.264).
Chaudhry Ranbir Singh (Pb. Gen.) quoting Gandhi said
that whether in the political field or in the economic sphere
decentralisation engenders a power which is much greater
than other kinds of power. (ibid Vol.VII, p.288-89).
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Khap
Shri Mahabir Tyagi said What Gandhi ji thought about
Swaraj? It must not be forgotten that Constituent Assembly
is the fruit of the labour of those who worked day and night
for about thirty years in their attempt to win freedom. ...it is
they who should have given us this Constitution. They alone
are competent to draw up the Constitution. ...but since this
Assembly was constituted by the British, we cannot think of
the other possibilities....But again we should see to it that
the Gandhian outlook does not vanish from the country so
soon after his death (ibid, p.360)
B N Rau as Advisor and main architect of the drafting
committee came out in defence and stated that it was too
late to make any attempt to change the basis of the
Constitution which has gone so far.
Bowing to sharp criticism, official side took to the only
known stratagem available to them that there is no time left
to redraft Constitution in light of the criticism from the
members voicing opinion of the freedom struggle and
promised a heaven in future. For the present, Article 40 was
inserted to mollify the raised tempers. Jawahar lal Nehru
said that there is no permanence in constitutions, it will grow
and appealed to pass it (ibid, 322-23)!
There was a another category that did not bite the bait:
One of them Seth Damodar Swarup castigated it, saying that
this Constitution may even be the Magna Charta for
capitalists of India, but so far as the poor and the tens of
millions of toiling, starving and naked masses of India are
concerned, there is nothing in it for them. He quoted another
member from Congress Shankarrao Deo to say that this
Constitution is bound to be rejected, if a referendum is taken.
The framers of this constitution at best represent 14 per cent
of the Indian masses. This is the bitter fact. (We) have failed
to fulfil our duty for which we had assembled here due to
various reasons and causes such as party politics this
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Constitution does not deserve to be passed. We should reject
this Constitution (Vo. XI, p.694)
Today after having a full picture of the Constitution, I
feel that I cannot make up my mind wholly to appreciate
and welcome this Constitution, K. Hanumathaiya declared
at the last reading, (Vol.X.p.616) while T. Prakasham said:I
have been sitting here with a painful thought that we had
been drifting, avoiding the soul of it as it were(697) The
millions were ignored during British Raj and they were ignored
in our country even after the British left and we also ignored
them and we are proceeding with this Constitution (ibid).
I am afraid in this highly centralised Constitution of
the Indian Republic there is possibility of there being
apoplexy of the heart and paralysis at the ends, warned
Mr. Deo (732), while Kamlapati Tripathi reminded that
Everyone knows that effective power in the hands of the
Centre can only be based on military strength and the
concentration of military power is the sure road leading to
the complete destruction of popular rights. This is historical
truth. Our Constitution obviously presents this danger(V.X,
p863). Loknath Mishra said: In this way we have made this
irresponsible Constitution in the hope of giving responsible
government to our people (p.798).
Mahabir Tyagi (UP) pointed out another obscenity of
the adopted mode and warned ..I am most afraid of one
aspect that democracy has created everywhere - of
professional politicians. All democracies are run by
professional politicians and I am afraid that is the main
cause of their failure, because such people begin to live on
democracy. It becomes with them a profession. The statecraft
becomes their only source of living. This is the bane of
democracy...If this democracy (of ours) is also run by such
persons who will have nothing to fall back upon and who
live on ministries and on the membership of Parliament then
this democracy is doomed. I am sure (Vol. X, p.964)
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Khap
On the promise that in future Constitution will grow
to the desired goal of decentralised polity a member declared
that the dynamics of what is laid down may not allow the hope to
materialise and argued that the wish for a healthy growth of
the Constitution is misplaced. The dynamics of what has
been released with the adoption of its philosophy will
ultimately assert against the wish.
The official view, however, prevailed in the CA on the
intervention of leadership of the time, as was summed up
by the advisor, BN Rau. By now, however, it is clear that the
undertaking on behalf of the leadership proved to be a poor
consolation. Mr. Deo proved prophetic and correct: the
dynamics of what was released by the adoption of
Constitution in 1949 asserted.
One aspect of the promise, however, did materialise;
the Constitution of India did grow but in the opposite
direction of what was desired then by the leaders of the
ruling coalition. It did keep pace with the direction the
Constitution virtually had laid and the members opposed;
it debunked the majority of the people for whom members
then pleaded. The danger inherent in providing a
philosophical basis for individualism in the Constitution was
not foreseen by anyone so seriously and hence not contested.
B. The Great Debate:
CENTRALISED POLITY V/S
NON-CENTRALISED POLITY:
What was at stake in the long debate? Let us examine.
Stake was relevant and important for the very future of the
nation. Once these basic questions were decided in favour
of the super rich, people were dumped again in the dustbin
of history uncared for with the state structure strengthened
to care for the chosen ward. The people stood disinherited
and dishonoured.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
One fact is incontrovertible: the whole period of
Freedom struggle was permeated with two basic issues. One,
what will be the future mode of socio-economic system the
country needs to adopt. Second, what would India need as
its mode of governance after British rule is over?
Constituent Assembly debated and decided. On the
result it was said: I am afraid that they have made a wrong
approach to the problem summed up K.Santhanam
forcefully (Vol.V.p.54). He was afraid that the overall structure
would remain unchanged. It remained unchanged. The
whole structure is drawn on the lines of Government of India
Act, 1935, said Gokul Bhai Bhatt (Vol.VII, p.316). The long
shadow of 1935 Act prevails till date. One may add to what
G B Bhatt said that the 1935 Act was improved upon by
making it compliant to Brahmanical uniformity when the
tribal communities were brought under centralised power
by crafty mechanism with an autonomous veneer.
The great irony of history is stalking now; those who
voted for such an unchanged structure were of the same
pedigree who is now asking rural India to change instead in
tune with the adopted path in cunningness. For a moment
we may look a bit back for slight wisdom to know what
happened and with what cost to the majority.
During freedom struggle the village republic had become
a symbol of revolt against the centralised polity i.e. State,
against the formal system, which in the modern age has
stripped the individual and rendered him/her defenceless
against the ruthlessness of state that is wedded more to serve
the minority super rich. Khap represents the non-centralised
polity as a reliable alternative with a hoary past to rely upon.
The Little Republic of which Khap is its extension, in
much of Hindi zone and called in other areas with several
titles, that is visualised as the only frame in which the
ordinary people can be on their own, can feel and realise
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Khap
their own potential and engender a milieu behoving the
human society with family and its neighbouring community
as its strength to stand by. The concept of Little Republic
endured the spirit and inspired them to fight against a
centralised system of governance which the British had
thrust upon India to serve its colonial agenda.
One of its stalwarts had reminded that India lives in its
villages. By saying this then he was stating an obvious truth
and nonetheless important to remind the nation for its future
to rely upon. Keeping fingers on pulse of the common man,
Gandhi appreciated another truth of its social life, while the
left leaders failed, about Village Republics as a living organism
and effective model true to the spirit of Indian ethos for self-
governance and dispute resolution.
In the centralised society of today one bomb on the
power plant is enough to extinguish all lights and there is
no single lamp to light up darkness. But where many lamps
burn with little oil in tiny mud pots, there will not be flood
of light that dazzles but there will never be darkness said
Shankarrao Deo from Congress benches in the CA (ibid Vol.
X p. 694). But this was not to happen. There was regret, there
was anguish on the point as to how and why that most vital
community practice was not in place where it ought to have
been in that so-called document of destiny, the Constitution.
The community practice had significance not only in
the limited frame of life in Indian nation. It was the symbol
of other alternative which could salvage the human
civilisation in peril, when corporate capital is out to strangle
it with resolve to rely on centralised state power.
When it was stated by Manmohan Das that unless and
until our village people are educated, unless and until they
become politically conscious...the village Panchayat system
will do more harm than good.. and local influential classes
will absorb to themselves all powers and privileges (Vol.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
VII,p.308) Sarangdhar Das argued legitimately that it was
based on a superficial view of rural life of those who had
lost contact with villages. If there is ignorance in the villages
it is ignorance of English language and also our various
written languages It has nothing to do with real life because
as far as knowledge of nature and wisdom are concerned
there is more wisdom and more knowledge in the villages
than in our modern cities. (Vol. VII, p.286).
Another member in CA said: The excuse has been
given that we are not yet ready, we would need greater
experience, better education, and more wide-spread
consciousness of political power amongst the masses as well
as its responsibilities to be able to work such radical forms
of democratic government, they did not realise the
perversity of this logic. Had we agreed to such arguments
in the past,...we should never, even now have obtained our
independence and the right to self-government which is now
our proud possession, exclaimed K.T.Shah (Vol. X p.619).
Prakasham put the question straight when he declared
that The village republic which is proposed to be established
and worked is not a bullock cart village republic...when we
fill the whole country with these organisations... there will
be no food famines..no cloth famine...these village republics
will establish peace in our country.(Vol.VII,p.522).
But sanity did not prevail and a centralised polity was
adopted instead. There is one and the only one reason for
this situation to prevail:
because you are still unable to trust the people in
full (ibid), which is indicative of a psyche of faith in the
infallibility of the bureaucratic system. Believe the
system, disbelieve the People is their evergreen motto
to follow!! And our wise men did it again to the sorrow
of millions after millions!
This was the basic point at issue in the deliberations of
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Khap
the Constituent Assembly. It was difficult for the leadership
to face the logic and shrewdly relied upon the advice of Mr.
B N Rau instead to adopt the faulty Draft Constitution with
a promise in future. It proved fatal. Tragedy struck.
There is another aspect of Constitution that is relevant
to the subject of scrutiny which the President of CA, Dr.
Rajender Prasad tried to make while appealing members to
adopt the draft. He said:
Whatever the Constitution may or may not
provide, the welfare of the country will depend upon
the way in which the country is administered. That will
depend upon the men who administer it. If the people
who are elected, are capable and men of character and
integrity, they would be able to make the best even of a
defective Constitution. If they are lacking in these, the
Constitution cannot help the country. After all, a
Constitution like a machine is a lifeless thing. It acquires
life because of the men who control it and operate it.
7
One of the few leaders at the top who mattered in
shaping the future roadmap for the country Dr. Prasad was
emphasising the nature of the constitution they were
producing while consoling for the faith they had in the
personal qualities of the leaders to run it, though now the
effort seems to make the same document as something iconic.
One thing is sure: the Constitution was viewed as
nothing perfect and sacrosanct by its framers as it is made
out to be by this new class of mandarins, including the wise
men of corporate media and academia.
Now, the protagonists of individual freedom are citing
the same imperfect document to be so sacrosanct as to decry
the Khaps on this very account! This is at least a very shallow
basis to argue their case for demolishing the valuable
institution like Khap. The truth about rule of law is more
ludicrous to argue against rural community practices.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Law is what the rulers decide and thrust on the
unwilling people. Mostly they are ignorant about the law
adopted in their name. To make such laws as litmus test is
ludicrous and atrocious exercise indeed.
Emerging issues:
The centralised system of governance so adopted has
by now sapped out the energy of a young nation to its bones.
In the bargain it lost confidence and support of the people
in matters governance and had to rely on its steel framed
bureaucracy for all nation building activities. To suit the
interests of a minority, Westminster system with highly
centralised structures was adopted instead on the bidding
of British and the aspirant big Indian capital.
Ostensibly, this minority became too apprehensive of
participative democracy where people not only participate
directly to discuss, analyse and decide on issues of self-
governance but act as masters of its destiny, and do not
depend upon representatives to speak for them through
some forum provided by the state. Khap practice could have
formed the essence of that little Republics which India one
day stood proud of. The Constitution talks of democracy but
circumscribed it to a forum of representatives to speak for
the people instead, though Hind Swaraj was a favourite
prime reader with such leaders for form sake.
Representative system was favoured instead by
adapting the colonial Act of 1935 with a bureaucratic super-
structure as was available from British. Freedom cannot
mean anything else than recognition of the competence of
people to navigate life according to their traditions and
customs with their wisdom to innovate.
To talk about village Panchayats, as ordained by Article
40, less said the better. It took 47 years for village Panchayats
to become part of the constitutional frame and much more
to be on the ground, but not as unit of self-governance, like
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Khap
little republics. Panchayats, even after finding place in the
scheme of Article 243 under Part IX of the Constitution are
not more than the lowest unit of administration. Similarly,
when provisions of panchayats under this part were
extended for tribal areas in 1996 it remained a passive piece
of legislation. The provisions under Schedule V and VI to
the Constitution are yet to be translated to the disadvantage
of the tribals and none cares. Then, who is playing with the
law of the land; rural India or those elites who are controlling
commanding heights of the structure? Not the people by
any means indeed. Such is the sanctity of law with them.
The dictum in jurisprudence that everything legal may
not be legitimate and everything legitimate may not be legal
is conveniently forgotten. It is the society which has to
intervene on behalf of legitimacy to take it ahead from morass
of the state. But at the time when rural India is the target all
such fine principles are left to the dustbin. They are called
upon to prove their fidelity at the alter of partisan laws. Such
is the honesty of purpose with these gentlemen.
Theory teaches
In conditions at present, the basic question of political
science is to define nature of relation between society and
the state. It is agreed in general that society takes precedence
over the institution of state. In fact, it is understood that state
is the servant and not the master of society. This is theory.
In practice, however, the state is the monster that has
assumed the role of master of society with repressive power
at its core, supplemented by an elaborate system of mental
slavery, as organ of governance for obedience. Its education
system is designed to serve accordingly. Educated class
mostly has been acting to advance this cause blindly and
faithfully as ordained by state. This is nothing less than
perversity of theory as also cheating morality of principles.
The state, as its own creation has overtaken the society
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Perceptions and Perspectives
for good or bad. This dichotomy between theory and practice
of state is the fundamental question to resolve if man has to
breathe in fresh air and make sense of a useful and serene
life. Another facet of the situation is the limited span with a
man as an individual, while the man in society is to think of
a perspective with generations to come.
Currently, the society operates with two distinct types
of structures. The primary one is the type of informal
institutions it has evolved and perfected through a process
spanning centuries of hit and trial for growth. It is a
continuous process never to end and perfection is always
relative to time and space.
The second is the type of formal and contractual
formation like state with a defined role and ordained power
jurisdiction. The Principle of Eminent Domain is a later
invention by a colonial state, later adopted by every
government in the service of capital and its owners. This
perversion of theory by deceit is designed to clothe
legitimacy and uncouth possessions by expropriation.
This principle of eminent domain has nothing to do with
any concept of orderly behaviour to serve humanity, but for
a particular or sectarian object. It is a transgression of political
mandate of the master by its servant and cannot be reconciled
for obedience. It is extraneous and incongruent extension of
delegated authority. The illegitimate usurpation of power
by state for itself has to go and deficiency made up so caused
to the common good. The British rulers did it to colonial
India and Independent India cannot go on enjoying sinful
gains from the service of an illegitimate child and claim seat
on high table in the comity of free nations at the same time.
C. Feudal and Patriarchy
Let us see another paint-brush that provides substance
to malign Khap and is in frequent use. There are two words
from western lexicon that go wild to provide legitimacy to
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women issues of whatever worth and are gleefully used by
anyone and everyone who is out to show off his progressive
credentials, howsoever week and a supporter of feminist
movement whatever it may denote in the country today.
One of two is feudal in the world of capitalist relations
that presently permeates every walk of life dominated by
money power. The other is patriarchy that is used more to
malign man in relation to woman when virtually both have
been reduced to the status of slave by highly organised
corporate capital for mere survival, barring a small number.
This is the condition even of those who stretch their necks
out with relatively small amount of capital in their pockets
and dream to be independent in profession.
Credit goes to Indian leftists to popularise these terms,
feudal and patriarchy in political discourse for such negative
features of gone by era dubbed as regressive in relation to
industrial-commercial mode with capital in command
holding family farming synonimous to feudalism.
These words are standard epithets for abuse also by
leftists to denounce opponents, if no other argument works.
Situation has come to a pass that feudal is the word of easy
choice to use by any Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to
describe any family head in rural India on any account. In
relation to Khap, feudal is the word of choice while patriarchy
works magically, if the issue relates to woman. It seeks a rift
artificially between male and female of 80% composite
families on the bidding of foreign and native financiers and
raking up secondary issue of contest to shut out the main
issue of their lives to save a wretched system! In both cases,
need to analyse the issue objectively vanishes at ease. Such
is the level of prejudice; a big achievement for leftist
movement in India indeed but to serve capital, not labour.
It is doubtful if practitioners of this terminology really
understand the essence that is attached to it in political
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Perceptions and Perspectives
economy. In political economy these terms denote a definite
relationship of a socio-economic life of yester years, largely
in West, which hardly find any tangible place at the
beginning of 21st century even in the field of culture any
more, anywhere in the world, except in some dark corner.
Still, many seem to feel comfortable with this
terminology of bygone period for fancy sake; otherwise it
carries no substantial meaning now, unless one intends to
rebuke family relationship and/or produce a psyche of an
oppressed among women in general with ulterior motives,
like having permanent chasm between the two to win over
female on the side of an anarchic life style in sinful pursuits.
See the result: times seem to have moved decisively in
their favour due to this campaign. Even the institution of
marriage has been largely converted now into a ladder of
convenience for career or income by a good chunk of young
population. A keep is now in a live-in relation, prostitutes
are proudly called sex workers, chattel is a girl friend, having
no burden of social obligation to procreate, world over
including India. A satisfying gain for modernity indeed!
Let anyone having a modicum of understanding the
modus operandi in an Indian family of normal standard
answer; can it survive for a day if its elders conduct like a
feudal, whereas family as an institution in India has a
reputation to have survived marauding forces in history for
centuries? Only recently the progressive capitalists have
succeeded to cut at its roots to the despair of many. Soviet
Union or China did not benefit from its dispersal either.
This fancy for the word feudal betrays a low level of
understanding about the other side of feudal period in
history. It was in this period that community assertion
emerged with practices which gave meaning to social content
and it remained immune from the depravity of lords, in
matters love or sex to name one.
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Khap
There is no doubt that break up of family with males
and females apart will make hell of it. Does not anarchy will
prevail then on its ruin? Soviet Russia and China suffered
defeat in building a new society short of family.
Patriarchy is an epithet which is very popular these days
with all supporters of feminism. It has a dual intent to depict
the society into male-female divide firstly to induct an alien
cultural mode in India and demolish the family institution
for a specific purpose to fulfil. It is curious that these critics
do not plead for matriarchy either to replace it. They
champion individualism instead citing human/ fundamental
rights of individual against males in the family.
First, it was a fight for these rights against autocracy i.e
state in favour of citizens. How the fight is diverted now
against male in the family leaving state oppression free? Who
benefitted from this diversion, if not the rulers?
Secondlt, landlord versus serf relationship of feudal
variety is now master-servant relationship of capitalist mode
almost in every field of human activity and money has
replaced human values at the centre of relations by this
march of events. To find patriarchy between a capitalist
husband and a capitalist wife is creativity in mischief.
By the way, what is feudal and serf relationship in the
practice of Khap? None has come out to detail the accusation
on this account. Merely epithets go wild to prejudice the
mind of commoners. During the debate in media nothing of
the type ever was specified, except that elders dominate.
D. Conventions, Traditions and Customs
The accusation of an allergic mode from crusaders given
expression by corporate media in current campaign for over
five years by now against Khap for following conventions,
traditions and customs that bind rural way of life as a code
sounds more biased that is steeped in prejudice than logic.
Capitalists too have their customs to follow.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
To present customs and traditions, ipso fact, good or bad
is mischievously flogging a wrong horse. Each category of
era, be it farming or commercial-industrial avocation has its
own distinct set of customs and traditions for smooth
delivery. In fact, urban areas also go with their own customs
and traditions to keep their mode of life in motion. When
rural people are asked to leave traditions and customs for
modern life, in fact, they are asked to replace one with the
other. Hatred is only to conventions, customs of rural life.
Customs with village India ipso facto do not make it
feudal. It is for the society to decide the question of rationality
and not any messiah on its behalf. Let no one beat rural India
on this account irrationally. Khap functions with its own
unwritten code. It does not make it uncontrolled bull.
Conventions, traditions and customs do not come down
from the blue; these are the tools of respective mode of life
based on method of subsistence in each era. When traditions
and customs based on agricultural life in rural India are
flogged as despicable, feudal, anti-national and anti-
development, the message is clearly for the commercial-
industrial one to take over, even if the object remains under
cover for deception. The important point to consider is as to
how it affects the social growth for the majority.
E. Bhaichara or Money Relation
The most intriguing aspect of this campaign against
Khaps and Gotra Khaps is the ridicule these elites heap on the
concept of Bhaichara. A myth is flaunted around that
Bhaichara is a worthless concept for a modern world of their
belief, only because it comes as a roadblock in the use of free
sex to turn female like a tool of sex-based industries? They
seem to be contented with money relationship instead.
Bhaichara is a close relationship of neighbourhood as
brothers and sisters through blood or deemed, like any other,
defined and practised as a natural right in villages. It is as it
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should be. None other can define it for them and thrust it on
others that would rob it of its natural content. At present,
Bhaichara is in contest with another type of relationship in
master-servant. Bhaichara is in rural setting with a definite
connotation that has become a red rag with those forces who
are spearheading a crusade to make capitalist relationship
of master-servant irretrievably dominating for the triumph
of their mode of production and distribution in the society.
While equality is the soul of Bhaichara, subordination is the
essence with master-servant relationship where money rules.
Yes, Bhaichara is irrelevant and dispensable for a world
having money/capital as its first God to live by. There is
nothing unexpected in this abnormal situation where India
is involved in a desperate contest between one culture of
family-labour based agriculture mainly represented by rural
India and individual-labour based industrial culture of
immigrants and urban India for dominance. While industrial
culture loves leg-pulling and cut-throat market instincts,
rural life survives on Bhaichara, co-sharing and cooperation!
Two are incompatibles. This is the truth of the situation.
Is it open for urbanite elite to use state power and force
their way of life and values on the rural folks? Perhaps, they
are suffering from arrogance par excellence on this aspect.
They can have no such claim of righteousness either. Rural
India lives its own life on honest labour as a birth right. This
non-negotiable right Bhaichara is not endowed by anyone
who can exercise prerogative to abolish it at wish. If change
is required, it is for them to evolve it in answer to the call.
In nutshell, the present crusade against society is a war
between these two distinct cultures that feverishly contest
for supremacy in India. It is a war not of choice with rural
society but thrust upon it by the evil forces of industrial
culture out to dominate the sky.
Let analysis continue...
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Perceptions and Perspectives
It is by now clear that rural way of life and its Khap
system are under severe attack for wrong reasons and for
unworthy cause to serve. It is also known that the current
tirade came in the backdrop of so-called honour killings that
is the effect of a definite but sponsored culture to serve a
sinister cause. You cannot punish the effect leaving out
perpetrators of the cause intact.
It would be instructive if the cause that led to the effect
in honour killings is examined dispassionately and honestly
in the interest of society and its future to eliminate the crime
as well as the real hands that feed it. If abetment to a killing
is a penal offence, all those who have caused this crime to
occur at a scale unknown in past history are to answer the
charge of culpability today or tomorrow without fail.
Those who are sponsoring revolt against parents for
freedom to have sex free from encumbrances, except
payment in cash or kind, freedom of choice in selecting
partner in sex, love marriage and the like by the immature
youngsters and adolescents to commit crime like elopement
are also then liable for abetment and conspiracy in the first
instance in matters of honour killings. However, the abettors
themselves are posing themselves as champions against
honour killings by calling Khaps killers instead and subtly
shifting the blame on them as a self defence mechanism!
Let it be understood that to kill siblings or kin by parents
and/or guardians is not a normal human fad or so easy a
task in normal circumstances. Parents are not brutes to their
Charges Examined
9 99 99
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children, unless or otherwise abnormality of highest order
prevails. Let it be clear that Gotra Khaps are extended
guardians, otherwise community or biradari loses its meaning
to assemble at call. They are not the cause for such killings;
such killings are the result of a cause abetted by vested
interests to push events and serve their economic gains.
Honour Killing or Defensive Reaction
By now, the evil seed has bloomed into a jungle of
weeds. It has taken the rural families in its grip for a fatal
plunge. Almost every family is in war with itself where its
young, more so educated one, are out to pull rag for the worst
and those who had ventured in this project with the seed
are happy over their diligent efforts. Killing of siblings and
parents as adversaries has taken the form of an unending
strife putting village life in turmoil.
For the media, these were honour killings or
retribution for a perceived right for free sex. For parents it is
a case of loosening family cohesion forever while
simultaneously betraying community mores by the
concerned family, giving a fatal blow to the system of
relationships that provides life sustaining conditions for
them. For the family the happening was like death for loosing
its rightful place in the comity of common interests in
relationship where it felt threatened for its existence, cutting
at the roots of social behaviour that had invited this
exceptional punishment in despair to their own daughter or
son against deliberate defiance so that others in line may
not suffer for generations to come.
In consequence, they court for themselves the
prescribed sentence for a criminal act of murder happily,
since they know well that such mores provide sustenance
for the family every moment as important as free air living
in a web of relationships with neighbourhood community.
For the westernised intellectuals, these murders are gross
violations of a right to life of adult individuals, while for
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Perceptions and Perspectives
parents the violators of community mores were under
obligations with no right to block future of others - a
defensive action taken in desperation. Rights go with
obligations, according to their rustic wisdom and exhibit
differences in perception of both sides are wide.
Abettors go scot free
Forces that have ignited the fire and fanned war like
situation through a concerted campaign for perceived rights
of such youths must bear responsibility to abet fatalities and
cause honour killings that are abhorrent in nature. Of late,
media barons on behalf of corporate capital have incited the
rural youth to embark upon such a course of ruin, but go
scot free of the charge of inciting it, being a powerful party.
The war of attrition between these two cultures right
within the families is raging for supremacy where educated
youths of the family are the warriors of individualism, duly
indoctrinated and supported by forces of the propertied class
in urban India, leading a fight to overturn its culture for good.
The reaction by Khap Panchayats or by the family
relations to stem this rot in rural society that is besieged for
a sponsored change in its ethos is also related to this
sponsored cause. In fact, honour killings have come in the
wake of serious provocations, with a definite background,
as an action undertaken in self-defence by families when
they felt threatened to the extent of extinction. This sense of
threat becomes more pronounced when the state has turned
abettor in the service of corporate capital, which was
however, supposed to act in favour of society.
Remember, the present campaign against rural way of
life in general and Khap in particular is a cover fire on behalf
of Indian state establishment as it is moving now sufficiently
fast towards clearing the path, overtly and covertly, in service
of money bags to make sex entertainment hassle free and
without any inhibition on demand.
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Khap
The uneasiness over this bid in rural areas of the country
was not difficult to feel, but when elite club hit at the raw
nerve on a matter of such sensitivity, tremor is the result.
The motive was apparent when the elites started hitting at
the very concept of Bhaichara prevalent in rural society. There
was no ambiguity left on their part what they want to achieve
in this campaign for possession. Once the concept of bhaichara
is gone every family is open for establishing sexual relations,
for money or otherwise as free entertainment, which the
crusaders want when their production system requires new
venues to earn super profits through industries based on
male/female sex (almost twent-five at present, including
surrogacy where a poor woman is asked to bear children
for others on money as her means to survive). This is the
liberation of woman capitalism assures!
The allegation that rural population is wary of change
has a sinister connotation; it not only belies Indian history
but virtually requires to make sex available on demand and
is stubbornly sticking to an outworn concept of shame and
honour over such affairs, finding expression in Khap.
When urban India can flourish without this concept of
Bhaichara, where is the necessity for rural folks to cling to it
and loose the race for easy riches, this elite club asks in rage.
Again, why they are so keen for rural folks to earn easy
money out of sin, when they have expropriated rural India
to the bones during last six decades with the active
connivance of state establishment? There is No answer.
The logic is perverse and deceitful. It is a bad counsel;
worth a dustbin. The logic has come to justify the concept of
freedom of choice, more particularly in context of sexual
depravity which they are sponsoring, without any sense of
shame or remorse and are asking rural India also to change
for this sinful living in dancing bars, night clubs without
hesitation and be modern like them. Finding support from
Supreme Court, the Executive and Law commission on Khap,
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Perceptions and Perspectives
these jehadist elements are bold enough now to demand the
head, heart and soul as also its will to live in dignity from
rural India. The alignment of forces is clear to the bare eye.
Khap system is sought to be extinguished to avert any
worthwhile challenge to a rule of capitalist dispensation in
this land of promise without contest for which free sex is
being utilised as a weapon to demolish a civilisation that
takes pride in its rich tradition of Bhaichara.
Let there be no misunderstanding; the crusaders against
Khap are not so much keen to modernise rural India, they
want to keep rural population in penury as its reserve army
of service-seekers for its service sector at pittance rate of
entitlements. It has sucked rural India of its resources during
past seven decades where hunger and want rule, while cities
shine at the cost of rural population.
In fact, it is the present day political economy of the
rulers that works behind the present tirade against rural
areas in the name of fighting Talibani, casteist and feudal
Khap and conservative Bhaichara! Their interest is to take it
over completely and convert its bountiful population as
dutiful servants for ever.
It is also alleged by this resourceful urbanite club of
elites that rural folks are anti-national in conduct, having a
potentiality to frighten FDI in the country away by its feudal
and conservative way of life. How? Apparently, by not
allowing its females to roam about in the market for free sex
as urban females do of upper crust to these immigrant
foreigners on jaunts here to earn profit and enjoy oriental
sex like British colonialists used to do in their hey days as
rulers? No, gentlemen, if ever you are! Rural India is not for
sale nor ready to bargain the dignity of its sexuality.
We know they have their bar culture, if at all it is culture.
Urbanites may remain content with their sexual mores and
riches. Rural India may not like such a change. We also know
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it was FDI from East India Company once that had made
this great nation crawl and they had their local collaborators
in the process. The same type of elements are at the game
again. They are evaluating FDI more important than its
citizens, their future and dignity, asking them to renounce
their culture for owners of foreign money.
If foreigners want to invest here for profit, let it be on
our conditions and not by fulfilling their base desires.
Rural India fears change, the allegation goes. But what
change, gentlemen? They are asking the rural girls to come
out from the shadows of their parents by sponsoring freedom
of choice, but why? It is only because they need girls to be
available for cat walks to happen without any inhibition
for the delight of those who have invested money in that
industry. This is the freedom you are labouring for,
gentlemen. Is it not? Be forthright in your intentions.
Let there be clarity on one point. None can blame rural
India for its forced poverty of over sixty years. None in senses
can blame it for its economic distress. Forget about fiction
characters from Munshi Prem Chand, none can compete
rural India for hard labour and honesty of purpose. Still it is
reeking in poverty. Rural India stands highly expropriated
in independent India, more than what British did in their
times. Give an ear to the facts, if you dare to know the extent
of loot on this account that made it pauper.
The Change and Sponsored Change
Rural India stands accused to be a cesspool of
conservative and caste prejudices with instinct not to change.
The charge is being repeated ad nauseam, since November,
1948 by all and sundry with glee. But to whose benefit? This
aspect of the question is as important as the original one lest
vested interests go scot free of the loop. Peasantry has proved
its grit for innovations to improve its mode of operation.
Nonetheless, the question may again be looked into afresh.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Yes, rural India must change as others are changing.
There is no point in marking times; if one marks time
unnecessarily, time will consume him/her in course. Marking
time is important sometimes for a leap though. The pointless
wait also is no option for any one in hope for a bright future.
Agreed, and without reservations. However, one point of
clarity must prevail. What change?
Without clarity about the nature of change, plunge for
it sounds a deliberate trap for sure disaster. The country once
stood cheated previously at a crucial point in its modern
history when a similar ambiguity was used.
Gandhi ji was reluctant to answer straight a query from
Bhagat Singh and his friends about the course country will
take after independence under his leadership. It was side-
tracked by saying that the question is untimely. Events later
proved that apprehension of Bhagat Singh was genuine. The
country was taken over by exploiters and people stood
cheated as he had apprehended for good reason.
So, caution is necessary on the question of change. On
a premise that villages are cesspool of ignorance representing
dark ages of history, averse to change and Khaps are its
bulwark of conservative forces, not allowing it to modernise,
a question nags. Change in whose interest?
It would benefit to remember that this allegation against
rural sector is not new; the campaign started well in the
beginning of the new innings. It was levelled in 1948. It is
again there on the table. A reasonable explanation is required.
The nature of change is as important a question as the
will to change for better. Change per se is no change for life.
Change must satisfy the future. One change is like water
flows in a stream for renewal, for keeping itself alive and
kicking. The other change is to turn the bubbling stream into
a stinking drain for industrial residue.
Change is essential in times of need for a society/
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community to survive. Perhaps, no one will dispute this too.
But a change against the future of a heavy majority of the
people is no change. India itself has much changed after 1947.
Rural population too has changed. One change was to occur
in natural course of history as it has been doing in the past,
even during the British period, despite merciless
expropriation by the foreign rulers. As an independent
nation India has changed a lot too.
During this journey of over six decades after
independence, the change has benefitted to some and ruined
the majority others. Why? It is not a secret that a minuscule
but pungently arrogant section of population is now assertive
of its existence as a powerful bull in the countrys precincts.
Its trajectory is the same that took shape during British rule
surviving on borrowed privileges from the rulers; it grew at
the cost of working population with the grace of state power.
Major section of them gets paid out of public money for
playing cards in government offices while lording over
citizenry who happen to be at their doors for begging mercy
of one kind or the other in need or get largesse for
expropriating others. Their riches are mostly from sin.
By misusing the official patronage during the last six
decades, these elites have now attained the renewed stature
of a fortune with no parallel. These are the main stay of status
quo now acting as a powerful bulwark of reaction in the
country who plead for a close proximity with imperial
aspirations and asking rural India to get out of their way for
good or be ready being kicked out. A change they aspire.
The question about the nature of change is more
relevant when the Indian economy is made to advance with
zero growth in employment and easy takeover of its natural
resources in land, forests, water and mines with the
peasantry to serve the rich of posh colonies, turning this vast
section as pauper fit for Jhuggies in these urban centres of sin,
as its srvice sector on paltry wage.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Rural India is now asked to accept the fresh position of
a facilitating server in the streets while its able-bodied
daughters to serve the frayed nerves in entertainment
industry at command, enjoying five-star comfort for a change
in a rugged and dreary life! It is out to advise rural population
for accepting this change peacefully, under its benign law
and order to bet, expressing faith in a Constitution that makes
it possible in a free country and where freedom of choice for
sex relations is the new mantra as a sure path for fame and
riches, with of course hazards of a profession to bear.
If such conditions are acceptable, riches go aplenty in
the proposed dispensation of slavery of new type that the
slogan of change implies. The only pre-requisite is to forget
about the good old frame of human relations without any
sense of loss and regret. Then enjoy as the other club
members are doing. Here lies the choice, gentlemen. Grab it
if it suits your taste and temper.
With such a pre-decided frame from a hopeless but
powerful minority to play hanka to hunt such a majority of
its citizens with a natural right to exercise its will, the
proposed change is no change but a retrograde prescription
for slavery to the rich. To follow such a path of destruction
is nothing but a blindness that leads to hell. Simply because
this minority terms it as a change cannot be accepted.
Any such change that props individualism and destroys
family, community, neighbourhood Bhaichara with resource-
less existence is bound to affect the future of this country,
destroying its rhythm irretrievably. No sensible person can
support such a path to ruin and degradation unbound.
Such a direction of change is definitely to the
disadvantage of rural population, living and surviving on
family farming with allied mode of production. Balance-
sheet of this change since 1947 is disheartening and cannot
evoke an iota of fresh confidence in its intentions.
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Khap
The Chosen Path:
Anti-national, Anti-people
There is no reason to believe that the change which has
been thrust upon this country during these six decades after
1947 on plain account is worth aspiring. Except this elite club
there is no beneficiary who can claim peace and prosperity
of a kind they had a dream to achieve and hence cannot be a
point of celebration by them. Rural India is one such sufferer
at the hands of destiny, much like Red Indians in America of
thirties of the last century. (Read: Grapes of wrath)
The nation was robbed of the opportunity on this count
and protests were diplomatically side tracked with fatal
consequences for the future of the country. Weakness lies
here. Those in the Constituent Assembly who pleaded for
rural India found themselves helpless in the end.
Compromise, did not work.
Western prescription prevailed in the final draft of
Constitution and rural India was given a short shrift with
clever but clumsy subterfuges to assuage wounded tempers.
Community and family were out and the individual found its
place instead as a basic unit of its care. It suited the new
masters if society dissolves and hapless individual rests on
its mercy with no reservation.
By now, the arrogant elites stand charged with a historic
crime against almost 80% of Indian people. This current
crusade is the final assault to demolish it by roots and
branches. See what the compromise meant to the people.
Constitution is flouted more by protagonists
Fact is glaring: mode of development imposed upon
the country went against many specific articles in the
Constitution promising a just order, which they themselves
had adopted in 1949 to a great hahulla of self praise over this
achievement; rather, proving Dr. Rajinder Prasad correct.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
The same state structure that the British had devised to
rule over Indians for greed, has worked the same way after
1947 with little change despite the new Constitution!
Members after members in the Constituent Assembly were
critical for wrong prescriptions. See again, to be brief, what
the Article 38 Indian Constitution said:
(1) The state shall strive to promote the welfare of the
people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a
social order in which justice, social, economic and political,
shall inform all institutions of the national life.
(2) The state shall, in particular, strive to minimise the
inequalities in income and endeavour to eliminate
inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only
amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people
residing in different areas or engaged in different avocations.
Article 39 stipulates that: The state shall, in particular,
direct its policy towards securing
(a) that the citizens, men and women equally, have the
right to an adequate means of livelihood
(b) that the ownership and control of the material
resources of the community are so distributed as best to
subserve the common good;
(c) that the operation of the economic system does not
result in the concentration of wealth and means of
production to the common detriment;
(d) ...... that citizens are not forced by economic necessity
to enter avocations unsuited strength to age or strength
(f) that children are given opportunities and facilities
to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom
and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected
against exploitation and against moral and material
abandonment.
Article 40 ordains that the state shall take steps to
organise village Panchayats and endow them with such
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powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them
to function as units of self-government.
Though these provisions so made were a mere
caricature what the aspirations of the people had demanded
of a free country, what was reluctantly conceded actually
translated into a farce. No comment is necessary than to say
that the provisions so described are observed more in breach.
By design, the concentration of wealth in the hands of
few, despite Constitutional directives to the contrary, has
grown at tremendous speed while the inequality in society
is at unprecedented scale as a result of a deliberate planning
to Americanise Indian society. The share in national wealth
for rural India was 63 % in 1952. It has reduced to mere 14.6%
in the year 2010 and is scheduled to be reduced to 6% by the
year 2020 on design going down by 1% of the GDP every
year. What there remains of the promise in the Constitution?
Not much in substance to demand unalloyed allegiance for
such a structure indeed.
A killing quote:
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when Im 64"
asked the Beatles in the song When Im Sixty-Four.
Like the average age of its ruling elite, today India is
over 64 years old as an independent nation, and its people
are asking their government both questions. The answer is
a resounding, No. The politicians do not need the people to
stay in power, thanks to the easily manipulated electoral
process it invented. Nor will the state feed them equitably
despite politically expedient promises to do so.
Market forces playing havoc
The issue had come into sharp focus when the country
was made to crawl before the market forces and the super
rich started playing their game unchecked. It is the market
that teaches man to be selfish, makes stealing and treachery
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Perceptions and Perspectives
as its art to excel. Present day world is what has been made
to be. Market is no friend to man or woman. It dehumanises
man, no less woman. The system too loses its sense of
proportion and priority. At times, corruption can become an
issue with it rather than the issue of farmers dying in lakhs.
Remember, British Parliament was sensitive enough in
nineteenth century when it took due notice of famines and
deaths of Indian farmers, all because of its own policies; but
now in 21
st
century the Parliament of independent India feels
no obligation towards farmers killing themselves all because
of its own policies of internal expropriation and foreign
prescriptions that pauperised rural India.
Moreover, it is not the market of Adam Smith or Ricardo
period presently. Market is no free game now. It is controlled,
contrived and manipulated by the super rich, world over.
Those who openly declared their intention to go for market
forces in 1991 in India knew this bare truth. Still, they
marketed it without least care for the consequences to its
citizens, barring a handful of super rich.
There is another law. The market forces require
capitalising everything in its reach, including human values
and emotions. Commoditisation of anything and everything
in human relations too for the benefit of super-profit is
inherent in the game. Still it was opted deliberately, with
little or no mind for social deficit.
The political elite have contributed hugely to bring the
country to this stage when everyone is scared of its future.
Poverty is a factor, and the state has used it to keep itself
rich and the people poor. It gave Indians a delusion of being
independent of state benevolence and good economics
would minimize the role of bad politics.
Moral corruption in policymaking and its ideology,
disguised in calls for inclusive growth and welfare
schemes, has atrophied our muscles at 64, making us less
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attractive as a model for the world to follow. Loving us even
less are our corporate houses, which are taking their
businesses and their charitable impulses abroad. Mahindra,
Ambani, Narayana Murthy, Nilekani, and such others
became super rich over night at the cost of hunger and
suicides of farmers thanks to the reforms of dubious
character to have riches enough for donating millions to
Harvard, Yale, Cornell and Penn State universities that
hardly need money, but where they believe it will be a better
business. So, their patriotism vanishes the moment they are
asked to behave or if their profit reduces by a mere paisa.
Fruits of development: How is India Doing
As per Human Development Report, India languishes
at 126
th
level out of 177 countries at the age of 64 years. The
International Food Policy Research Institutes Global Hunger
Index ranks India 94
th
out of 118 countries surveyed. The
World Food Programme estimates that over half of our
children suffer from severe or moderate malnourishment.
Sixty seven out of 1000 thousand children born in India die
before the age of five. Despite a national policy for
compulsory primary education, less than 50 per cent of
children have access to proper education.
Even these appalling numbers are often generous
figures, quite far from the truth! Director of the UN Research
Institute for Social Development says that the Indian
governments claims of poverty reduction are not reliable;
he notes ...Indian data is always controversial. Professor
Brij Kothari of IIM Ahmadabad maintains that the 65.4
percent literacy rate published by the 2001 census is highly
exaggerated, and not based on proper evaluation of the
childrens ability to read and write. Millions of those
classified as literate cannot actually read, his study found.
This is official data of achievement. And this modern India
of the elites for which rural India is asked to bend in
obedience and accept the future of this make.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
On the basis of the National Sample Survey data on
calorie intake for 1999-2000, Professor Utsa Patnaik found
that 70 per cent of the Indian population was at or below the
poverty line fixed by the Planning Commission in 1979 -
having 2400 calories per person per day. She also calculated
that an average family of five was consuming at least 200 kg
of grain less each year than 50 years ago. Food grains are
available, but the poor do not have the money to purchase
their requirement. Such is the story of development for
common man during these last 64 years of market
benevolence from the stable of renound economist in power.
The World Banks own estimate of poverty in 2007 has
been radically revised by new cost of living data which draws
the new poverty line at 1.25 dollars at 2005 purchasing power
parity. On this basis 41.6 per cent of Indias population - or
456 million people live below the poverty line. This is about
one third of worlds poor population. Even this World Bank
data is an underestimate because it does not adequately cover
the rural areas where the vast majority of poor live.
The National Commission for Enterprises in the
Unorganised Sector in its report, entitled Report on the
Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the
Unorganised Sector says that over 394.9 million workers (86
% of working population) belong to the unorganised sector
and work under utterly deplorable conditions with
extremely few livelihood options.
The Commissions data is based on National Sample
Survey (NSS) studies. Going by its statistics, it was found
that while 235 million people are in a position to take care of
themselves, an unbelievable 836 million people, or 77 per
cent of the population, require assistance from state or any
other social security network for mere survival. It is the
picture after over six decades of development for which
sacrifice from the workingmen is being asked for with no
question raised to the intention of this development.
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Objective criteria needed
According to Multidimensional Poverty Indicators
developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development
Initiative and applied by the Human Development Index
(HDI) 2010, the proportion of BPL families in India is 55.4
per cent of the population. Bihar fares poorest, with 61.4 per
cent of the people below the poverty line, while Kerala has
the lowest fraction of BPL people - 40.9 per cent. Inequality
has doubled during last twenty years. It has created 61
billionaires with combined wealth of $ 250 billion or 100
richest Indians owning equivalent to one-fourth of its GDP
and 80 % population with 20 rupees or less per day to depend
upon for bare survival after two decades of globalisation spree.
To the utter delight of western and eastern corporations
there is a huge market being created for the white goods
and automobile makers and huge demand for the products
says Director of the Centre for Macro Consumer Research
(Economic Times) boosted by the state what Global Research
defines through an economic system that ensures the flow
of wealth to go upwards via what academic David Harvey
calls accumulation by dispossession and ensuring a
congenial law and (dis)order at the same time.
For the opportunity to live in dignity, less said the better.
Almost 80% of population has been written off register of
rulers now; for them about 20% of population remains as
real India to its care. The whole planning process and
executive function works for this minority percentage.
The welfare schemes for the rest in fact are mere lollipop
that too under compulsions of electoral politics with little to
ameliorate the pangs of large scale deprivation ever let loose
by its liberal policies for the benefit of big fishes - both Indian
and foreign. Food Security Act, 2013 is the latet eloquent
testimony where Indian state is faced to the wrath of poverty
despite development while pushing ahead its policy of
robbing poor to pay the rich under its commitments to WTO.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
The level of mental and physical servility can be gauged
from the fact that Indian leadership had meekly accepted
the advice to India from American representative at the
conclave that met to finalise the agreement on WTO in 1994,
to plan/work only for 20 % of real India. And media duly
forgot to raise questions over such servility to American
dictates that proved disastrous for Indian masses.
Again, when Indian rulers had launched its march to
liberalise economy for the benefit of corporate capital, the
corporate media conveniently forgot to remind the leaders
of Constitutional provisions, violation of which has ruined
these 80% of population in respect of little chance they had
to find opportunity for a survival in a wild world of sharks.
This is perhaps enough to recount about the respect
ruling establishment has about Constitution of the land while
it is extra vigilant in asking rural India to obey it on Khap, at
the cost of their very life. The reason for this duplicity is not
difficult to decipher though. Perhaps, dutifully, media is
working to keep a lid on its masters deeds.
Lies and damn lies
(2) Media was eloquent and alleged that Khap is a Jat
institution. It did not tell the basis of the charge. Let us
examine: To gain control of the situation and succeed, the
current crusade against Khaps is crude enough to sow seeds
of discord and disruption in the rural camp, since it fears
unity of the adversary most. Quite understandable. But it
surprised many in the profession when all of a sudden the
powerful section of media, disregarding its own code not to
help flaring up caste, regional and religious divide, so
shamelessly resorted to fanning caste prejudice by describing
Khap as a Jat institution without any basis and continued
hammering repeatedly that it is confined only to North India.
It is not possible to whip up caste and regional passions
without some overt or covert purpose. Which are the forces
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that are behind this game of divide and rule? And who are
its beneficiaries? Sequence of events is a better guide.
Rulers always survive by this divisive game, sages say.
But there is a specific background behind Indian tragedy. It
lies in its late entry in the race for capitalist dream to translate
where majority is destined to serve minority and the state is
wedded to manipulate governance for the rich.
The story starts fresh from 1947 with realigned political
forces contending for capturing/sharing newly gained state
power, circumscribed by the dynamics of an electoral game
based on adult suffrage. First was the stage when these forces
contended to win support of people on the strength of
respective policies, governance, programmes, deliverance
and a manipulated ideology of dubious value to society.
The second stage opened soon after sheen of the first
peeled off and got a serious beating when contending parties
lost credibility for their commitment to proclaimed principles
and were too short on translation with mastery on
manipulation of facts but profilgate on promises, while
different limbs of administration lost their posture of relative
neutrality completely and collapsed to deliver, except on
push by money power. The rule of law survived where law
was subordinate to money power and rule became nothing
but order of oppression. It gave rise to a different channel.
Caste polarisation
In given circumstances of political bankruptcy caste
polarisation became the rule. While common man/woman
increasingly became isolated and found all social security
net gone with slow collapse of family/community cohesion
because of deliberate policy of neutralising these social
institutions by state under its economic commitments,
political parties resorted to strike bargain with social
engineering for electoral gain. This paved way for caste
polarisation as a matter of survival for these partes.
(104)
Perceptions and Perspectives
The adversaries of Khap knew well that the practice is
common to all communities for resolving their issues
amicably since ages everywhere and any attack on it may
invite serious challenge from all. They also knew that the
level of caste animosity against each other is hyperactive in
India due to a planned polarisation for electoral politics.
By projecting this campaign against Jats, the media
apparently sought to frighten down expected protests from
other communities for supporting Khap practice and leaving
Jats alone to fight the onslaught. It was the divide and win
strategy, well thought out and planned to details.
So, the arguments and vehemence in the media as well
as the political establishment, including NGO sector reflected
a remarkable similarity. When entertainment industry,
especially film industry entered the campaign to supplement
it, cat was out of bag literally.
Unfortunately for rural India, the other communities
tolerated the present crusade against Jats as such and kept
themselves aloof from protest. They could not grasp the
common danger inherent in the campaign. In consequence,
the establishment found new zeal to interfere in life of the
communities, which both law of the land and practice so far
do not allow it to do.
Law Commission was harnessed to propose curtailment
and suppression of natural rights of communities/citizens
in the name of taming Khap with no protest from any other
quarter than Jats. The monster however worked to plan and
to their entire satisfaction! A known strategy of all the
crooked to beat the victims to blue, indeed worked for a while
to its advantage. Events on record tell this story.
It was also alleged that the problem of khap is confined
merely to certain areas in north India. Thereby, the idea was
to create a feeling that its appeal is limited to a small area
while what these wise men are pleading about relates to the
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advantage of majority areas. Later, same media conceded
that incidents of honour killing do occur in MP, Maharashtra
and deep in South as also in other communities with the
same intensity against depraved behaviour on flirt sex.
(3) About its feudal parentage less said the better. Who
is a Lord and who is a Serf in Khap? It shows only the
ignorance or prejudice or both about Khaps. Yes, there are
elders in khap to help and guide the deliberations. Still they
are not like advocates in the court to plead on the strength
of a contract. None can dispute this. Then, what is wrong if
elders are there in an assembly to resolve issues/ dispute
among kin or a Bhaichara conclave? Only senile can object.
(4) To fight out Bhaichara, reason exists: content that their
campaign for free love has taken roots among rural youth
by now courtesy their intense work of last two decades,
corporate capital has come to conclude that the community
feeling among rural people is the hurdle to move ahead in
taking over rural economy. They are out to extinguish the
very defence mechanism of rural population. Khaps have
come to be the first target to strike at.
(5) The charge that rural India is conservative in
character and a hurdle in the path of modern India is true if
progress means hassle free sex for riches. It is also alleged
that Khap is anti-development on the plea that country needs
more foreign money for investment (FDI) and khaps frighten
the guests with their conservative attitude on sex.
This argument carried by media while fighting Khap
practice in rural areas is astounding to say it mildly: do they
intend to say that for development such foreign guests with
money in pockets have to be provided freely available sex
in addition to the fabulous profit through expropriation? Do
they want to trade Indian females for riches? Who needs
such development at the cost of dignity? It is a shameless
advocacy for prostitution. Do these gentlemen want to say
that globalisation of economy means this change too?
(106)
Perceptions and Perspectives
The only relevance of this charge in context of the
present controversy on honour killings on questions of love,
marriage and sex means conversely that khap should not
oppose free sex and the right to freedom of choice in such
matters to allow industries flourish on the strength of male
and female sexuality. Why khap or for that matter anybody
should support such a demand for a sinful profession to
prosper at the cost of social cohesion, is the question.
This charge can be true only if it is conceded that by
modernity they mean industrial-commercial culture where
it is money, and not human relations, that dominate when
one does not need fellow members of the family and
community but the money alone to regulate relations from
economic to social, cultural and sexual, if sexuality is taken
as an asset on sale and purchase overtly or covertly, to bet. It
has nothing to do with love as a human trait with emotional
value of much higher level than craze to exploit sex.
The Liberating Elements :
Dignity of Woman or Her Sexuality
In this campaign against Khap practice, so-called honour
killing is the mascot with right of choice as a central piece of
faith, raging a debate on matters sex, sexuality and marriage
of late in public domain and the effort seems to keep the
subject boiling by all leading media centres. NGO sector and
the feminists groups particularly, wittingly or unwittingly
are putting hard labour on these questions seizing upon any
opportunity to do it. Sometimes it appears that few vested
interests are behind this tirade like fashion industry, mobile
and ready made garment firms.
A case is being made as if sex, sexuality (they talk less
about love though) are the only defining contours of women
liberation. It has brought such aspects of human life to streets
which normally had been the subject of privacy between
husband and wife till now, inflaming an artificial urge for
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sexual orgy between immature and raw urchins as subject
of enjoyment and fun. They are being made to feel as if doors
of bliss have opened, not available to them before in a closed
society on this aspect of life a subtle way to win over
immature minds before they could get real feel of life.
All this nonsense is being talked about in a society
which normally is closed on more essential things for
survival. For it trade secrets of traders and manufacturers,
event secrets that rob society and consumers are sacrosanct
and more important to guard than the good of society. But it
is more keen to open bed rooms for invasion to commercial
interests leading to even wide spread depravity in sexual
matters. Hell to society for it in the interests of commercial
gains, this is its law! Sex is another drug it is encouraging.
A full-fledged campaign is on to draw urchins,
adolescents and youths to wild fantasies woven around
female sexuality. It cannot go on without the support of state
establishment and the money bags. Depiction of woman in
despicable nudity and eulogising such streetwalkers, society
girls or boys as heroes is like turning sexual depravity
socially acceptable and honourable, though legally a crime.
No one from feminist faith ever takes notice of how woman
is being degraded in public mind by such depiction and her
dignity getting a beating. Who is providing this laxity and
why, question begs a reasonable answer.
The questions of sex, sexuality and marriage are
important for all those only who need to know intricacies
involved and beat ignorance at particular stage in life. Proper
counselling may solves their problems. The present unruly
debate has not benefitted any one, neither the woman nor
the man or the child. It also needs to be underlined that these
aspects of social life are not questions relating only to women,
unless the approach is sectarian for some underhand
purpose. In relation to the liberation of woman from any
perceived or real oppression of any kind it is the question of
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Perceptions and Perspectives
her dignity more important than sex, sexuality and marriage,
if her position in larger context has to be studied and
deviation contested. This is the first point of difference with
these protagonists of sexual anarchy.
One noted historian academic from Haryana, who
knows her region from urban settings, has in a recent piece
surmises marriage of women as control of female sexuality
and bestowal of this sexuality in marriage, meaning that a
female has no control over her own self. This is the crux of
feminist approach to women problems these days and an
academic view of looking at things divorced from real touch.
She did not answer, however, what self-control on sex
anarchy will imply for a dignified woman in case one is
married and for an unmarried one.
Here, sexual relation between husband and wife is
surmised as control. But it is mutual control in a married
life, otherwise, saying this amounts to debunking monogamy.
The marriage affair is taken as a subject of sole male
(patriarch) decision, which in a family cannot and does not
happen. It normally takes months/years together of wide
consultations before a relationship is decided to be part of
this web of relationships. She has not answered whether this
control of sexuality in marriage is a one sided affair.
The whole edifice of feminism (as a distinct philosophy
based on individualism) seems to rest upon this premise of
looking at things partially and in a coloured fashion creating
artificial fission between two compatible categories of human
life. This is the reason why heavy majority of female
population does not care about such rants and raves from a
sponsored campaign of the upper crust of society, except
youngsters of raw and impressionable age where the danger
to society lies. In simple terms, the attack is on the institution
of marriage, leading to a plea for unregulated sex in adultry.
Hell with society and social fabric, if the right of love
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between two individuals is not appreciated, such is the logic
in desperation from these quarters in debate, knowing well
that Heer-Ranjha phenomenon is not the rule in normal
human life and bereft of society, man can reduce to animal
world of dwarfs. The very existence of social fabric is thus
made subject to the supremacy of sex love between two
individuals, where love itself generally takes a few weeks
to wear off. Such is the logic of these anarchic narcissists
and their pleaders!
While the said historian notes that customary rules that
regulate marriages in most parts of India, especially northern
India, are based upon caste endogamy, on the one hand, and
Gotra, village or territorial exogamy on the other. Any breach
of the customary practices leads to direct violence since the
law on marriages go directly against the customary practice.
If one can recollect the fact, having state power in hand just
after independence, Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 was enacted
in haste on a different premise to usher in a uniform code
for an unwilling heterogeneous Hindu society. This is the
reason it could not work on certain aspects till now. For
example, this Act prohibits marriage with the widow of a
brother. You try your hand in enforcing this provision in
law and reap unrest of unprecedent scale, if one likes.
At least in northern part of the country among
peasantry such a marriage is a normal practice, despite what
this Manuwadi law prescribes. So, if this legislation of 1955
allows marriage between two adult individuals within Gotra
and within a village two hoots for it. Gotra prohibitions do
not loose the force and disappear only because it is enough
old practice. It makes no sense that an old practice to hold
mother sacrosanct and in reverence does not hold relevance,
unless one is bent upon to go out in the camp of lunatics.
The academic historian does not explain what motive
had impelled in enacting such archaic law to force things by
back door on a whole peasant community without their
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Perceptions and Perspectives
consent. Then, now after six decades to make an issue of
this deceitful law to force inter-gotra and inter-village
marriages giving death blow to the concept of brotherhood
that sustain village life and sustenance agriculture is nothing
short of brigandry and make such a legislative piece so
sacrosanct as to sacrifice the social fabric. Such reverence to
laws is unknown to jurisprudence even with the law makers.
But the servility of so-called Marxists to this law to beat
peasantry white is astoundingly revealing to their open faith
in capitalist order of the day. They cannot claim clemency
for betrayal to the concept of revolutionary thought and
practice, if sexual anarchism is not their new faith.
As an academic, she must know that no law should
cross arbitrarily the limits of customary practices of a large
section of society in pursuit of individual right at the cost of
social/political peace. But, perhaps social peace is not the
agenda with powers that be in order to keep the pot boiling
for another agenda to gain ground instead.
She admits that honour is a highly elusive and
indefinable notion, still she goes on with the concept in usual
usage. Perhaps her personal opinion is coloured by the
feminist perceptions as normally such educated women
carry this big baggage without much critical study these
days- an education system that colours vision on a sponsored
project as a legacy of colonial past with Macaulay in
command still. To look at sex, sexuality and marriage from
feminist perspective seems to be the problem when matters
are twisted to propagate individualism with its narcissist
implications to social movement.
Marriage and sex are not ladders for career
improvement which the newly educated class of careerists
is out to turn it one of late. This is a general trend among
them which goes in conflict with the previous concept
prevalent in rural society that is breeding a conflict situation
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of high magnitude. For this class both marriage and sex are
commodities that turns the woman as an object of indignity
in market economy, more degrading than any perceived or
real conflict in the previous dispensation.
Let us remember: woman is not an object of sex, neither
a means for entertainment. If agreed, think again. The money
bags in entertainment and tourism industry will invent the
slogans of women liberation that very moment and make
life hell for the rulers as Jean-walas and mobile-walas are
doing of late, reaching even to the corridors of higher courts,
making it a right to wear or tear one, despite the
constitutional prescription of public decency.
It is true that woman is continuously being crafted to
be an object of entertainment at the cost of dignity as a human
being, duly helped by state institutions, including the heavily
paid NGOs sector, sponsored by certain foreign interests like
IMF, World Bank etc who are out to control the whole
economy of this country afresh through other means.
Unfortunately, a sizable section of educated women is
already victim to allurement of these degrading pursuits in
entertainment avocations for livelihood in the age of
contrived unemployment where captains of industry are
trying hard to sell the idea to young rural girls who reach
centres of education, while not answering why industry has
gone sterile in providing useful and dignified employment?
What they preach instead is not freedom, but a contrived
trap. Such academicians must study this aspect too while
dealing with questions of sex, sexuality and marriage for
females. It must be emphasised that men, women are born
for dignified pursuits and not to serve private interests of
money bags on the strength of their dirty left-over crumbs.
Sex urge may be natural at a particular age and for a
definite age-span among humans, so to animal world too.
But in humans it is subject to control and regulation at will.
(112)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Celibacy is as good a phenomenon among them as
promiscuity is with loose ends. Man/woman is not and
cannot be slave to sexuality unless it is taken as a tool for
enjoyment taking male/female as a saleable tool. And sale
or purchase of a human being is not the modern idea! Only
a crafty trader can go to this extent for selfish interests.
When someone propounds that sex is the pivot to
human behaviour it goes beyond the realm of reality to plead
for a fantasy that has catered to the cause of commercial
interests, when organs of procreation so developed in nature
are converted to be tools of joy by crafty minds.
It is for nothing that corporate world has taken this
premise to heart since then as an effective tool for its
unaccounted riches. Let us go back a little and ask: what
was the reason that society in general once had remained
largely not infected by the sexual depravity of rulers in
bygone period of lords; they remained objects of despise on
this account from their subjects?
Sex urge is a product of biological growth at a particular
age of maturity to handle sensibly, unless someone ignites it
artificially in his/her brain as is being done for some time
past with definite agenda to fulfil.
The current outburst of this sex urge among all sections
of Indian society too is a result of a relentless effort in
conditioning society for this new found faith through a
purposely designed campaign to involve human material
in sex orgies like they do on drugs.
Pornography is a super-profit venture these days that
also is serving to condition society in unregulated and
perverted sex to drug the society dull. It is part of a big game.
Watch out the events of last four or five decades and the
criminal hands at the plot will tumble down from these
stinking cupboards. Surely, society is not what marketeers
running after private profit entertain for social good!
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Double irony
Let us see the result of this sposored feminist campaign:
it is a double irony that this feminist humbug for over two
decades has been so eloquent on free choice in matters sex
as a matter of right denouncing family control on urchins
going deviant and are virulent on Khaps for talibani dictats
on one side, while the same elements turn hyper-active when
such deviants as product of their campaign go amuck on
sexual orgies just for fun as free individuals!!
The immediate target of this design is clear to bare eye:
(1) breaking the family, including its neighbourhood
community relationships, (2) demolishing social institution
of marriage through a counter cultural revolution of sorts
and (3) making subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry,
handicraft etc bust, duly helped by legislations and the law
courts for easy take over by capitalists is the agenda.
The concepts of gay-marriage and live-in relationships
are few fresh inventions found in this direction through re-
interpretation of the same old laws in India recently, perhaps
to provide congenial atmosphere here to the visiting bigwigs
with lot of money to invest as also to hordes of tourists in
search of eastern tourist girls for sweet company.
At a time when the robust economy has been led to a
zero employment phase in its onward march to progress
through liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation
process, the doors are being opened for our young to engage
in such degrading pursuits for survival.
Secondly, hitting the very concept of Bhaichara
(brotherhood), otherwise an exalted human quality, came
under so severe an attack as something remnant of
conservative past when corporate media suddenly found
that it is the rock bottom foundation of Khaps that work as
umbrella to tide over difficult moments in rural hinterland,
ignoring the fact totally that subsistence agriculture will
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Perceptions and Perspectives
collapse the day this concept vanishes, more so in areas
where female labour is a major contributing part of this task
as in Haryana. It may be underlined that customs and
practices with the working people are not for fancy sake,
unlike with those who live by the labour of others.
How to relate these developments of these two decades
and plus of upper class prosperity through this LPG and
such sexual depravity of our youngsters as the rising graph
in rape cases show, other than the premise that sexual
depravity is a purposefully sponsored game like the British
did once to make China dull on opium. The feminist
approach to female sex, sexuality and marriage is surely
leading us to this uncharted course of non-relationships by
breaking family and community relationships.
Man and woman are compatibles to each other in
nature, despite man made incompatibility between both.
Those who are powerful enough to make them incompatibles
have axe to grind in a divided world of private interests.
And private interests have not been ordained by nature,
these are man-made. This is history. These can be then over
turned, if both decide and divisive elements are isolated.
Woman and man in natural growth have attained
compatibility for perpetuating their race as one of their
important task, if both will. Sexuality of both is a related
feature to that end and marriage is a social sanction for this
compatibility while certifying dignity of both in the web of
social relations to keep order in a settled community. This is
how relations have emerged to sustain harmony.
With the advent of industrial-commercial mode of
production and distribution, this element of entertainment
in sex is the worst intervention one could do to woman and
man relationship, more so to woman; she has virtually been
turned into a commodity as also raw material that is now
directly feeding industries in India, including modelling, cat
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walks (forgetting human walks) without adding anything
worth to the wealth of nations, except the fictional GDP for
easy illusions to work with. Rulers know it.
Marriage is a socially regulated aspect of sex life
between two compatibles, whereas forced sex is
unproductive and criminal act to the detriment of social
order. This sensibility underlines rural life in general. One
aspect need be stressed in this debate on sex, sexuality and
marriage: who needs uninhibited sex free from social taboos
or sex at demand? Why a woman in dignity would like to be
as a chattel at all for sex on demand? Clearly, reference here
is about women, not overt or covert, lowly or high-heeled
prostitutes of any gender by will.
Sex, sexuality and marriage are questions of social
interaction between human beings. If market forces start
conducting this interaction, rather than on the basis of social
mores the problem is bound to burst in the face, sooner or
later. There is no escape from the tragedy. In fact it has
already started unfolding with disastrous effects.
In defence of free sex is a concept of right for the
individual to roam free and do whatever one likes, with no
concern for neighbours and those parents who do bone-
breaking labour to bring up him/her in comfort. In such a
scenario parents are supposed to observe obligation to the
kids with no comparable rights? If conceded, this will
ultimately lead to a situation where parents also one day
may find themselves free from obligations to siblings of no
use to them. It will be a sad day.
What type of human being will be one who is detached
from all social environs except money spinning individuals?
It is leading to anarchy in relations, with contempt for family
and community for the sake of momentary sexual freedom!
There is no denying the fact that sexuality is a personal
trait but that necessarily resides within the ambit of social
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obligation to each other as normal citizens exercise it. Rights
are subject to public morality and decency, even under law.
As a result, sexuality does not remain a personal trait to
exercise. If sex is a profession or passion having serious social
ramification no system can remain unconcerned, unless one
chooses to remain anarchic.
It is a tragedy of sorts: in the era of employment-less
development forced on society by LPG policies in the service
of corporate capital, unemployed youths are being made
conscious constantly of a fallacy by those very forces who
closed venues of employment for them in their blind pursuit
of super-profit by opting such a path of development and
are now asking them to use their sexuality as an easy avenue
to riches. like any other man do with their assets. Corporate
media is happy to sell the idea and assure full support to
such forays without any guilt for a social betrayal. The newly
propped up middle class with aspirations to catch the sky at
the earliest is true to its flimsy character for grabbing the
bait, without realising the social cost.
There is another tragedy: the demand for employment
has yielded place to much more shrill a demand for freedom
of choice instead by the youths with a right of exclusive
ownership over their bodies to use as they like and their ire
is redirected to their own elders. The stratagem has worked
to the script and day is saved for the real culprits who
destroyed the future of middle class youths.
Youth and Sexuality
The first charge against those who have ruled India for
as long as six decades, emerges that they have deliberately
pushed the youth of this country to a brute and criminal life
in matters of sex. They have to answer it first. They played
with the life of a vibrant nation.
If one claims that such sex depravity is in the very nature
of youth, let them answer as to why there were no cases of
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honour killings or rapes before 1947 as these are today when
the country was considered much more poverty-stricken and
less developed? If sexual surge is such a driving force coming
naturally with youths - both boys and girls, as is made out
to be by the vested interests day and night to justify any and
every act of deviant behaviour, how to explain its lack of
such depravity about sexual behaviour among the virtually
naked aborigines roaming on this planet, including India?
In fact, ruling establishment stands charged that present
edition of sexual urge among youths is the product of an
effort to make the nation modern of their script. .
Understanding the Problem:
Love/sex, marriage, honour killing and development
To understand the problem let us elaborate a bit. In the
current campaign the core accusation against Khap relates
to the question of so-called honour killings. Despite hard
facts to the contrary, the accusation goes on parroting
relentlessly. For example, police officials testified in Supreme
Court on the basis of records that there is not a single case
since January 2001 to 31 December, 2011 where Khap stands
accused of honour killings in Haryana.
Those enterprising journalists, with definite affiliations
of a particular political creed, that go on accusing Khaps for
such cases are merely illiterates who do not want to learn
that khap does not and can not exist at village level. They do
not want to understand that khap and Gotra khap are two
different things. In Manoj-Babli case, the concerned journalist
belonging to a national newspaper merely documented
entirely the prosecution theory in her book to propound their
pet theories about honour killings by khaps in the state.
One thing is sure; the rustics of rural India are no
brutes; they are human beings with a better sense of human
values, emotions and sensibilities than the sharks out to kill
for money living in city environs. The practitioners of Khap
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Perceptions and Perspectives
do never conspire even against adversaries what to say about
their own children. When they decide reluctantly to punish
deviant kin; it is within the ambit of Ha, Ma, Dhik principle.
They are more attached to their welfare than anybody else.
To take the life of kin is not as easy with them as it is
with exploiters. For punishment, murder is not so convenient
an option as is made out by these sham well wishers. Neither
the problem of family honour is so cheap with man or his
family to dispense it so conveniently. Let it be understood.
When a mother or father happens to kill any of his/her
kin for any reason whatsoever, remember, the intensity of
provocation involved. Who has provided this level of
provocation in the first instance? None else than those who
have put the society to such a stage of crass self-seekers and
this very club of elites who is out to make sex so cheap on the
street to place rural India on the path of a war with itself.
But who put our young on this path of sexual deprivity?
Definitely, it is not a father or a mother? Who then is training
the innocent youngsters to such a path of ruin?
Surely, the first lesson to students comes from the
government itself who starts training students from primary
classes onward by involving them in dance and songs as
part of so-called cultural activities.
Where is the manadate from parents to initiate students
at tender age for such nasty activities beyond the pale of
curriculum? Do parents constitute such a dispensible
category in relation to their own children? If an urchin starts
life with Haath mein katora, peir mein ghoongroo one can
imagine what will be the fate of this nation! When students
reach universities and colleges they already stand initiated
for such vulgarity in sex games.
Khaps are accused of being anti-national, anti-
development by frightening FDI with their conservative
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approach to sex. But who made FDI a pre-requisite to
development? Not the people, neither the khaps. There was
no such mandate to the rulers. They did it on the bidding of
money bags. And development by trading sex of Indian
women? Shameless people only who have no sense of human
dignity can utter such nonesense.
The government first started posing FDI as an essential
condition for development since 1991, throwing out self-
reliance policy and now the argument goes to make a
congenial atmosphere for these investors from Europe, with
their culture of sex as a tool for recreation and making profit
from such industries whose raw material is male/female sex.
The corporate media in tow is busy to make India soft as a
drum boy for this life style.
Another accusation against khap is about its caste
affiliation. The experience testifies that rural population is
less caste and gender ridden than these modern and
educated elites are. The recent census data corroborates that
prejudice against female births is more pronounced and the
span of married life is shortest in this section of population
with a skewed mindset because of education and economic
status they have gained rather than the unlettered rural folks
in India with no such privileges of a modern life!
If these contentions are wrong, let one question be
answered forthrightly: who has benefitted from this
campaign of two decades for making sex as liberal as is
available on demand in European markets?
It has led to provide congenial or homely environment
with humour tours, live-in relationship, homosexuality or
contract marriages for big cats here on professional jaunts
or just on a visit in search of low cost freewheeling, as a tool
of entertainment and simultaneously boosted designer
apparel industry, film industry, tourism and hotel industry,
cosmetic industry, beauty and massage parlours,
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Perceptions and Perspectives
advertisement, fashion industry, surrogacy and the like
(more than twenty five in number at present) where female
and male sex or sexuality is the raw material.
It is an incontrovertible fact that this market and the
concerned industries cannot flourish until woman is
liberated from homely sense of shame for selling sex. This
job is accomplished through the so-called philosophy of
feminism with such concepts like freedom of choice and
individuality - the base of existential concept of life that is
bereft of social content, pushing the young girls and boys
out of homes to the wilderness of city market as a means to
fame, riches and flourish, no matter to what cost.
To turn rural India as the supplier of young boys and
girls for this city markets in search of low-cost, highest return
and least risk industry newly invented on the strength of
Freudian concepts, rural rustics are now asked to follow
this prescription of a rotten life style, no matter how
obnoxious it may be to social mores in the country.
This is the model they are asking rural India to adopt.
These people arrogate to self the right to decide for others
how they are to lead their lives, without even nominal debate
and are out to dictate terms for existence as citizens.
These brown Sahibs, radiant with arrogance on
questions of right and wrong, are claiming the whole wisdom
on issues, social and cultural involved and are out to decide
what the other India has to follow. The threat of legal
murders to practitioners of dissent to their system of values
speaks volumes in this regard. This is purely an imperial
mindset, and surely, it has nothing to do with democratic
percepts values they do not tire to laud.
By regimenting the thinking faculty and relentless
indoctrination of the people through education process and
such a media campaign, they may allure a section of youths
from rural families to its side who are in dark about what is
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awaiting them. But it is sure that rural Bharat is not amused
with this effort to convert it; modernity or no modernity.
It will be many times happy with its own conservative
life style, if given a chance to survive, rather than prefer a
half-clad, non-clad but decadent body of selfish life these
urbanites prefer to flaunt as its progress. But, perhaps elites
of this nation are bent upon to convert them, whatever the
cost unless their hands are forced to stop in tracks. The task
is urgent that needs immediate reaction for remedy.
Traditions and customs:
Another funny accusation against rural folks is about
their blind adherence to traditions and customs, as if this is
enough a crime to invite low grade citizenship, especially
when questions of marriage and dispute resolution are under
scrutiny; both aspects so close to their life style.
If someone is averse to tradition or custom terming it
feudal, the position will be ridiculous. Take a simple example
to understand: there is tradition to treat the mother unlike a
Bhabi or a wife in conduct and behaviour, which has come
through ages. How this differential conduct is feudal on
tradition and sufficient cause to leave it? Then what to replace
with? The question cannot be answered by labelling it as
moral policing. Britain goes by an unwritten Constitution,
consisting mainly of traditions and customs! Is it logical to
brand Britain of today then as a feudal state, which it is not
by any old or new standard to judge, except fancy?
If rural India insists to follow its own traditions and
customs, more so in relation to family affairs, no one can
reasonably argue it otherwise. The present set of
jurisprudence too does not exclude traditions and customs.
Problem arises only when Brahmanical customs are sought
to apply for all through law in a society of diversity.
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Another fatal myth works like a gauntlet in the present
day world that education basically is a worthy tool for a
civilised life. Beware of it. It is a tool, no doubt, but today in
the hands of rulers to shape the mind of the ruled in their
own image. This explains why one finds educated class today
generally hostile to village life and its ethos on one pretext
or the other. Explanation is desired.
Present education system in India is not its own
creation. It has a Macaulay pedigree in thrust and content.
With the given object basically of keeping Indians tied to an
exploitative mode, the education created a class of people
who excelled in appreciating everything European and
despise rural India as plague.
Unfortunately, after over six decades of independence,
basically its task is the same with one more addition that
everything American is bliss. Previously also education was
to help the growth of colonial economy and now its task is
to help the growth of capitalist relations in economy and
socio-cultural field to advance its interests. Knowledge
seeking is tuned to this main object. In context of the current
subject of this study it can be laid bare.
It is not surprising that village life with its ethics, mores
and conventions are anathema to almost all educated class,
including those who otherwise marvel in their rural ancestry
and go to enjoy weekends there. They all despise rural ethos.
Education system has worked hard to produce this class and
highly indoctrinated them in city mores based on individual
rights and take their elders as intruders in their lives. They
are tuned to exercise command on their atomised family
affairs themselves.
Education A Tool To Rule
10 10 10 10 10
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Having such tuning, the critics of Khaps/ Gotra Khaps
among the intellectual community are mainly those who are
themselves crusaders of existential freedom in the name of
love and sex taking sex as love and giving the family and
community mores a go by in pursuit of an elusive satisfaction
within a world of dissatisfaction on failures at the hands of
superior competitors in the market. Perhaps, who hold sex
as entertainment made available freely, are out to take refuge
in S. Freud as philosopher and smell danger in Khap to
achieve sizeable company for comfort, after frayed nerves
with a day of over-work in the service of masters in
pampered city centres of night life! It is a breed differently
crafted by a system of education for an exploitative mode.
One or two illustration will do. Once a chance dialogue
with a research scholar from MDU Rohtak it transpired that
patriarchy is what she has learnt from the teachers. It was
an admission after her relations with the father and husband
were found exceptionally dotting with her own attachment
to her small daughter like a deeply emotional mother. Still,
the lady was a fully convinced subscriber to the feminist
concept of freedom from dependence syndrome.
The same University, in response to one query under
RTI, claims that it feels no obligation to consult parents before
utilising the service of students, beyond the scope of syllabus
for which they are enrolled in the university, on the ground
that one is adult and needs no such care, though the same
institution gets signature of parents/ guardians before one
is enrolled for studies. Technically, the authorities of the
university are within the ambit of law though, but forget
their obligation to the families of their wards and treat the
students practically as an individual entity enjoying legal
right as an individual free from supervision of the family.
There started a search and the result was astounding.
True to the ideals of individualism, it is contended that
feminism be viewed as a mode of existence where woman is
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Perceptions and Perspectives
free from dependence syndrome. And when women free
themselves from dependence syndrome and lead a normal
life (with self in front), idea of feminism materialises. Thus
enjoins a professor in English with Delhi University.
He contends that the society lives by myths; preceding
society created myths around Sita and Savitri for their loyalty
and dedication and conditioned the society around such
myths to follow. So now, he pleads, new myths are to be
modelled for replacement. While examining how well
feminism has been presented and how replacement models
are possible within Indian context he commends a novel, So
Many Hungers, by Bhabhani Bhattacharya as a good piece.
He explains: Its character Kajoli shows great courage in
defying dependence neither on her dotting grandfather, nor
on her caring husband. She leaves the village and moves to
Calcutta (now Kolkata) where she is sold in prostitution and
she saves herself by selling newspapers.
When this novel is commended to students as a great
novel by the Professor it qualifies as his replacement model
for a myth to condition society in the changed circumstances,
as also a model for self assertion by a female protagonist as
a true champion of feminism, notably within the Indian
context. Freedom from the grandfather is better than slavery
to the brothel keeper or the newspaper lord in this case.
The above quote sums up succinctly the essence of the
argument in favour of fight against dependence syndrome
which has emerged as the clarion call of feminist thought in
the country and how education today seeks to condition
society through students on its philosophy.
From die-hard rightist to radical left, all find economic
independence with property right of woman as a sure
remedy for patriarchal injustice. Such is the influence of
economic determinism in deciding issues of social-cultural
nature and education is doing its role in conditioning society
in that direction. By now the new myth of this economic
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independence for womans emancipation is a running theme,
thanks to educationists, though the new slavery in sexuality to
money is considered a professional hazard worth grabbing!
Ignoble examples
The elite club must be happy about what it has achieved
already for its efforts. A recent incident is symbolic:
It was a shameful scene for the common citizens to
watch, when media persons were out recently on the roads
of Mumbai to defend the interests of a slain colleague in
media. He indulged in shameless sexual indulgence in course
of his official position with a small time actress. She was out
to trade her sex in search of a better space in glamour world
to earn gold, be on page one or three of the media for a wider
market opportunity in the entertainment industry and seek
a place of honour or dishonour among super-rich. What
freedom the duo was enjoying in defence of which trade
union was keen to parade? The Bhanwari case of Rajasthan
is another story of example where sex is traded shamelessly.
There is another kind of success story of free love for
the elite to be happy about, while it is sadly instructive for
rural population more as a scary to worry about:
Read on: On 19 September, 2009, in an incident first of
its kind, two caring families were slated to be killed under a
joint operation by the jilted sex-lovers of the same village
nearby Rohtak in Haryana. On her part, the girl strangulated
all the seven available members of her family, including the
children to remain free, one by one while they laid
unconscious by poison, the boy tricked and saved his family.
Soon after the murders in the night, dead bodies lying
around, both celebrated their love and freedom of choice to
their hearts content. On arrest both were bold to be free.
Heartless murders for sex right! Family members or
any khap had issued no talibani fatwa against the two!! Simple
fact is that both the mothers of the boy and girl were aware
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Perceptions and Perspectives
of what they were indulging in and silently working to avert
the disaster by their own means. How come such a pass in a
rural family having a tranquil past? Both the girl and boy
were inspired by modern views on sex in the city nearby.
The girl led the affair. She belonged to a father who did
his best to earn money sufficient to finance her study in the
university nearby, only to translate his obligation towards a
sibling learning lessons these years in free love and getting
training to be a crass individual instead duly helped by the
whole system of formal and informal education prevalent
in the country of late. This happened in an area where hardly
ever one could find any such incident two decades earlier.
The lovers are in jail as under trials with no regret,
but neither enjoying the cherished freedom as honourable
citizens too. What hands put them to the path of crime and
ruin even as individuals and for what? Question begs answer.
Another tragic incident on the plate: Learning that sex-
lovers are protected by law in its new avatar with shelter
available a boy and girl of village Garnauthi eloped away
from home. Tracing their location the father to the girl
brought them to the village and openly murdered both to
clean the society with the help of other members in the
family on 18 September, 2013 with no regret. Another college
girl fled with family ornaments and money to marry a boy
who later baulked for fear of reprisal like Garnauthi.
Kabulpur and Garnauthi are not alone. They represent
a trend how the war like situation is taking over families in
villages. When the concept of individualism nurtured by the
corresponding education system is duly being helped to
make sex as an elixir of life for youth like an intoxicant of
potential mischief, Kabulpur and Garnauthi tragedies occur.
This is what our seats of learning like Universities and
colleges are doing on behalf of this corporate agenda now.
When teachers thus drum the right of an adult to be
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free from any obligation to his family enjoying freedom from
dependence syndrome and taking decisions thereby laying
the ground for sinister individualism to creep in, one cannot
be surprised what the girls and boys are doing currently
like in Mumbai, Kabulpur Garnauthi.
Ostensibly, there was legalism in play in response to
RTI query by MDU to cover a wrong that is untenable on
socially legitimate grounds in a society that cherishes familial
relationship lifelong, while in case of other it was exercise
in indoctrination of the same pedigree.
It was perhaps a moment of satisfaction for these elites
on this spectacular achievement of their efforts when sex is
as saleable as a soap cake on the shelf without a wink of
hesitation or shame, but a spectacle of grief for the families
concerned and the country not to be proud of its education
system over what it is teaching the new generation of
impressionable age. But, the murders? Again, better no
question asked. This is a small price for the cherished goal
of freedom and GDP to soar to new heights!
However, this leaves a tale no one will invite for his/
her siblings to visit, even if the family is banished for a sober
thought. This is new times, but of a different variety than
what was desired for a peaceful existence with dignity, if
dignity itself is not synonymous with wealth.
Keep looking around......
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Yes, there is flood of sexual depravity in relations at
present. Men/women seem to have become victims to the
plot. That was not their nature. Rural areas used to have a
shield against any such unnatural inclination in the cultural
mores, which are under severe attack now by those inimical
forces who care less about social cohesion and more about
individual rights, with no mind to social cost, since the days
American government started dictating focus here on
individual rights through a chain of paid NGOs.
It is also true that sexual depravation started spreading
like a contagious disease during the period of LPG.
Everybody seems to be worried about the emerging situation
and suggesting ways to meet it according to his/her
perceptions. However, there seems to be less effort to study
its genesis for a way out. Depravity is not an outcome of any
natural process that has gone wrong somewhere. The truth
is that someone is benefitting out of this depravity and
benefitting hugely. This is one aspect of the problem which
is not in discourse at present.
Is human evil by nature or has gone amuck suddenly?
Is one prone to depravity? May be, one is soft to infection
due to decrease in resistance capacity inside and for poor
understanding of the problem. But, it is difficult for anyone
to claim that some super-natural force was happy previously
and sent Bhagat Singh and the like on this soil but now on
punishment all ill souls like Asaram are scattered around
on Indian soil in abundance! It is absurd logic.
Role of Political Parties
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So far, however, it is held on authority that by nature
human is humane. But, if infection is injected to a healthy
body on purpose and then medicine, fake or half fake, is
sold for money simultaneously telling the patient to be
careful about the infection by his/her evil disposition without
telling the source of depravity, one can understand the bill
to the social deficit. Let the wise-men tell also the source of
this depravity that lays somewhere and someone is reaping
huge money out of it. This is the result of market forces that
have been let off the hook purposely to make capitalist mare
run amuck. Who has done it? Unfortunately for the
commoners, all the organised political forces working in the
country are party to it. For a reason:
Let us recollect a bit of history. The modern political
dispensation is the product of a resounding slogan that had
once awakened people against autocracy in West. Equality,
liberty, fraternity was a war cry of the rising bourgeoisie
when it came out free from agriculture as an independent
class of trade and manufacture. It had spurred industrial
revolution against monarchy and autocracy and gave rise to
democratic aspirations that were found quite dangerous to
the rule of capital at a later stage of its march.
With the released mass energy out of this concept,
newly emerging bourgeois class in power at a point of time
felt deeply threatened and devised a strategy to put jinn into
the bottle back: it devised a concept of representative democracy,
converted cunningly Liberty from autocratic rule of state into
freedom from patriarchy and feudalism instead, thus saving
the day for state violence. But it robbed democracy of its
core values and turned society into a collection of individuals
by crafting a fresh instrument known as political parties as
peoples representatives, to checkmate this unwanted mass
energy that may have told death-knell of this new rapacious
monster in course of time.
It is this instrument in political parties, which has shut
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Perceptions and Perspectives
the initiative and decision making power of people to a
handful of manageable leaders for control and regulate this
energy on dotted lines, killing creativity of the masses to
ensure stability of an exploitative system. This is what has
happened. It saved the day for capitalist system to kick.
It is the class of leaders of political parties that has
served the present exploitative system to survive through
sheer manipulation of thoughts, even those who apparently
profess change in production relations. Let us see what such
a leader who in few words said:
1. To prevent capitalist growth and go for social
revolution ...is altogether reactionary.
2. Except through the growth of capitalism there is
no guarantee of victory over it.
3. Do not retard the development of capitalism but
accelerate it, forcing it to resort to more civilised,
technically higher methods of capitalism... it suits
the proletariat.
If only three short quotes above are gone through
meticulously there remains little doubt that it is a plain plea
to work for capitalist development.
What political parties did in history
Deliberately, the source of these quotes above are not
mentioned against each, which normally is the norm, lest
one is baffled and put on shock out of his faith, where faith
is the staple food for this new little tribe of leaders to thrive.
Though a bit diversion, here it may be mentioned that
the contraption of a political party and the concept of
authority (apart from invention of money and sex as
enjoyment) has been one of the most sinister drugs invented
by the bourgeois thought that ultimately proved to be the
undoing of healthy growth in society and have sapped out
the energy of peoples power, which had been the source of
social change in history, arrogance of elites apart.
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One fact may be mentioned without any fear of
contradiction that all political parties are today wedded to
the above quoted formulas on one pretext or the other,
including the leftists, in advancing the cause of capitalist
growth that thrive on expropriation of the majority to the
advantage of minority and which is the root cause of
inequality, misery and oppression of every kind in all
countries without exception. Once it was done on the slogan
of New Democracy, now National Democracy, while some
others did it on pretext of Peoples Democracy and few more
on the plank of Social or Socialist Democracy. Such
deceptions are galore, to hide behind the facade of ideology
while serving this charming progenitor -the capitalist class!
It is an incontrovertible fact that Marxists or other
variant of left parties in India have been following the above
quotes to the letter and spirit with disastrous consequences
for the agenda of social change that has gone bust so far,
while they continue mouthing slogans of Inquilab Zindabad.
The above quotes may help clear the deep mist of this
treachery if told that these gems of wisdom are from none
else than the great Lenin who had shaped the strategy and
tactics of socialism in large part of twentieth century that
has gone waste lastly. And, faith in Lenin or Mao is sacrosanct
with them still, despite what happened to the experiment in
Soviet camp and China or Vietnam! Leaders have been more
faithful to these teachings than Marxism and its essence.
The Indian Marxists of all hues and nomenclature are
practically victims of the dynamics lying behind these quotes
from Lenin and have been virtually acting diligently and
faithfully for the growth and consolidation of capitalism
since day one better than the outright bourgeoisie parties.
This was also the tragedy that scripted the epitaph of the
experiment in Soviet camp, Vietnam, China and others.
It makes clear why adherents of the above quotes are
so zealously virulent in denouncing Khap in India by
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Perceptions and Perspectives
declaring this practice as a remnant of feudal moss. They
are so ready to strike at the roots of family and the marriage
as institutions of social relevance. How family, community
and regulated sex through institution of marriage are
detrimental to the capitalist growth? We will see it a bit later
in the article. That will clear the real face of these left leaders.
Indian communists:
Pathetic apologist of capitalism!
Since, the object of this article is not to evaluate Marxists
but to deal with the question of two distinct cultural modes
in operation today, these quotes are provided to make it clear
as to why leftists of all hues in India are, wittingly or
unwittingly, mouthing slogans for Revolution against
capitalism, while practically working for capitalist growth.
After reaching a stage of its development capitalist
growth requires dispersal of families and village way of life
so that subsistence agriculture can be easily taken over
without resistance, as individuals in family and community
tend to get organised for resistance easily.
This job of dispersal of families and demolishing
community way of life in rural India is being done by left
parties more than anybody else with a philosophical twist
by branding it as feudal past, providing a historical parallel.
According to this logic since feudalist tendencies are a hurdle
in the onward march of capitalist growth in the country, so
to disband such institutions is the duty of progressive forces
of history, which logic is acceptable to its indoctrinated cadres
in the hope that socialist construction is being thus speeded
indirectly and through capitalist hands in the given situation.
The alibi is however spurious and a criminal diversion.
The cadres of these parties are hardly left capable to catch
the mischief of leadership who are victims of teachings
provided by Lenin himself as above quotes amply clarify.
(133)
Khap
These left parties in India tragically, by resorting to
branding family as a left over moss of feudalism, are
simultaneously championing for a corresponding cultural
mode that breeds crash individualism to the detriment of
social cohesion, breaking the families into atomised units
instead with self interest dominating the scene, including
instigation to a dark urge for sex gratification, which even
animals do not indulge in. It fully corresponds to the task
corporate capital has undertaken at this particular stage of
its development to dissipate the youth energy for diversion.
So the slogan down with khaps, and long live women
liberation movement makes a perfect combination of the
twin objectives explicit that catches fancy equally of both.
The slogan from progressive elements do make sense for
the corporate capital to rejoice, while it is a foolish hope on
part of day dreamers to think that it will one day pave way
for the dictatorship of the proletariat to take possession of
the scene and set right the wrong they are now helping to
flourish. The corporate capital is not any longer worried
about revolution from these friendly forces any more..
People need not be fooled around like this with double
talk. A patently wrong understanding of historical
materialism held mechanically with a flourish of ideological
sweep from Lenin is the real reason behind a virulent hatred
for rural way of life, including attachment to family
relationship from all such progressives of double faith in
the name of fighting feudal remnants, while searching for a
necessary progressive stage in capitalism, when at another
place these parties have been debunking it as moribund.
This is the ideological tragedy of Indian left in following
old clichs without understanding the present. In fact,
following such precepts as above, Indian Marxists of all hues
have proved not better than minesweepers for a capitalist
faith caring little about mounting miseries of masses under
present system and practically delaying dawn of new era.
(134)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Consolidating crash individualism under the present
stage of capitalist development, even in the hope of
developing productive forces for socialist take over in future,
may be a bigger deluge than one meets the eye. It will be a
hard journey to reverse.
Through a grand strategy people are fed by a sustained
campaign that their role in history is to follow the leaders
and political parties, as these are embodiment of wisdom
and authority. The stratagem has worked to the script. When
the question of Khap was taken up by media for attack, the
political parties and their leadership, leftist parties and
leaders more than others, again came out in support of
capitalist order that is working for the right of individual to
free love and sex, working for the demise of family and
village life. Their slogans that khap is anti-development, anti-
national tell the tale perfectly.
By now none has the illusion, except the tonsured ones,
about the basic character and role of political parties,
including the so-called leftists, as faithful instruments of a
state structure that serves the collective interests of corporate
capital and reasons are both ideological as practical.
The tragedy with Communists on Khap
The leftist parties and their cadre are pathologically
against village life, taking agriculture as synonymous to
feudalism and family as playground of patriarchal slavery,
village as cesspool of conservatism. It seems they are faithful
more to the then Law Minister for India when he bravely
said so on 4 November, 1948 while presenting the draft of
constitution than to Marxism.
They are not naive; their eagerness to find feudalism
and patriarchy in rural families and villages testifies to only
one explanation that the growth and consolidation of
capitalism is their first love at the cost of peoples interest.
Unfortunately, leftists in India are what they agitate on the
Khap question! It does not surprise.
(135)
Khap
Insiders know what this set of leaders are in fact. They
are bending their energy to the full for changing rural mores
in their own image and wish these villagers transform
according to their script. For this, they have come up to
provide an ideological aura to this campaign in search of
centralised power for a modern state.
The tragedy with India communists of all hues in fact
is larger than what they have been saying on Khap. It goes
deeper. When talking about Khap they are merely exhibiting
their philosophical predilections, without putting mind on
objective analysis to arrive at conclusions and then
presenting cohesive opinions on issues involved into a
practice rural India is so deeply attached with.
Rhetoric apart, post-independence Indian communists/
socialists in fact have lived a political life of duality (different
from dialectics!); they were found miserably short of
communist thought rooted in Indian soil and remained busy
throughout in fighting for the growth of capitalism basically,
giving it a shining costume it does not deserve and doing
everything they could to consolidate this system of
exploitation and oppression that has gripped the nation with
frightening tentacles around, including its degenerating
mode of life and culture, while telling the nation that they
are wedded to social transformation, which will free the
people from expropriation and injustice. Let them deny the
charge - without abuses and epithets if they can.
Their new found love for the Indian Constitution, with
its supremacy over the people to lord over is merely one
example to illustrate a larger tragedy of sorts. They know it
was framed to facilitate capitalist growth and it is its over all
thrust. They also know that people are suffering due to a
system which gets sanctity from the present legal and
constitutional frame. Armed with this knowledge asking the
people to prove their fidelity as per constitutional scheme is
telling them to get out of the way of this growth story. And
(136)
Perceptions and Perspectives
what is this growth story indeed of six decades, except
misery, hunger, disease and oppression for the people while
consolidating the strength of rapacious corporate capital for
ruthless exploitation and work for an imperialist dream.
The commitment to Marxist principles of Indian Left
and what they practise in fact is again a curious subject of
much fascinating wisdom. One can understand their
predicament on questions of politics in search of state power,
when capitalism world over has proved more tricky for them
on the question of capturing state power, but the bankruptcy
of thought and action this section of opinion has shown on
understanding rural India, is purely puerile to say it mildly.
Indian left does not agree that urban India represents a
culture of force in favour of retrogressive Capital which is
out to gobble up rural India by nasty means. It also does not
agree that rural India represents honest Labour power that
stands expropriated in the interest of capital. They see
progress only through the womb of capitalism instead to
deliver a just and equitable world for them to enjoy later in
the day. This is indeed tragic and pathetic.
One can understand the non-left parties when these
berate rural people for their emotional attachment to land
they till, homes they adorn and love to regulate their own
life. They are status quoits by faith. Nothing better is expected
from the zealots of the coloured visions. They have squint
in both eyes and are habitual to search gems out of barren
pebble fields. But when these assumed leftists in general and
the communists (Marxist) in particular too talk and act like
status quoits, it may surprise many. Not us. We are insiders.
The reality from inside is grim what principles and
practices Indian communists do have. Before the collapse of
Soviet experiment, many of us were also playing the same
old tunes of theory and practice that delivered only the same
stinking old capitalist garbage with much ferocity.
(137)
Khap
Industrial spree, with public or private capital,
necessarily produces individualism on both accounts. And
individualism, per force, produces all evils a capitalist system
is endowed with, including the commoditisation of sexuality
and giving rise to corruption for greasing the rough wheels
of exploitation for a smooth push.
This is the lesson of old Soviet experiment where
communists worked on a flawed political economy on wrong
premises and helped the growth of capitalism within former
Soviet bloc despite state power being in the hands of
communist party with all consequential ramifications to the
disadvantage of working masses.
Let us recollect that the traditional Indian left forces
are responsible to popularise terms like feudal and
patriarchy in Indian context after Independence to provide
credibility to their fanciful theory that free Indian state is
semi-feudal, semi-colonial in character meaning thereby that
the primary task in the circumstance remains to clear this
moss with help from national capitalist class considered
progressive by them on dubious grounds.
It is doubtful if people ever understood the real meaning
and intent of this leadership that sidelined the issue of Indian
revolution on this soil, while cunningly playing with this
terminology. According to them the capitalist dispensation
historically is best suited to undertake this responsibility,
the progressive forces led by communists are duty bound
first to help capitalist relations to develop in Indian society
before conditions ripe for socialist change, goes the logic from
these wise men. On strength of such formulation, the Indian
communists have been collaborating with the exploitative
system to survive so long without a blink.
In the classical understanding of materialist history of
human development in European story, feudal represented
a definite system of relationship in production and
(138)
Perceptions and Perspectives
distribution as lord v/s serfs that impedes the next higher
capitalist stage of development. Indian leftist leadership
tragically dubbed everything feudal and conservative, which
it considered a hindrance in the path of capitalist
development. They did it without giving thought to what is
beneficial for society and what is not, practically working as
dutiful agent collaborators for consolidation of capitalism.
Similar is the story about the term patriarchy when any
issue concerning women is under debate. They are putting
females against males as if it is the basic divide in the country
today without telling the fundamental source of oppression
of females under capitalism that dehumanizes her even on
matters sexual. They hardly realise that liberation zone for
women on questions of sex, love and marriage starts
somewhere else and salvation does not lie in Jean P. Sartre
brand of philosophy on freedom of choice which is at the
heart of this current campaign being sponsored by corporate
world in its over-zeal for a new bliss in sex industry,
employing media to its benefit, as it had done in America
with the help of women liberation movement [Women Lib]
after two world wars in twentieth century to counter the
effects of ruin hoping to tide over by utilising cheap female
labour that this movement made it easily available on the
streets, freeing women from families with such concepts as
singular identity, dependence syndrome etc. Indian lefts,
including assumed communists are doing likewise here.
They are guilty of misusing these terms from social history
for a pre-determined object.
The logic of fighting feudal remnants to strengthen
capitalist growth as prelude to socialist movement in India
proved a useful smoke screen for strengthening of capitalism
and capitalist system to new cliffs of highly centralised state
power coercive, legal, executive and judicial for the people
to bear. To justify their wrong prognosis, the leftists have
been inventing time and again feudal elements as false
(139)
Khap
enemies here and there to provide an ideological alibi for
their support to capitalist growth instead. Experience so far
of over six decades in India and over seven decades
elsewhere tell eloquently that it is a thoroughly flawed
philosophy of opportunism and deception.
When Indian communists find feudal and conservative
forces residing in every crevice of rural life including rural
families, their community practices, their social and
community institutions it sends a signal that these gentlemen
are craving for a still higher centralisation of state power in
the country to hit wrong targets, though all levers of action
are apparently to remain in the hands of a state establishment
that has merged its identity with the corporate capital
working at the mesmerising instance of American rulers.
It is no communism. It cannot be so in 21st. century
India. One should refrain to prescribe path of deliverance
for other nations. What these gentlemen have been preaching
can at best reflect economic or historical determinism, with
no relation to the reality on the ground where people dream
to live and smell the fragrance of their labour in peace.
On Khap question the difference between non-left and
left parties was visible only on electoral calculations. Leftists
do calculate for choosing caste and class configurations on
issues. They do not care about catching votes simply because
they have nothing to lose or gain on this account on pan
India level, while non-left parties cannot afford to annoy
rural India directly; so these people talked with tongue in
cheek or at times glibly on such issues. But the leftists did
their worst to hit the village life. Their eye is always on
recruiting disgruntled cadre and damning the community.
At least for those who understand Indian leftists from
within, there is nothing surprising when these gentlemen
are exhibiting their new found faith in professional courts
and official Panchayats. Likewise, when they tend
emotionally to eulogise the present Constitution of India as
(140)
Perceptions and Perspectives
something sacrosanct as a scripture to provide fidelity test
of any action or institution, while out to berate Khaps, is really
amusing. One may recall that once they were the first to
declare their intent to wreck this bourgeois document
(Constitution) from within if chance places them in power
by utilising it, though they did nothing like it later. Now
they are the loudest to ask Khaps to prove their constitutional
status and strained every nerve to get these to be legally
banned for being anti-development and conservative.
Let us see them a bit more closely. Forget for a moment
about the shallow understanding of communist parties of
any kind working in the country at this stage regarding the
political economy and the corresponding superstructure of
feudalism, capitalism and socialism. Let us watch them how
they are behaving while working in and outside Parliament.
The leadership of communist parties fancifully describe
India as an under-developed semi-colonial and semi-feudal
state ever since independence, while they are working with
its superstructure that is working out to become a world
power. These parties were seen advising the same state
structure in Parliament and outside as how best to do the
job! It is a mystery that despite their labours on this count
during past six decades the position of semi-feudal remnants
seems to have remained intact; the same formulation is ruling
its activities since then, while the capitalist growth in the
country has attained a globalised level of strength.
By the way, who benefitted from this ideological
muddle, except the corporate capital and the state that rule
the country while communists/socialists stand marginalised?
To become a world power today is nothing but to aspire
for turning the country into an imperialist one for the sake
of its corporate capital and capture as wide a market as
possible, while grabbing resources in other countries for
super profits, which the Indian state is facilitating for long.
(141)
Khap
It cannot do it as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state. Only a
developed capitalist country after achieving a definite level
of relative maturity can aspire to be one. What is progressive
with the capitalist class today by the way? They are finding
good tails in a bad creature.
In fact, by raising the questions of female oppression
Indian communists are taking the fight into families and by
making sex and sexuality as issues of prime importance
before the mass movements cunningly doing a grand job in
the defence of capitalism by diverting the energies of the
people from fighting their battle on real issues of life at a
time when the present system stands exposed.
Their attitude is distressingly similar to their Italians,
French and American friends on questions of love, marriage
and sex; full with madness that borders around pleading
for upper class fad of live-in relationship as a replacement
and still they think Indian proletariat will accept them as
saviours. The level of respect people used to have for Indian
communists during the period of freedom struggle for their
sacrifices, dedication to the cause and a restrained way of
life on these aspects of social life has evaporated largely
because of their present muddle.
Left parties proclaim their fidelity for socialism and
commitment to communism while, one can find them busy
in strengthening capitalism on the premise that India has to
be cleared of feudal moss first. In the process, they tend to
forget that for clearing this moss and strengthen capitalism
first, their advocacy leads them to work for consolidating
individualism of the worst kind and consequently dissolving
the institution of family as a fountain head of communitarian
way of life at grass root level.
Do the communist workers understand this politics of
their respective leadership where they are leading them to?
Probably, do not. The level of regimentation of thought, as
(142)
Perceptions and Perspectives
the single achievement of this leadership to keep the flock
in tune, ensures this blindness.
Unfortunately when people reposed faith in the leftist
movement, more so from those who swore by a scientific
thought, for deliverance from the rapacious capitalist
dominance they fell victim to clichs and taking mechanically
that agriculture denotes backwardness and industrial life is
a sure path of bliss which it was destined to fail man, leaving
the important question of impact on social life to go to dogs.
Recently some khaps opined it is necessary to amend
the archaic Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 that leaves option to
marriage within the same Gotra and same village. At once
retort came from a lady leader of CPM that the demand of
khap is retrograde. Opposition to khaps is her trade mark by
now and is most vociferous on sexual freedom.
Over her reaction, question came; how the opinion of
khap is retrograde by the way? Was she not pleading by
implication that sexual relations between brother and sister
are progressive, unless one desires to impose your own
definition of brother and sister in rural context of Haryana?
If people start taking Marxist as followers of anarchic
relationship in sex and marriage affairs, how wrong it will be?
Peasantry has its own reasons to define the relationship
between brothers and sisters for it. Some powerful forces
back in 1955 forced their own definition on peasants through
Hindu Marriage Act of that year. They took the peasantry
by ears on this count. Despite this Act, peasantry in large
part of the country, at least totally in north zone, never
followed such a prescription. And no one charged them of
flouting this Act on this account either.
Now all of a sudden, when a war was declared on khap
this provision was made a litmus test of progressive conduct
in affairs so close to the mind and heart of peasantry.
Reaction was bound to be and it erupted with ferocity. It
first surprised many that leftist parties started beating rural
(143)
Khap
(144)
areas with this stick too. Soon it was clear that CPM leaders
and cadres are out on this issue with an decadent ideology.
This fringe among Marxist faith is out to utilise state
power of bourgeoisie, including its legislative power, to force
change in traditions and custom of agricultural communities,
more so of Jats in Haryana, as is evident from its tirade
against khap practice, with the hope that through this they
will usher in industrial revolution of capitalist variety.
They take agriculture as synonymous to bankruptcy in
potentiality, despite the shattering experiences in the Soviet
experiment in building socialism based on industrial spree
at the cost of agriculture and dispersal of family and its
neighbourhood communities.
Left politics, perhaps, must have been more logical and
rational than this irrationality on family question.
Perceptions and Perspectives
In the tirade against rural India, apart from political
establishment, both ruling and opposition parties and their
affiliates, the corporate media is a leading partner that works
as opinion builder to make way for easy take over through
the state establishment. It manipulates facts to manipulate
minds of the people. It plays tricks and follows Goebellian
method to turn untruth as the final truth. In the beginning
of the tirade a few years back, the jihadists invented Khaps
as murderers of lovelorn youngsters and a new term honour
killing entered currency in the media with much enthusiasm.
A full throated country wide campaign thereafter
continued for years to put blame on Khap system for such
murders, though in almost every case parents or close
relatives were found involved. Still tirade against Khap
remained the target. In created a word honour to look
reasonable for murders of those who play offensively
obstinate towards family obligations. In fact such murders
by enraged parents on extreme provocation are a defensive
action to save collective interest of the family.
Since the object with the media is to paint the adversary
in highly prejudiced colours they went to call these as honour
killings. Some of the recent examples may suffice to show
how media manipulates events in its campaign.
Take a case to see hyper active media in the game: an
enraged father killed her daughter and a boy involved
persistently in wayward behaviour, on 18 September, 2013
in a village, named Garnauthi. In concert, The Tribune,
Chandigarh was quick to fish out khaps in the story to carry
on its virulent tirade as ever, among national papers.
12
(145)
The Media as Crusader
Khap
It promptly tagged headings like Unconstitutional Khap
on 24th September, 2013 as if everything else on Indian soil
is constitutional while Indoctrinated people and Silence of a
land on 25th September, 2013 to its editorial pieces, followed
by a full page kaleidoscope on 29th September, 2013 of highly
biased reportage and carried an edit-page article by a known
habitually khap-baiter on 30th September, 2013 followed by
another piece of 11.10.2013 by a serving IPS officer from
Haryana as part of its full-throated campaign which it is
carrying religiously for a couple of years now.
As if to give it an academic flavour, it carried on
03.10.2013 a piece on the concept of honour in honour killings
by another historian carrying the baggage of feminism on
her sleeve (though, epithet honour is given to such murders
by the media who proves more creative in such matters for
a purpose, not by any academic). Another Hindi paper from
New Delhi followed it on oppression of patriarchy from a
retired police officer of Haryana cadre having strong leftist
views of radical variety on women slavery.
The Garnauthi incident was a plain case involving two
murders of wayward youths, with no other party to it either
in planning or execution as per details out so far. The
ingenuity of these gentlemen lies in the fact that role of Khap
has been invented here in this case also to curse the
conservative attitude of village folks, though the torn shoe
lies on their own wounded toes. Prejudice is so heavy and
thick with them against village people that they foregot to
apply mind for a rational analysis of events on purpose and
with no regret.
The strategy seems to be: invent Khap where there is
none to hit the perceived enemy, like President George Bush
of America did for his Iraq adventure in the service of
corporate capital on weapons of mass destruction, but with
no regret to the level of destruction and murders involved.
(146)
Perceptions and Perspectives
Khap is a word in the hate-tirade they use to beat
villagers, for meanings the crusaders themselves have
attached to it. For them any and every assembly of village
people qualifies to be labelled as Khap with glee!
The draft law from Law Commission for punishing
Khap on honour killings also proposes the assembly of
people as its target! When one is faced with an imaginary
enemy to beat a real target, all one does is to employ such a
ploy as these gentlemen are resorting in case of Khap
panchayat. It is a general rule with all traders in deceit.
A lady journalist with The Hindu, a CPM sympathiser
has written a book on Manj-Babli affair for Penguin and used
the same trick, deliberately or in ignorance, to beat the rural
sense of right or wrong, talks about khap while reference is
clearly to a village assembly. She talks about Gangaraj as
leader of Khap and his actions in individual capacity find
narration as khap decisions. It is a sinister trick to falsify
events to ones liking. In fact, this has been the practice of all
rural baiters without exception. She documents that same
Gangaraj was discharged by high Court of allegations
proved by the trial court.
Will CPM leaders and their sympathisers who charged
Khap of complicity in the murder of Manoj and Babli all
because of pre-supposed activities of Gangaraj in this case
then apologise for maligning khaps? The lady journalist in
her book did not express any such regret. Such is the level of
intellectual honesty if the matter concerns Khap.
Similarly, all these elements have being making big
issue about Mahapanchayat held on 13 April, 2010 at
Kurukshetra and touted as evidence of complicity of khaps
in such murders. It was not a khap meeting; it was not called
by any khap. In fact, it was a meeting called by a monthly
magazine (catering to the interests of a caste) to celebrate its
day at Kurukshetra on that day. The organisers had spread
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Khap
the message to attract attendance in a hall that the proposal
for amendment to Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 will be
discussed in a seminar on the occasion. On the eve of the
event a press conference was also held to detail the agenda
of the seminar. The banners of the magazine were quite
visible in photos published in the media covering the event.
Since, the meeting came in the background of decision in
Manoj-Babli case awarding death sentence the people
converged, even beyond the capacity of organisers to handle
and capacity of the small hall. How this conclave became
Khap conclave only the journalists who covered the story
with their little knowledge about khaps affairs know. The
lady journalist as above obediently quoted it accordingly.
This Mahapanchayat turned out to be a big event where
every shade of opinions and groups in khap affairs gathered
there to exploit the issue at hand for sectarian ends and tussle
broke to capture the stage where original organisers left the
scene bewildered to save their skin. It was then a free for all
to fish in muddy waters where political elements vied with
each others to be on pages of the media. The media made it
a khap Mahapanchayat where a proposal had come to collect
money in support of those sentenced in Manoj-Babli affair
and CPM got its logic extended against khaps. Panchayat
denotes meeting in Hindi while Maha project one to be big.
But for media every meeting is khap meeting. Ludicrously.
After Muzaffarnagar riots, one of the original organiser
journalist of Kurukshetra event called a meeting to condole
the victims there from his particular biradari on 22 September,
2013 at Rohtak. Hardly 10-12 individuals attended, including
a faction leader of his biradri khap. The meeting came in the
background of Garnauthi murders by parents of the girl who
wanted to marry a boy of the same village on 18.09.2013 in
which no khap was involved. The media jumped upon this
condolence meeting, turned it into a khap and the tirade
against khaps was released with zeal.
(148)
Perceptions and Perspectives
13
(149)
We said and repeat that the whole rural sector is under
siege for long enough to make it crawl. The scheme worked,
in the name of development that proved more elusive and
destructive. In the process, country side is now more of a
begging angel, despite bone breaking labour. Peasant
economy is on the collapse while agriculture is made to feed
industry to the full. Mid-day meals scheme for its loved ones
is the mercy after robbery. Dance-lessons and competition
from primary class onward is a training module for the new
awaiting role. It is a dichotomy of sorts, but true.
Six decades of ruthless and insidious expropriation of
rural India has no parallel in world history for its sweep; for
certain reasons worst than even what Red Indians in America
had to go through. The current phase of land grab campaign
and mine-minerals occupation with state collaboration is
intended to tighten the squeeze before the noose goes to
breathe it out. The victim is disparaged lest retribution.
Rural India stands prejudiced. What was said about
village on 4
th
November, 1948 in the Constituent Assembly
on the strength of Macaulay education is being repeated,
despite the powerful rebuttal it had received then. So deep
is the prejudice towards rural India! Now, corporate media
is doing the job for its masters. Virtually, the whole educated
class is arraigned against it for the final blow.
Lest some misunderstand, facts must speak. When the
new rulers after 1947 embarked upon industrial spree what
was the source that had financed the enterprise? Surprisingly,
Rural India under Siege
Khap
(150)
peasants and artisans in rural sector were made to do the
job without acknowledgment. Post-second world war, India
was as bankrupt as any other belligerent nation gasped, with
hardly any capital to invest. British had left it with more
debt burden to carry for years to come. Partition in addition
made it virtually bleed. On empty pocket, country embarked
on its march to industrialise quickly. How? Any guess!
The only sector remained with it to bank upon was
agriculture. Insidious expropriation of rural economy was
embarked upon with no mind to its victims. The rural
population was cheated over its entitlement to finance their
fanciful enterprise. Some bare facts:
In contrast to the urbanite organised sector, a highly
discriminatory criteria was invented to determine the rate
of entitlements for unorganised sector workers, including
family-labour of peasants. That robbed agriculture and made
rural economy dependent on urban sector and unviable.
The result: One working unit at the lowest rung i.e. a
class four employee in the organised sector cannot get on
average less than10,000 rupees a month, per sixth pay
commission while, the whole family of five units is supposed
to live by rupees 390 a month for the unorganised sector.
(for more detail watch how Minimum Support Price is fixed
by a commission to rob agriculture economy of its resources)
The Planning Commission is doing the job for it nicely.
And the World Bank is quite vigilant to oversee its job.
According to the mandarins of Agriculture Costs and Prices
Commission, Indian farmer works only for 156 days a year
as unskilled one to keep it at the lowest and suppressed level,
though agriculture is one of the most skilled work one learns
through lifetime. The entitlement for his family labour is
calculated for this period while computing MSP for his
products. This works out much below statutory minimum
wage agriculture worker is supposed to get from him for a
days work on his field for eight hour job.
Perceptions and Perspectives
(151)
One rough estimate tells a stunning story: on this
account of entitlement alone nearly 7 lakh crores of rupees
per year (nearly one crore per village on average) are
extracted from agricultural economy each year to finance
the urban sector. Another pathetic story is about compound
interest on agricultural loans, which even British rulers had
forbidden under two specific laws adopted during 1883-84.
Margret Kennedy in her treatise Inflation and Interest
Free Money remarks that compound interest robs agriculture
since its growth is destined to be mathematical in progression
while compound interest was devised for industrial loans
as per its geometrical growth. Burdening agriculture with
compound interest was worse than usurers used to do earlier
that siphoned off crores of rupees to urban sector each year.
Policy remained to raise price of inputs constantly and check
prices of agriculture produce to make it bankrupt. Only on
one account, nearly 3 Lakh ever-optimist peasants found
cornered to commit suicide to save their honour. No
economist ever told the country what crime has been
committed in the name of development.
Millions have been ruined during these six decades on
the development trail. While media is hyper active on any
stray honour; killing, but all its power of expression dries
up when 3 lakh peasants have been forced to commit suicide
all because of official policies. Peasants have paid the price
for the enrichment of Indian corporate houses like Ambanies,
Tatas and the likes to amass wealth that has given them sharp
teethes enough to land in other countries as East India
Company had done on Indian shores to loot, while native
masses are forced to survive like beggars and lepers in the
market of human deprivation. Like the British did, Indian
establishment is posing as if these corporate houses are doing
India a favour to be sharks in other lands. It makes the
country a super power to live by pride in its strength as East
India Company did to Britain in the past!
Khap
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It cannot be overlooked that Corporate India has
reached a state of such strength and weakness that it now
needs foreign lands for its jaunts. It also needs Freudian
fantasy and Pavlovian science to harness human sexuality,
mainly female, so that it may work as a balm on the tired
nerves of its over-worked employees for survival.
It is not mere coincidence that the question of free choice
with due emphasis on individual liberty is sponsored, when
the country has reached a definite level of industrial
development with this sharp urge for corporate capital to
collaborate with western corporate capital and attain the
status of a super power. The corporate houses feel confident
that their past labour is going to pay dividends now or never.
They feel emboldened enough to demolish every hurdle now
openly and pointedly, legal, social or cultural to make it
irretrievable. If village life is to be demolished and its life
style swept away, now is the time for them to do it.
But, perhaps, they had not visualised that war between
these two distinct cultures in Independent India would lead
to so violent reactions as have occurred recently resulting in
murders of wayward youngsters or unbending parents by
their own near and dear kin on matters of traditional values
of the community. This occurred because families exist within
a community of shame and glory so important for man to
relish or repent in its social milieu. It cannot be wished away
so lightly, even if law wishes otherwise.
The surprise is because murdering even the habitual
offenders is not the rule among village communities. But
normal are not the times now, apparently. It is a full-fledged
war against rural India that was under siege for long and
have reached a stage of zero tolerance. Such is the misfortune
of hard working people in the rural areas that they are alone
to face the onslaught.
Let us learn and beware......
Perceptions and Perspectives
India is free for over six decades from British rule.
Villages had the liberty to survive by their labour and
allowed to live by their traditions and customs unchallenged
while Khap practice with rural Haryana was never
proclaimed from roof-tops as anti-national, anti-
development ever during the early four decades of this
period. It was a sort of peace with itself. No crusaders ever
came out to teach our young generation about freedom of
choice in matters of sex and sexuality, except when female-
sex based industries (numbering no less than 25 at present)
had started contributing heavily to the GDP as the
unchallenged yardstick of notional progress, copying the
wild West and forgetting the golden East even at the cost of
national ego of super nationalists at convenience, for money!
Now, village life is turned upside down. Rural India is
under siege. Its economy is being shattered and resources
grabbed. Its culture and mores despised. You are not wanted
in your own country to survive. Change or perish! And
change according to the script offered. You are required to
live for urbanisation agenda. The new philosophy ordains
that dispossession of uncouth is a collateral damage to bear
in the service of civilised world as fait accompli !!
It is really a riddle wrapped into an enigma that why
the agenda of women liberation (WomenLib) of American
genre, as distinct from old left variant, having existential
slogans, had never been the forte of such liberal media and
heavily financed NGO sector earlier when females were at
disadvantage as is the evergreen faith now. Have these forces
become more vibrant now? Seriously doubtful.
Sum - Up
13
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Khap
Such type of free-hold freedom was never preached
earlier ever, except for the last two decades of liberal
economy. It is not because these gentlemen have grown more
democratic, rather the situation is in reverse gear. The
democratic rights of the people are under tight leash of late;
they have grown vary of the earlier version of democratic
dispensation of their own make and feel very uneasy with
democratic rights of the working people.
Clearly, these forces have an agenda now against the
rural folks for their alleged backward and conservative
outlook towards their own life simply because the ruling
establishment has set a target to urbanise a big chunk of rural
India rapidly for easy take over by corporate world and the
media is acting on its behalf to clear the path by implanting
a corresponding culture of crash individualism to take roots.
Who needs urbanisation of rural India and in whose interest?
The answer will lead to the evil design of black forces.
In hindsight, one thing can be unhesitatingly said that
due notice was not taken of the danger inherent in the
campaign from a few arrogant people that started just after
independence creating prejudice against rural way of life
dubbing it as a cesspool of caste, communalism and
ignorance and rubbing village as an abode of conservative
lazy lizards in contrast to city life. A similar relentless counter
was the necessity to avoid the damage.
In simplicity the humble villager started believing the
charge perhaps not realising the scheme of things planned
against their very mode to be over-thrown for a sinister
purpose to achieve. After six decades of a relentless effort, it
has reached to the present situation of desperation.
The level of prejudice against rural India that has
reached by now out of this campaign can be gauged when a
retired Chief Justice of India, trained to see through things
for truth, J.S. Verma presiding over a Committee on
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Perceptions and Perspectives
Amendments to Criminal Laws set up against rapes etc
recently finds it necessary to castigate Khaps in the same
terms -tenor of abuse for honour killings as the corporate
media, political class and the sponsored so-called civil
society are doing in concert for almost half a decade.
To pin down untruth, an application under RTI sought
information from Haryana government about number of
honour killings in the state from 1
st
January, 2001 to 31
st
December, 2011 by Khaps or on their bidding. All 23 police
districts informed that there is not a single such case in the
state during this period. It was peak period of media
campaign against Khaps on honour killings and the fact was
brought to Supreme Court for record. Still the charge
continues to find place in media. Pretexts are many.
How untruth is made to prevail
It is interesting to see how untruth worked on honour
killings and maligning Khap practice in rural areas.
J. Verma Committee apparently did no investigation,
no shuffling of facts, no evidence, no hearing of Khaps, but
took paper clippings, bites from electronic media perhaps
and a prejudiced view from a particular shade of political
opinion on feudal and patriarchy to boot, as the material
to prepare its report. It was in tearing hurry to beat other
organs of state on efficiency, only for pinning khaps down!
Earlier, a Division Bench of Supreme Court, headed by
Justice (retired by now) M. Katju brought in Khap question
out of blue, while writing a judgement where it was not a
subject for deliberation. He was apparently surcharged with
media reports and wanted to tell his mind on the subject, so
preferred to describe Khaps as barbaric, feudal and
commented on its legality. Law Commission depended on
media reports and opinion of Katju Bench as reference to
claim objectivity for its conclusions, Justice Verma Committee
on its part took Law Commission report on honour killings
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Khap
as reference for authenticity while the media made its
narrations about Khaps authentic on its reliable sources and
press releases from publicity hungry upstarts or vested
interests to the crime for filing reports in tearing hurry to
beat the deadlines. And a NGO working with Home Ministry
and National Commission for Women files a PIL to issue
directives to Khaps against honour killings without hearing
them. Thus, went the vicious circle of making truth out of
untruth about Khaps and coloured the nations mind for a
law to curb the democratic rights of rural people.
The unfortunate part was that affiliate women
organisations of CPM are working over night to provide
material for the media to launch a sinister campaign to build
public opinion in concert with these forces against Khaps with
a definite political agenda to modernise rural India!
It may be recalled here again that village is completely
an autonomous unit in traditional Indian system of self-
governance and Khap Bhaichara consists of more than one
village and may comprise upto 360 villages to have a
conclave for discharging agenda at hand. To call assembly
of a village or part thereof as khap is ignorance or mischief.
Experienced elders of khap system have been zealously
guarding the core of its conventions without favour or fear
inviting their wrath on even minor deviations to rob off its
core values. For example: after a historic Mahapanchayat on
7 March, 1911 which had adopted 28 resolutions at Barona,
another conclave ten-eleven years later tried to repeat some
resolutions that invited strong criticism in an immediate
rejoinder by one of khap stalwarts, Ch. Piru Singh of Dahiya
khap to his equally prominent elder for a wrong claim
reported in Jat Gazette on 21 March, 1923 dubbed it for
chicanery and false bravado. He castigated a conclave as Sarv
Khap or Haryana Khap when there were only few khaps
invited and attending. A khap is not a khap simply because
someone claims it so, unless it fulfils the basic ingredients
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Perceptions and Perspectives
that make it a khap. In the above reference, the comments
from Chaudhry Piru Singh, is a good example to dispel
distortions in ignorance or in mischief.
Let us recapitulate in brief:
Let us recount for clarity sake: Khap is a system of self
confidence. It is a practice with the people since man started
living in as a settled community of its own with
communitarian mores to sustain. Khap is Non-Centralised
Polity. On its part it is a social system of self defence with
the rural population to regulate its own life, at least in the
areas which are its core concerns.
It is alleged that Khap is arbitrary in conduct and action
where few rich people decide in the name of the people. It is
an outrage against democracy, they say. If one know anything
about rural India, the charge is motivated.
It was corporate media first that started alleging fatwas
from talibani khaps while castigating certain decisions/
opinions from khaps to make their campaign more pungent
and hateful capitalising anti-muslim sentiments. It was a
spectacle to watch the seasoned political leaders also
resorting to such hateful terminology that smacks dirt
communal language in essence. But when CPM leaders also
started using fatwa word for describing unreasonable
decisions of khaps in their view, it was more distressing. The
lady from CPM who by now specialises in khap hatred is
one but she can be ignored for her biased approach.
However, in articles and statements when these two words
have found frequent use by left leaders and cadres in general
the disease seems to be contagious without mind to the
underhand message such conduct leaves behind.
Unfortunately, these people have their own notion
about democracy, which stand emasculated by such
interpretations as suits their sectarian interest. This is the
story of six decades of representative democracy in the
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Khap
country. For example they claim that once votes are cast,
representatives declared elected, people have no right to
direct them or ask questions till the term expires. In fact,
some where a guilty mind works when such an absurd
charge is made against Khap; it is the parliamentary system
of theirs where a handful of resourceful leaders of political
parties decide everything in the name of electors.
Khap is most democratic a system where an arbitrary
dictation or rich voice does not work. To tackle issues at hand,
it is within the purview of a concerned family first to resolve.
On failure, the matter goes to the Kutumbh. Thereafter, it is
referred to community or Gotra Khaps for help. Similarly, on
failure, Khap of Bhaichara intervenes on call. When the wise-
cracks of this variety seek to malign Khap by terming as
kangaroo courts, motive is to malign and hit it with hatred.
Much has been made of a charge against Khaps that they
take ludicrous decisions. The cat came out of the bag when
it was alleged that Khaps, after declaring a marriage void,
acted so crudely arbitrary asking married couples to become
brother and sister again in relationship! The argument itself
was dramatic than logical. It betrays common sense and
testifies ignorance about rural idioms and lacks an
understanding of its life itself.
When a professional court of British vintage presided
over by a paid person whom elites presume is blessed with
superior wisdom, grants divorce and declares the concerned
couple no longer husband and wife; with conjugal rights no
longer valid after divorce, what remains the nature of
relationship between such a former husband and former
wife? Husband and wife? Bua-Phupha, Mother-son? No.
Brother-sister? Yes, anything but wife; only because they
cannot exercise legitimate sexual relationship any longer.
If it is called divorce by an official court, our wise men
are very happy. But if rustics of rural origin happen to call
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Perceptions and Perspectives
divorce as brother-sister relationship instead, the whole rural
world turns a complete disaster in the eyes of these
gentlemen, including the learned judges sitting in higher
echelons of Judicature so keen to declare Khaps illegal and
unconstitutional, as a shame to civilised world. Such is the
bias against rural India with the elites.
A Decisive War
Apparently, the Khap system has ultimately come now
into conflict with the formal institutions of State over the
issues of family and community relations when till recently
both co-existed without much crossing each others path.
Khap system of both the categories has been quite alive since
days immemorial and nobody ever took adverse notice of it.
Once British rulers did what they could to replace Khap
by Zail in 1879 and other formal structures of their own, like
civil and criminal courts, police and revenue departments
in the interest of governance, along with proclaiming the
so-called Principal of Eminent Domain, meaning thereby
supremacy of the rulers, to control the natural resources of
this country for their own imperial interests.
The state structure in free India is now keen to harness
this colonial principle to be intrusive and peep in even the
precincts of family relationships between parents and their
siblings, which the British masters could not dare to do.
Khaps were never found wanting on subjects of their
social interests too. These played crucial role in social reforms
in the past at important junctures and mustered acceptability
in the region. In living memory the Mahapanchayat at Barona
on 7 March, 1911 heralded a few unconventional reforms in
the community and was followed many efforts in the same
direction. Suddenly these institutions have come under
attack for indulging in the same type of activities i.e.
exercising constitutionally recognised right of assembly,
interaction and mediation in family disputes of community
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Khap
interests! The practice is not confined to one caste or religion
either. Since there is no such practice with the urbanites, rural
India is sought to be penalised for their community practice
merely to push urban agenda on the community conscious
rural people through sheer force of state apparatus, including
legislative and the executive.
Curiously, the demand for banning Gotra Khaps has
become shrill when, under this context of siege, khaps reacted
against wayward activities of their own wards indulging in
delinquent and uncivilised behaviour. In effect these self
styled champions of free love are out to claim a right that
does not exist in the society. In any case, such a delinquent
conduct cannot be the norm in a context of social life to
sustain with any reasonable sense of prudence.
Ludicrous is the effort to justify elopement from their
families for love marriage as a sure ladder for modernity
to attain. For love, obligation to parents and family is quite
disposable value of feudal vantage to them, leading to such
bizarre incidents like what happened in Kabulpur village.
To the gullible, girl and the boy were quite modern in the
making but nonetheless a new phenomenon of devastating
consequence to the emotions nurtured by rural India.
The tirade
No one in senses can cross the sanctity of relationship
between brother and sister or mother and son. None can
justify the imprudent activities of some youngsters bordering
on criminality, which goes to demolish social cohesion in
trail. Such action does recoil in course of time -tomorrow if
not today. History is the best teacher in such matters , if
anyone has the wish to learn. Freedom in sexual relations
cannot be absolute; it has to be subscribed social morality.
One aspect is noteworthy: despite stringent actions by
law courts in such cases of murders in recent years, such
occurrences did not subside. Unfortunately, the phenomenon
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Perceptions and Perspectives
was not studied that deterrent law is not the answer in such
cases of murders. Still, cases of defiance of family code for
the sake of sexual depravity and elopements with a rising
urge for self in command, especially among educated rural
youths are on the increase.
Surely, there is no mystery about it. The present
situation is the natural outcome of a concerted move to induct
alien mores and cultural shift duly built assiduously slowly
and surely in our society through various means at the
disposal of the resourceful class. After a laborious effort of
almost six decades, crash individualism has gained sufficient
currency in the society to strike at the roots of indigenous
cultural mode and its value system to make way for a mode
to take roots. And something like naktavad is working.
There goes a tale: accidently one fellow got his nose
snapped. Continuously teased as Nakta (shameless), he
devised a stratagem to get over this problem by bragging
that God has blessed him by presence in his abode. Curiosity
took many more to him for blessings from God. He told that
it is possible only if ones nose is chopped. When another
fool followed his advice and came to complain that God has
not blessed despite being a Nakta as advised, the primer told
that you also tell others that God has now blessed him;
otherwise people will tease you to hell. In most cases, as a
rule crusaders find followers in train to give company.
The timing of the recent tirade against village life and
its political economy fully tallies with the collective interest
of corporate world that is out to tighten its grip over people
and community resources, including human talents. Young
males and females are viewed as special zones of interest by
them for a lucrative business. In this fast game rural India is
considered as big speed-breaker to be removed as early as
possible. The tirade throws up many lessons to learn and
look both inward and outward to investigate and save the
nation and its future generation from humiliation.
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Khap
Centralised Polity
The first important conclusion from this crusade against
Khap is about the basic character of modern state worldwide.
It is an armed instrument of expropriation for the benefit of
the corporate capital. Indian state also has gone over by now
completely to the camp of corporate capital- native and
foreign both with a strong urge to attain an emerging
imperialist agenda at hand. It is an aspiring imperialist entity
in hurry and has thrown away its legacy of struggle for
Independence from British slavery. In pursuance it nurtures
centralised polity keen to reconstruct the requisite cultural
mould as against the time tested ethos of its own social life.
The next lesson that can be drawn from this crusade is
the anti-people character of the entire political establishment
in the country. Political parties and their leaders of all hues
are working to maintain the present state structure that
serves the forces inimical to the interests of rural India.
Another important lesson to learn from history is for
the people to be vigilant about its future and a future safe
for the coming generations. Do not believe the myths. Do
not believe the political class. Do not aspire to become rulers.
Safeguard your social institutions from decay and
conspiracies. Keep the initiative alive for collective action to
advance the cause of a rational way of life in peace and plenty
with a right to self-governance.
Assertion by the people is the only way for direct
democracy where they exercise their own wisdom to govern
themselves with no concept of superior Authority.
Preservation of bhaichara and equity is essential component
of a civilised existence. Let us discard the very concept of
representative democracy that disbelieves the people and
believes only its system of expropriation and oppression. It
is important to move forward and clean our own stables too
of the moss wherever it has set in for want of vigilance. No
other viable alternative is at hand.
(162)
Perceptions and Perspectives
(163)
For rural India, which is to go by the only available
strength of traditional family farming with its collective
labour and collective consumption is its core; Bhaichara is
irreplaceable. Khap is the best form available of democracy,
with no bar to share opinions with others, even the adversary
of a known kind, having direct participation of the
population without any barrier of any sort, and none to
dictate. To act otherwise, is against the very grains of Khap
system and its ethos.
Let us realise that village life symbolises a life in
cohesion and harmony. All that disturbs its serenity must
be guarded against consciously and zealously with
prudence. If khap is accepted as an institution, it becomes an
object of factional fight to gain control by vested interests
entrenched in this time of market competition, which sadly
is made today by many upstarts in ambitious politics.
Khap has a great potentiality to let the humanity
survive and survive with peace, dignity, free from coercion
and expropriation, provided this system is freed from
features it has acquired of late from alien systems like
electoral politics.
Khap is a dependable alternative to the centralised state
if corporate capital is made to surrender and people take
initiative to refine it fit for present times. Gotra Khap on the
other hand is a powerful mechanism with the families and
their concerned communities to self regulate their family
life. Important factor in its favour is that People need a change
from the present one. To live a useful life with peace, a
different world is necessary to have. Can we afford to ignore
the writing on the wall?
Well, at our common peril.
End
Khap
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References:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120727/edit.htm#6
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05india.html?_r=2HYPERLINK http://www.nytimes.com/
2011/06/05/world/asia/
05india.html?_r=2&ref=jimyardley&pagewanted=all&HYPERLINK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/world/asia/
05india.html?_r=2&ref=jimyardley&pagewanted=allref=jimyardleyHYPERLINK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/world/asia/
05india.html?_r=2&ref=jimyardley&pagewanted=all&HYPERLINK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/world/asia/
05india.html?_r=2&ref=jimyardley&pagewanted=allpagewanted=all
http://www.countercurrents.org/rawat181012.htm 18.11.2012
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-purposes-of-
tradition/1016714/ 15.10.2012
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/07/16/india-prosecute-
rampant-honor-killings Human Rights Watch
http://indialawyers.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/khap-
panchayat-signs-of-desperation/ Jagmati Sangwan in
Hindu
http://www.sacw.net/article521.html South Asia Citizens Web
on Khap
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28084729_1_khap-panchayat-gotra-siwah
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panchayats-no-room-for-a-parallel-justice-system-
comment_100362369.html Ranjna Kumari
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32863.html
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20090828261701700.htm Ranbir Singh
http://creative.sulekha.com/khap-panchayats-and-gotra-
issues-what-should-be-done_471604_blog
Perceptions and Perspectives
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2608/stories/
20090424260804600.htm Tamil Nadu
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20090828261700400.htm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/dishom-manjhi-supreme-court-
santal-society-073417787.htmlTribal Manjhi
Related readings
Constituent Assembly Debates, Lok Sabha Secretariat, New
Delhi-1.
50 years of Anti-Panchayat Raj , Sahyog Pustak Kuteer,
Nagli rajapur, Nizamudin East, New Delhi-13.
Hind Swaraj, Navjivan Press, Varanasi.
Self-Rule Laws, MP, 1998, Sahyog Pustak Kuteer, Nagli
rajapur ,New Delhi-13.
The Spirit and form of Indian Polity, Aurbindo Ghosh.
Uttarbharat Ke Jataon Ki Shashan Vyawastha, M.C
Pradhan, 1990, AI Jat Mahasabha, Vasant Vihar, New
Delhi.
Family, Private property and the State, F. Engels.
Marx on Malthus, PPH, New Delhi.
Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck
Confessions of an Economic Hitman- John Perkins.
Mans Worldly Goods- Leo Huberman.
Manoj-Babli, A Hate Story by Chander Suta Dogra. Penguin
Books, India, 2013. A chronicle of prosecutors file in the
trial court plus the narration from mother-sister of Manoj
and CPM philosophy of women liberation movement in
India currently
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ANNEX-I
Theodore Roosevelt on Americas own disposable Indians and their Land
Theodore Roosevelt, Chapter I: Ranching in the Bad Lands, Hunting
Trips of a Ranchman, 1885
I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western
view of the Indian. I dont go so far as to think that the only good
Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are,
and I shouldnt like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.
The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the
average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New York into
New Jersey, support them for fifty years in vicious idleness, and
you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless,
revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys,
who can take care of themselves, but the defenceless, lone settlers
on the plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked
Sheridan for a cannon. What! Do you want to kill my soldiers
with it? asked the general. No, replied the chief, want to kill
the cowboy; kill soldier with a club. Theodore Roosevelt, speech,
January 1886 Robs comment: Roosevelts The Winning of the West
contains several false or unsupported claims. Among them: That
the US was generous to the Indians, paying them many times
what their land was worth. That the Indians broke as many treaties
as the white men did. That they broke treaties at all without
provocation. That just and honorable nations can operate by
breaking treaties whenever they choose. That international law
and morality dont apply to indigenous people. His claim in
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman is also problematical. The western
(i.e. Plains) Indians may have been nomadic, but what about all
the Indians west of the Rockies and east of the Mississippi? What
is Roosevelts rationale for taking their land? In Hunting Trips
Roosevelt doesnt offer a rationale, but you can imagine what hed
say. He made it clear in The Winning of the West that any excuse
would suffice. If the Indians were nomadic, they didnt own the
land. If they were settled, they didnt deserve the land. If they
signed treaties giving them legal ownership, the US had the right
to abrogate the treaties whenever circumstances change.
Perceptions and Perspectives
(167)
Annex-II
Self-sketch
At 17, while a student, I had joined the communist ranks. It
was in November, 1952. Family background was enough to keep
away from idol-worship. When a sudden logic for the personality-
cult of Stalin was thrown it did not appeal to us. Thereafter, the
Communist Party of India, in 1956, sought to change tack on certain
fundamental issues. That astounded our young minds and it could
not satisfy the searching queries. The splits since 1964 bewildered
us more. Stepped into journalistic activities in May, 1966 with
Tehrik H/F and other Hindi/ English publications thereafter. It was
a turbulent period. But all these factions within the known
communist formations failed to answer the task and proved
wanting on basic issues of theory and practice. Later, in the early
part of 1969 it was an incidental introduction to Socialist Unity
Centre as the only genuine communist party in Indian soil that
brought a few of us to its fold after a series of discussion on
important issues of principle that troubled all like us at the time.
At the national level, I was inducted to work in its trade union
body in later part of 1969; elected me as one of the vice-presidents
and later in 1985 as a member to its secretariat. In 1985, I was
inducted to work in the newly floated Peasants and Workers
organization (AIKKMS) as its General Secretary apart from another
front floated in 1983 to work on Democratic Rights (CPDRS) as
the General Secretary, while retired Justice VR Krishna Iyer was
elected as the President. In the party, I was elected first as member
of its National Control Commission in 1988 and later its
Chairperson. While engaged in organisational activities, certain
features were marked that did not square with the claim in theory
of this party. Inner-struggle for almost a year proved fruitless. In
the meantime, the collapse of soviet experiment in building
socialism was another important reason to look afresh into the
whole range of related questions in theory and practice, specifically
the relevant mode of production for the society. The relevance of
industrial mode vis-a-vis agriculture came up for scrutiny. We as
group decided to seek answers for the fresh situation and say
goodbye to SUC and search for better course of philosophical
approach in life. Resultantly, we stand firm by rural India in its
struggle to face the present turmoil.
Khap
(168)
The Book
The subject of this study centres some questions that came up for
scrutiny in India. But these have relevance for all nations. In fact,
the study is a treatise on alternate mode of production and
distribution relations to what humanity is tied at present.
During its long period of Independence struggle and immediately
thereafter a serious debate raged throughout (read Constituent
Assembly Debates for detailed reference) what shape the country
is to take for good governance. In the given circumstance the
country was destined to be a federation of its constituents with
high degree of autonomy to govern its internal life. However,
situation so conspired that a strong structure at the centre with a
strong tendency to a centralised polity was thrust upon the newly
free nation with a seeming federal structure. It has led to many
disturbing features to emerge during almost seven decades of its
functioning with lacerating wounds all around. By now it is
troubled nation. At its present stage of development, the ruling
corporate capital is pushing the country to a highly regimented
state for governance to serve its emerging imperialist agenda. To
fulfil the agenda of taking over rural India, corporate capital in
collaboration with a powerful media at its command and obliging
state structure, the fresh attack on the very life style of rural India
hitting at tthe very collective system to govern its internal life in
the villages. Its Khap system came under severe attack.
The book is a small effort to answer some of the important aspects
in the raging debate.