1 Women's Movement and Crimes concerning 'Honour' An Indian Experience A Review Paper Prof. Vibhuti Patel, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai-20 Crimes in the name of 'honour' are on a rise in our country. Both rural as well as urban areas are gripped with instances of horrific crimes where young citizens of our country are being killed for exercising their democratic right of choosing their life partners. The democratic minded people of our country are both shocked and distressed by these incidents. During last three decades, women's movement in India has provided institutional support to young lovers and newly married couples faced with life-threatening consequences. The murders of young women and men, who have married by choice or across caste barriers, often go unnoticed. There are no statistics on loss of lives due to honour related crimes. Many are not investigated because the community closes ranks, apparently making it impossible to find out what really happened. Spate of violence against love marriages involving couples from same Gotra and same village at the behest of caste panchayats (councils) meting Kangaroo justice, has forced women's rights organizations to demand laws deciding parameters within which caste councils can exercise their rights in the name of 'identity'. Though the mainstream media, politicians and community leaders call such barbaric acts of lynching, burning, stoning, brutally murdering young lovers 'honour killing', feminists refuse this term and declare it as 'custodial killing'. (Chakravarty, Uma, 2005). Political Economy of 'Honour killing' In a patriarchal society there is prevalence of a pattern of social evaluation based on the performance of the 'prescribed roles' by women in particular. The notion of 'honour' as the apex of social values and the embodiment of social ideals establishes the framework for a woman's social worth as it is continuously evaluated and sanctioned by family, neighbours, clan, caste, community, colleagues at workplace etc. One's conformity to normative roles guarantees societal approval by conceding honour, while deviance leads to isolation, social boycott, ostracisation, even killing. Patriarchy also imposes double standard of morality for men and 1
2 women. With respect to women, honour may be synonymous with 'chastity' or 'virginity', or in case of a married woman, 'fidelity' (Kanchan, 2007). Normative social assumptions even today understand women mostly in terms of domesticity and reproduction and therefore reinforce women's traditional powerlessness. Family pressures also often cause enormous disadvantage to women. More than 47.4 % of marriages in India are child marriages (NFHS, 2006). Many women are married off early in life to men chosen by their parents, often against their will. They do not have the liberty to get higher education or choose a career of their choice, and the liberty to decide whom and when to marry remains inaccessible to them. Women are considered to be repository of custom, tradition and identity of the community (Narayan, 2003). Violence against women among South Asians is in some way or the other connected to 'honour' of the family built on control of sexuality, fertilely and labour of the