I've been debating for a couple of months now about whether I should even post this or not. Part of me understands that people often do not want to read blog posts about negative, sad, or scary subjects. I also realize that the nature of the article I am posting about is less common in the West (U.S., Canada, UK) but the fact that it does still happen here is concerning enough in itself.
I really don't watch much television at all. In fact, I watch the local and national news and that's pretty much it. For some strange reason one night I couldn't get sleepy so I started scanning the channels and landed on a Dateline MSNBC documentary called "Justice for Sparkle, Could a vivacious young woman have been killed by her in-laws?", you can find it here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29020846/ns/dateline_nbc-crime_reports/
If you ever read my blog, then you know this headline naturally caught my attention. The gist of the story is about this adorable, young African-American girl in GA (Sparkle) who meets a desi boy (Ricky Rai), falls in love, gets pregnant, then shortly after gets married and winds up being murdered at home by a thug in front of her infant daughter for the price of $10,000. Who was the purchaser of Sparkle's death? Ricky Rai's, father, Chiman Rai. I sat straight up in bed and never left the television until the program was over. I was enraged, insensed, horrified, terrified and nauseous. How could someone take a young mother's life, in front of her child, all to save face? Shocking? Not so much in India where these types of killings are far less shocking than here in the west. Does this qualify as an "honor killing"? No wonder desi kids are terrified to have a love marriage! Geez.
Here is another article of forbidden love/desi/murder drama: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14606778/ about a desi girl who secretly marries a desi boy because her parents do not approve and ends up being murdered while visiting India. Who was the the purchaser of Jassi's murder? Her own family.
So, maybe my PIMIL and PAFIL are not worlds worst as I'd originally thought? Still yet, I go about my day for five years now always looking over my shoulder.
May God/Bhawan/Allah always keep Sparkle's daughter Analla safe from harm.
About Me
- The Milky Chai Life
- This blog is written about my Indian/American culture-blended life. I am the American part of the equation and my darling hubby (DH)is the Indian (American born) part. We have two amazing and beautiful daughters who keep us constantly entertained and busy. I hope to post here about the things that I love; food, family, health, all things beautiful in this life and even a few things that are not so wonderful, like my in-laws. I refer to them as PIMIL (Psychotic Indian Mother-In-Law) and PAFIL (Passive Agressive Father-In-Law) here. There may even be an occasional posting from my DH here. Enjoy! You may also email me at themilkychailife@gmail.com
35 comments:
Most Punjabis are Jats
Jats , there are Hindu and Sikh Jats are notorious for honor killings even in Delhi
They kill upper castes who elope with their kids, they kill lower castes who elope with their kids
They kill other Jats of the wrong sub-caste or wrong village who elope with their kids
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Theodore Dalrymple - For example, relations between immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and from Jamaica, at least in my city, are often far from amicable, the hostility extending to the generation born in England. Indian families are often dismayed (to put it mildly) when their daughters choose Jamaican lovers. I know of two who have been killed by their close families to redeem family honor in the eyes of their community. The first was hanged at home; the second was taken back to Pakistan, where she was beaten to death, the local police regarding this as the correct procedure under the circumstances.
Babu Bajrangi -
COMMUNALISM
A serial kidnapper and his `mission'
DIONNE BUNSHA
Bajrang Dal activist Babu Bajrangi "rescues", by kidnapping, Patel girls who marry outside their community.
PICTURES: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Babu Bajrangi: "I don't believe in love marriage. We have to marry within our own community."
"If you rescue one girl, it is the same as saving 100 cows. One daughter equals 100 holy cows."
- A pamphlet distributed by Babu Bajrangi's Navchetan Trust.
"I HAVE some masala for you," Babubhai Patel (alias Babu Bajrangi) told me excitedly when I called to arrange an interview with him. "There are three new girls with me." The "serial kidnapper of Gujarat" has never shied away from his mission. Every time I meet him, he brags about the girls he has "rescued", almost as if each one were a new conquest.
As president of his Navchetan (New Awakening) Trust, he has made it his mission to "rescue" Patel girls who marry outside their community.
"In every house there is a live bomb that can erupt at any time. Do you know who that is? Our daughters," the Navchetan pamphlet proclaims. "Daughters are the honour of the family and the community, and to protect that is our Hindu duty and Hindu culture... . Come, and let's unite to save bombs... Jai Shree Ram." Babubhai claims to have distributed 10 lakh pamphlets all over Gujarat.
Bajrangi part 2
"I don't believe in love marriage. We have to marry within our own community. These girls go to college, make friends with some lafanga [loafer], roam with them on their bikes, fall in love, and then run off and get married," said Babubhai, pointing to the three girls sitting meekly by his side. "We bring them back and convince them that they are ruining their future. They stay with me for a while and then return to their parents."
"But why do they stay with you?" I ask.
"We give them shelter, make them understand, and when their mind is fresh, they go back home," he says.
HIS `magic mantra'
I remind Babubhai that when we met two years ago he had described to me how he and his men thrashed the boys and took away the girls. "That was some time back. If I say that now, the media will be after me," he smiles. "I have a magic mantra that makes the girls come back. We do whatever it takes and somehow bring them. If it's a Musalman, we definitely use force even if the girl doesn't want to leave. Musalmans don't have a right to live in our country. How dare they marry our girls?"
Bajrangi-more
The short, stocky Babu Bajrangi, as he is popularly known, would pass off as an average middle-class trader. He claims to be a social worker. Sitting in his second-floor office in the Ahmedabad suburb of Naroda, Bajrangi talks about his NGO, Navchetan, which ‘rescues’ Hindu women who have been ‘lured’ into relationships with Muslim men. “In every house today there is a bomb, and that bomb is the woman, who forms the basis of Hindu culture and tradition,” Bajrangi begins. “Parents allow her to go to college, and they start having love affairs, often with Muslims. Women should just be kept at home to save them from the terrible fate of Hindu-Muslim marriages.”
Bajrangi’s Navchetan works to prevent inter-religious love marriages, and if such a wedding has already taken place, it works to break the union. When a marriage between a Hindu woman and Muslim man gets registered in a court, within a few days the marriage documents generally end up on Bajrangi’s desk, ferreted out by functionaries in the lower judiciary. The girl is subsequently kidnapped and sent back home; the boy is taught a lesson. “We beat him in a way that no Muslim will dare to look at Hindu women again. Only last week, we made a Muslim eat his own waste – thrice, in a spoon,” he reveals with barely concealed pride. All this is illegal, Bajrangi concedes, but it is moral. “And anyway, the government is ours,” he continues, turning to look at the clock. “See, I am meeting Modi in a while today.”
Punjab part 1
Witness to a kidnapping
MEERA NANDA
The district court building happens to be barely five minutes walk from my parental home in Chandigarh. Outside this house of justice, I witnessed the kidnapping of a young woman who had come there seeking justice.
The violence of the act — and how it was accepted by so many as natural, just and “for her own good” — revealed the ugliness of the City Beautiful. What I saw is very much on my mind as I think about the recent protests to defend women’s right to go to pubs. I wonder if all the pink chaddis the protestors sent to shame the hoodlums of the Hindu Right have anything meaningful to offer to that poor woman in Chandigarh.
It was early February when I came to Chandigarh for a short visit. I was walking past the high court building on my way to the market around midday. A woman was walking in my direction. I would have passed her by without noticing her, but suddenly I heard her scream. Before I could figure out what the matter was, she began to run in the opposite direction. Just then I saw a huge white van stop by the curb. Burly young men — four or five of them — stepped out, and began to run after the woman. Within a matter of seconds, they had grabbed hold of the woman who was screaming and struggling. I saw them drag her by her hair into the van. Before I could unfreeze myself and try to take down the license number, they were gone.
--
Then a middle-aged Sikh man who was in the crowd spoke up. He told us that it was all right, it was all a ghar ki baat and nothing bad was going to happen to the woman. He claimed that he was her father and it was her brothers and cousins who had “taken her home”.
“How can you allow your own daughter to be treated like this? What kind of a father are you? Have you no shame?” I asked.
Punjab- part 2
This is what he offered by way of an explanation: His daughter was having an affair with a Muslim man and that was not acceptable to him. She was a bright girl, he said, an engineering student, but this Muslim man was ruining her life. He said something garbled about a lawsuit the couple had filed against the family. It appears that she had come to the court in connection with the lawsuit and the family had been waiting for her.
It seemed to me that many in the crowd cooled down after they heard this “explanation”. But there were four-five young men who agreed with me that we have to take this man to the police station and report the kidnapping.
We narrated what we had seen to the policemen on duty. Then the old man started talking about the affair with the Muslim man, as if it were a crime. To show that he was not narrow-minded, he said that he would have had no objection to a chura-chamar (derogatory reference to “untouchable” communities) but he could not accept the idea of his daughter marrying a Muslim.
His story had an immediate and a dramatic effect. The policemen were far more interested in the old man’s travails over this supposedly wayward daughter than the violence she had been subjected to. My pleas that the victim was past the age of consent and had the full right to choose her partner were met with total incomprehension. Madam, you don’t understand these matters, the cops told me. How can this poor man let his daughter marry a Muslim? Would I let such a thing happen to my daughter, they asked, without heeding my affirmative answer.
It was self-evident to these guardians of law and order that respectable women from Sikh and Hindu families should not marry Muslim men. In their eyes, the old man did the right thing by having his own daughter kidnapped.
KODERMA, India — When Nirupama Pathak left this remote mining region for graduate school in New Delhi, she seemed to be leaving the old India for the new. Her parents paid her tuition and did not resist when she wanted to choose her own career. But choosing a husband was another matter.
The New York Times
Honor killings are most common in parts of northern India.
Her family was Brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and when Ms. Pathak, 22, announced she was secretly engaged to a young man from a caste lower than hers, her family began pressing her to change her mind.
Days after Ms. Pathak returned home in late April, she was found dead in her bedroom. The police have arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak, on suspicion of murder, while the family contends that the death was a suicide.
The postmortem report revealed another unexpected element to the case: Ms. Pathak was pregnant.
“One thing is absolutely clear,” said Prashant Bhushan, a social activist and lawyer now advising Ms. Pathak’s fiancé. “Her family was trying their level best to prevent her from marrying that boy. The pressure was such that either she was driven to suicide or she was killed.”
In India, where the tension between traditional and modern mores reverberates throughout society, Ms. Pathak’s death comes amid an apparent resurgence of so-called honor killings against couples who breach Hindu marriage traditions.
Intercaste marriages are protected under Indian law, yet social attitudes remain largely resistant. In a 2006 survey cited in a United Nations report, 76 percent of respondents deemed the practice unacceptable. An overwhelming majority of Hindu couples continue to marry within their castes, and newspapers are filled with marital advertisements in which parents, seeking to arrange a marriage for a son or daughter, specify caste among lists of desired attributes like profession and educational achievement.
Personally in your case, I dont think you are in physical danger because you are not Muslim, Christian, Non-vegetarian or black
Think of Hindu society as islamic-lite, fewer honor killings than in muslim society, but similar but milder
I am saddened and shocked by these stories. Interesting that you pose the question about qualifying as "honor killings." The Western media has led many to believe that honor killing is a Muslim phenomenon and highlights its occurrance as a political tool to prove that Muslims are evil people who don't value human life and that Muslim women are in danger from and need rescue from Muslim men. Though the circumstances of the murders you highlight are the same, the question is posed because these horrific acts didn't occur in connection to Muslims. In Arab communities, it happens among Christian and Druze as well as Muslims...and in South Asia, it happens among Hindus and Sikhs as well as Muslims. The answer is yes, these are honor killings.
@barani:
These stories are absolutely shocking. I can't imagine not having a choice in who I would marry. Parents killing their children or their childrens love interests/spouses is just crazy. It is hard for me to believe that anywhere in the world in the 21st century that this kind of archaic behavior happens. Like I said, no wonder desi kids shy away from love marriages. This topic brings to mind a post that one of my favorite bloggers posted on whether desi's really have choices or not, here: http://girlsguidetosurvival.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/desi-choices-or-else/
@LuckyFatima:
Thank you for your comment here. I appreciate your opinion on that question b/c it's interesting, when I told my husband about this story and relayed that it was about an honor killing he corrected me once I told him the story and explained that honor killings are defined as Muslim murders within families, usually over the females. I argued with him briefly over it and I told him that my understanding was that an honor killing had no religious boundary, that anyone that would kill over a family memeber to save face/"protect their honor" could be considered an honor killing.
Thanks again for your answer on that!
@Milky Chai,
Honor Killings happen to a very large extent among muslims even in India, because they are even more backward under the rule of primitive mullahs
Hindus do mostly outcasting
I have deliberately not posted muslim honor killings in India
because that is a very large volume and you are not married to a muslim
There are plenty of Indian muslims killing Hindu suitors of their daughters, throwing acid on their daughters face for dating a hindu , beheading a Hindu son-in-law and so on
Even in England, the bangladeshi muslim girl who starred in Harry Potter movie was nearly killed by her father and brother for dating a Hindu boy
Honor-Killing
It is usually done by certain castes like Jats more often
If their daughter elopes with XXX it may be limited to outcasting , whereas with YYY it may lead to death
There is a political angle to this
If your daughter marries XXX , the number of XXX will decrease, whereas your tribe will decrease, and if XXX increases too much, bad things happen
For a Hindu family,
In terms of impact from Maximum to Minimum
Muslim
Black
Indian Christian
White Christian
Non-Vegetarian
A white vegetarian, non-christian , such as yourself is almost honorary upper caste
and usually there will be no drama
What often happens is a naive girl watches Bollywood or Romantic soap operas, and falls in love without realising consequences for the extended family
For safety, falling in love must avoid red-lines, and try to fall in love within the safety zone
Change does happen but very slowly
@Milky Chai,
the best way to explain this is like this
In my case, I am a Brahmin
I am allowed to marry any Brahmin, or merchant caste and even farmer castes down to the level of Patel or Jat,
Any further down the caste heirarchy or a muslim or a christian, in my caste, the punishment would be outcasting, Only some Hindu castes do Honor Killings
This is because, once I marry outside the red-lines, my extended family would find it difficult to get married and the extended family would get shunned
Regarding muslims or christians, this is due to historical reasons and being considered foreign invader barbarians or Mlecha
Now everyone in my caste knows the rules and most try to stay within
If a girl or boy goes beyond the redlines, it reflects very poorly on parental upbringing
My ABCD nieces had the rules drilled into them repeatedly by the extended family and the consequences include deportation to India and / or outcasting
In my caste, marrying a non-Indian the rules
include vegetarianism, non-islam, non-christianity, and non-black
Most other upper castes have similar rules
@Milky Chai
In both these cases, the perpetrators are Punjabi Sikhs
Rai is a Sikh and Jassi is also a sikh
Hindus more likely do expulsions
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/07/12/phyllis-chesler-muslim-honor-killings-media/
Nevertheless, according to my 2010 study in Middle East Quarterly, 84% of those who commit honor murders in North America have been Muslims and 96% of honor murderers in Europe were Muslims.
But, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times did not write any in-depth stories or send their own reporters to cover the honor killings of: Noor-Al-Maleki in Phoenix (2009); Aasiya Z. Hassan in Buffalo (2009); the three Shafi daughters and a first wife in Kingston Canada (2009); the two Said sisters in Dallas (2008); Sandeela Kanwal in Atlanta (2008); Aqsa Parvez in Toronto (2007); Khatera Sadiqi in Ottawa (2006); Dr. Lubaina Bhatti Ahmed in St. Clairsville, Ohio (1999); Methal Dayem in Cleveland (1999); or, about the first known honor killing on American soil, that of Palestina Isa in St. Louis (1989).
@barani:
I really am pretty ignorant on the caste system and the requirements to only marry within (or close to?) your caste. Is this a law in India or a requirement in religious texts like the Gita? Also, what is the purpose? Why the need to keep everyone separate? It seems to me that when you have people only marrying in their communities for thousands of years you are going to run into some serious gene diversity issues. Ex: European royal families marrying within for centuries resulting in genetic defects.
It sounds like you don't have a choice, you just understand you will have to marry someone from your same community or else you face the wrath of family...? Do you ever question that reasoning or do you just go along with it and accept it?
I'm not implying anything, I'm just trying to understand the reasoning.
@MilkyChai
There are four red lines that I cant cross
If I cross them, in my case, my extended family can do nothing to me. My caste is non-violent
However, I shall ruin the marriage prospects of my entire extended family and cause them to be shunned and I dont want to cause them pain and suffering
In India , the extended family is the social safety network and sooner or later, I will need their help
The four red lines are Muslim, Black, Christian and Non-vegetarian
There is actually a rationale behind each of these redlines
Non-vegetarians are mostly backward castes, less educated and less good looking and in my caste, non-vegetarianism is considered semi-cannibalism
Blacks , I wish to remain silent on an open blog
Muslims and Christians - If I marry them, in most cases the kids will eventually be raised non-Hindu and anti-Hindu, and this would swell the anti-Hindu population and reduce the Hindu population, which leads to very observable bad effects such as Ethnic cleansing of Hindus from such locales all over India.
Pakistan and Bangladesh became Hindu minority and Hindus got ethnic cleansed, as well as from Kashmir and in North east India, Christians have converted at gunpoint ( google up NLFT baptist ) and ethnic cleansed on a large scale
Swami Vivekananda said " One Hindu less, lost to Abrahamic religions ( islam and christianity ) is one enemy more "
Anyone outside the redlines, is someone I could not bring home to my extended family
as I dont see how this person could fit in with my extended family and indeed be hostile and disruptive to my extended family
In South India, non-brahmins
marry their mothers-brothers daughter or fathers-sisters-daughter, and the birth defects do happen and those kids die young.
This is slowly going away due to public health awareness
Indian Hindu law, on paper at least prevents marriages closer than third cousin
Each caste has millions of people and as long as you are third cousin or further away there is no risk
There are 60 million brahmins and 240 million merchant and upper landlord castes
By the time of the Gita, 3500 years ago, castes had become hereditary, hence attempts by reformers to make it based on
conduct, than birth
The gita does speak against varna-sankara or caste mixing, when castes are based on conduct alone
Historically, upper caste men have been allowed to marry lower caste women and this leads to yellow skinned brahmins in Thailand and dark brown skinned brahmins in south India
The Rishi Vyasa, author of the Mahabharata, was born of a brahmin father and low caste fisherwoman and yet was accepted as brahmin due to his learning
Indian law allows anyone to marry anyone and officially bans using caste against anyone
The reason that most Hindu parents object to their kids marrying Americans is due to the red-lines of non-vegetarian diet and christian religion
There is no red-line against a white person who is vegetarian and non-christian
I found that Sparkles ex-Husband, went to India, and married an Indian girl and the extended family did not know that he was already married and had a child already
The honor killing was aimed at preventing the extended family from finding out about Sparkle
@MilkyChai, castes are evolved tribes
Most tribes dont allow outsiders to marry in and they each have their own set of rules on who is acceptable
Rai married Sparkle, crossed the No-black red line
Most Hindu families would have simply outcasted, whereas Rai family being Punjabi Sikh, resorted to violence
Jassi violated the no Non Vegetarian / No Backward caste red line
Most Hindu families would have simply outcasted,
Jassi family being Punjabi Sikh, resorted to violence
The ABCD Gujurati girl married a muslim and crossed the no muslim red-line, her family being non violent Hindu caste, simply outcasted her
All these incidents can be explained by understanding the four red lines for Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains
Whereas in your case, you did not violate any red line, and the only explanation is crazy mother in law
Honor Killings happen to conceal the elopement from the extended family and from the social circle
If the extended family and social circle already know of the elopement, it is too late to do an honor killing
@barani:
"Whereas in your case, you did not violate any red line, and the only explanation is crazy mother in law"
Hahaha! My sentiments exactly!
Thanks for explaining the red lines. Although, I think PIMIL would have thrown a fit regardless of who he chose. She hated his ABCD girlfriend prior to me. The girl partied all the time, drank, smoked and engaged in illicit conduct with other guys behind his back and PIMIL tells him she was still a better choice than me? I don't party, drink, smoke or do anything crazy/wild. Yes, PIMIL is nuts.
"Non-vegetarians are mostly backward castes, less educated and less good looking"
-I'm not sure I can agree with this comment b/c in my profession I know many highly educated/intelligent desi's who are non-veg. And also many attractive desi's who are non-veg. Is this your opinion or do you mean the general Indian populations opinion? I'm vegetarian myself but I don't consider myself more attractive or more intelligent for it.
YES! I also read that Ricky Rai married an Indian girl, never disclosing his past or the baby. WHAT A CREEP! I feel sorry for the desi girl he married! She should have divorced him for it.
I am so glad that I was born in these times and in the U.S. where I have freedom of choice. I think sometimes as young Americans here we take that for granted. I respect my parents so much after all this because when I introduced my now husband to them, they never blinked an eye and instantly loved him like their own son. I would have expected nothing less from them.
@Milky Chai,
while certainly your parents are broadminded, they come from a cultural history that is very different from Indian parents
Two of the red-lines, against muslims and christians is due to 1500 years of genocidal jihadi violence and 500 years of colonialism ( colonialism is considered a christian invasion, than a white invasion )
@barani:
I can agree with you on that and I'm sure that plays a big factor. I dispprove of violence in the name of any religion, even though they are brain-washed into believing that their violent acts are pleasing in God's eyes. I also disagree with the imperialist activities of many christian nations, even though they are also brain-washed into believing that they are saving the world by strongly persuading (and sometimes forcing) people to convert.
Thankful my parents are no such crazy people, religion never even comes up. Their philosophy is to each his own and non of my business.
I just saw a documentary on this
Ricky testified against his father. Ricky was told that dating black would lead to violence, but he didnt think his dad would actually carry this out
Ricky's brother and sister had an arranged marriage fixed and that would have been cancelled if the in-laws found out about this
Again, I wouldn't put much faith in most of what barani is saying - there's a lot of spin in his words, and more than a little flat-out falsehoods.
There are plenty of great books about the Sub-Continent if you want to learn more about its history, religions, or culture, broadly understood. They're a bit drier than what you'll get from an individual, but more trust-worthy.
Even my own husband has enough biases (for instance, army bra whose father fought in wars against Pakistan) that I don't always believe his stance on India 100%
Punjabi Sikh family honor kills when their daughter tries to elope with a muslim
In yet another case of honour killing, a family attempted to burn their daughter alive and hacked her young lover in Bijnore on Wednesday morning. The girl was admitted to a hospital with 80 per cent burns while her mother was arrested in this connection.
However guring quizzing, the mother came up with a conflicting story claiming that she did kill the youth but she did so because the man tried to torch her daughter alive.
As per reports, Taufiq Ahmed of Umari hamlet of Haldaur police circle was having an affair with Roshni in adjacent Khakpura village where Taufiq has a shop. Roshni' family opposed the marriage on the grounds that Taufiq was a Muslim and they were Sikhs. Taufiq was hence threatened by the girl's family several times in the past but it had little impact on the lovers.
In the wee hours of Wednesday, Roshni's uncle Raju Sardar caught the couple in a compromising in his farm house and called the other family members. They later brutally assaulted the youth. Not satisfied with the punishment, they hacked him to death and dumped his body under a protrided verrandah of their house to conceal the crime.
Seeing her lover being killed before her eyes, Roshni threatened that she would inform the police about the incident. This angered her family members so much that they subsequently overpowered her and after dousing her with kerosene, set her ablaze,
Hey Barani,
Are you like the owner of Sepia Mutiny or something?
This happened a few months ago, near Kolkata in West Bengal
A Hindu tribal ( lower caste ) girl tried to elope with a muslim boy and got hauled before her caste panchayat ( tribunal / kangaroo court ) which sentenced her to be humiliated.
Again in this case, the severest redline was breached.
Tribal girl stripped over 'affair', molested by hundreds in Bengal
SURI: A 17-year-old tribal girl was stripped, beaten and forced to walk nude for 8km across three villages with hundreds of men molesting her all the way and taking videos on their mobiles
According to sources, the girls fault was that she loved a boy from another community ( press code for muslim )
@ barani:
Wow, that is very interesting. How is raping a girl supposed to "teach her a lesson"? It's like these guys were just looking for a reason to do it really. And where does that leave them in their karmic cycle by having done that? It's a crazy world out there.
@milkychai,
she was not mass-raped
She was mass-groped.
This has nothing to do with karma, but entirely political in nature.
The final redline is - Dont marry a muslim - because he is an Orc. Temple destroyer and hands dripping in blood.
Marrying a muslim swells muslim numbers and
that is politically dangerous.
The sikh family did murder, whereas the lower caste hindu family ordered humiliation for this attempted elopement.
The goal is to scare not just this girl but also to preventively scare a thousand other girls who might think of eloping with a muslim.
Conversely each year, muslims murder thousands of Hindu men who try to elope with muslim women, to prevent a depletion of their numbers.
Virtually every Indian family would do at least as much as below
-
Twenty-eight-year-old Amrita Singh* is a confident, Ivy League-educated woman who has dated black, white and Indian men. She told her parents about her first boyfriend, a black coworker, when the relationship became serious. They agreed to meet him, but were instantly critical. "They claim it has nothing to do with the fact that he was black. They claim it was because he didn't come across as being very well educated and he came from a broken home," she said.
On a trip to India, her aunts and uncles sat her down and told her that she was "killing her father" and destroying the family. Her parents told her that she wouldn't be a part of the family ( outcasted ) if she stayed with her boyfriend. "The first time (my boyfriend) experienced it, he stayed up crying. He wanted so badly for my parents to accept him, but he knew no matter what he did, they wouldn't."
Singh became depressed. She was fighting with her parents and bickering with her boyfriend. Her father was drinking heavily and her relatives were not letting up. She didn't want to end her relationship, because her parents would win, but eventually she moved on.
Contrary to what "barani" is saying, most Punjabis are NOT Jats.
Besides, Jats aren't just in Punjab, they are in Rajasthan and numerous surrounding states.
Hey, I stumbled upon this blog so randomly tonight, but have been up all night reading it.
The only thing I wanna add to it is that these killings, they are nothing but cold blooded calculated murders, by the very family of these women, who think they have a say over her body. What she can do with it, who she can give it to.
By calling them 'honour' killings, we are nothing but glorifying these heartless murders. There is nothing honourable about such killings.
There are organizations and activists, here in India, who are currently working on disarming this phrase.
These crimes, in the name of family honour, from murder to rape to molestation to social ostracization are heinous offences, worse than those of such nature, committed under different motivations.
A woman above 18 has the right and autonomy over her body, she is an equal citizen who is free to have a relationship of her choice, and not be tortured or humiliated by anyone, even if it's her family.
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