Cut the "Khap".....(oops..Crap...)

Recent times have seen a string of "honour" killings trigerred by the decision of few young men and women to marry, discarding the so called traditions of our society.

In a modern democracy which aspires to be in the league of superpowers, such regressive beliefs and practices are not only condemnamble, but highly derogatory.

Some of the killings were systematically ordered by the self proclaimed moral guardians and granted sanction by the village lords "Khap Panchayats" which disapproves intra gotra marriages.

Let us move towards the genesis of the two terms involved: "Khap Panchayats" and "Gotra".

Khap panchayat is an age old caste based body which controls the system of justice delivery by virtue of its caste members being in majority over a particular area. They were granted some sort of legal sanction during the british rule. After all the Britishers main aim was not justice delivery and the less nuisance they faced on this front the better it was for them. It helped them in maintaining social control and acted as a filter between the masses and the mainstream justice delivery mechanism.

Some vedic texts point to the fact the concept of Gotra emerged from the following of various religious saints. The followers of a particular saint were classified as being members of one Gotra and intra gotra marriage was prohibited. Thus the followers of Kashyap rishi were classified as belonging to the Kashyap gotra and that of Rishi Atri as belonging to Atri gotra. It is more to do with learning lineage than patrilineal descent. The motivating factor behind prohibiting intra gotra marriage was perhaps not incest but the belief that marrying a person of other gotra would result in increase in number of followers of that saint.

Now in the present circumstance how much of it is relevant?

To make matters worse the union of India has intervened in the social arena by making distinct laws related to marriage:The Hindu Marriage Act,1955 and The Special Marriage Act,1954. Section 29 of the hindu marriage act already prohibits certain kinds of marriages as being incestuous. At the same time it allows certain real incestuous marriages such as marriage with one's niece among some communities, considering local traditions. This itself smacks of appeasement of caste in-groups. The state cannot be on both sides at the same time. If you are giving sanction to the local sentiments, you will have to give value to all local sentiments irrespective of region, religion etc. Or otherwise the better option is obviously to have a uniform civil code which is compatible with the democratic ethos of a progressive country.The state has itself left the scope for illegitimate demands to be made from various groups.

In times when even the SC has asked the state to incentivise inter caste and inter religion marriages the state has created a separate piece of legislation "The Special Marriage Act" for such marriages though a welcome step in this direction but the 30-day notice period stipulated in the act itself smacks of double standards. I suppose even the makers of this legislation were not fully convinced with the idea of inter caste/religion marriages. I believe that apart from cricket and bollywood, the only thing which has the potential to create a non parochial, non fundamentalist society is inter religion, region and caste marriage. After all love knows no boundaries, so should marriage.

This was about criticising others, now let us come to our own selves. Many of us boast of being an "open-minded", "liberal" person but the truth can be gauged every sunday by just making a passing reference to the newspaper matrimonial ads. Almost all of them are highly educated people: some Manager in a top notch company, some IAS officer, all vying for marriage "strictly" within their own caste. We expect our politicians to follow the model code of conduct when elections are announced but we ourselves cannot devise a uniform code of conduct for simple thing as marriage. Don't forget that at least our political parties had the alacrity to develop a model code of conduct for themselves...but alas we don't have it.

Solution: another law? Obviously not. We already have the Section 302 of the IPC for murder and I think it is sufficient to deal with any kind of murder irrespective of its motive. If we continue to make laws based on each motive we will have hundreds, if not thousands. Moreover a new law cannot change long instilled social beliefs which have become regressive. Its time we change the mindsets of people around us, ourselves, our friends, relatives and what not. Let us atleast be vocal against such parochial mindset. Let all the religious leaders and community members meet and devise a uniform civil code for all of us. After all who is the state to decide who should we marry or not. And as far as the Khaps are concerned....lets cut the "Kh"(Cr)ap....

As far as I am concerned I don't know my gotra and not even concerned. Are you?

The "HR" lobby.......

Even before the quantum of sentence is announced in the 26/11 case the so called self professed proponents of Human rights are out with their knives. They are opposing the expected death sentence for Kasab.

This post is dedicated to Mr. Jug Suraiya (for his TOI article dated 05/05) and the others like him who constitute the so called HR(human rights) lobby of our society.

To quote Mr. Suraiya :"by urging his execution in the midst of an emotionally supercharged atmosphere we are endorsing the fundamental legitimacy of capital punishment. The death penalty represents the absolute power of the state to take life of an individual who has transgressed its laws. Shorn of euphemisms, capital punishment is the legitimisation of murder on the part of the state.Like all acts of life-taking it is an asymmetric right, in that the taker of life, is unable to give life, or to give back life, in case of an error of judgement"

First things first, Kasab is guilty of not only transgressing the laws of the state, he is guilty of taking the lives of 72 innocent Indians, irrespective of their age, caste or religion. This is a sweet coincidence that murdering also means transgressing Indian law under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.He is not only guilty of waging a war against India-the State, he is guilty of waging war against the very heart and idea of India and all that it stands for.He is guilty of shooting an 11 yr old girl , who is now on crutches. He is guilty of eliminating many a sole bread earner of their family. He is guilty of turning many people's supposed pleasant journey to a journey to heaven.

Under Indian law capital punishment is given under only rarest of rare cases where the complicity of the accused is beyond doubt. If Kasab's case doesn't fall under that category then whose will?

Its not only about a judge or a court, its about we the people of India whom Kasab was sent to murder. If you are criticising the court's right to take life of an individual then call for a referendum and see what the result is. Don't ask me for the result, ask the result from a 9 yr old child who has lost her father in the attack. Ask the result from Constable Ombale's wife who laid down his life to catch Kasab. You and I haven't, thats why we can have the comfort of typing out an article in our air conditioned rooms criticising death penalty for Kasab and either posting it to our blog or mailing it to the TOI.

You can call it "lynching', you can call it the "mob mentality" but this is what it should be, to deter future killers of humanity. To show them "look, this is what we have in store for you if you dare to kill our people". Realpolitik doesn't run on morality, its fuel is hard decisions taken in the interest of your people.

If it would for Israel or the USA, Kasab would not have the privilege of staying in a super speciality cell of the Arthur Road Jail. He would have been sent either to the guatemala prison and tortured or would have been hanged twice if possible, long ago.

Sometimes physics carry more marks than moral science.

I agree to Mahatma Gandhi's statement "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind",but you also have the newton's third law of motion and whether you or me like it or not it sometimes overrides or has to override Mahatma's vision.

Civil Nuclear (Zero) Liability Bill

After the Women's reservation bill, the Govt. aims to introduce the civil nuclear liability bill in the parliament. The provisions of the bill, though supposed to fix responsibility, smacks of over protectionism and goes a long way in insulating the US' corporations working in the nuclear field, in case of a nuclear accident. This is not a cynical anti-american stand but taken after a careful deliberation of the provisions of the bill. The fact that this act is necessary for the operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal further accentuates this assertion.

First, the bill fixes the entire responsibility of a nuclear accident on the nuclear power plant operator, which is in our case is the the Nuclear Power corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL). The suppliers of nuclear equipments will not be just exonerated of charge but exempted from any investigation. This means the american suppliers can very well laugh their way to the bank without bearing any responsibility of lost lives, livelihood and long term damage to the environment.Only a detailed investigation can determine whether the cause is the operational failure or an equipment failure. But in this case any investigation would be a farce because the de- facto culprit will be the operator.

Second, it puts a ceiling on the compensation package offered by the operator at Rs. 500 Cr and the rest will be borne by the Indian government. This provision is aimed at preparing a "smooth playing field" for the entry of big corporations (both Indian and foreign) when the nuclear market gets "liberalised" or more aptly "deregulated".

All this is being done after we have already faced a major industrial disaster in the form of Bhopal Gas tragedy and there has been no fixing of responsibility of forgotten lives and lost dreams. till date, no one has been prosecuted. Warren Anderson, the american CEO of Union Carbide has successfully dodged extradition and arrest and is leaving a peaceful life in the US. Can an Indian CEO afford to do the same with americal lives.

The broad contours of the bill broadly underline that Indian lives are less valuable than american lives and will continue to remain so. The success of any economy is determined by how much value the government puts on the lives of its people. Of course, this cannot be quantified as growth rate. Successively falling rank of India in the Human development Index with rising growth rate is an indication.