Amid backlash, women’s khap backs Jind panchayat’s ban on live-ins, love marriages

While the Jind khap panchayat’s diktats against live-in relationships and love marriages drew sharp reactions on social media, Santosh Dahiya, pradhan of the women’s wing of the Sarv Jatia Sarv Khap Panchayat, said all women attending the wing’s meeting in Ramrai village on Sunday had no counterview and endorsed the khap’s earlier decisions.

The Naugama Khap had called the women’s panchayat after its decision drew sharp reactions, mostly on social media.

One young woman, whose comments have gone viral on social media, said on the Facebook page ‘News Time Bharat’: “Haryana’s aged people have decided that they will not change their old habits. They cherish making comments about women in 'ghunghat' but think that phones are spoiling girls in Haryana. Since educated women are not relenting to their wishes of marrying their school-dropout boys, they have decided to impose restrictions on girls on the pretext of phones and love marriages.”

She added, “Now educated girls are choosing their partners according to their standards, where they enjoy equal status in the family and in life, and not like what happened in Haryana till now.”

She alleged that, as uneducated Haryana boys without jobs were finding it difficult to get brides, restrictions were being sought on girls to facilitate their marriages with such boys.

“They don’t have basic decency towards girls. Why are girls from other states being brought as brides? Because girls of their own state — Haryana — know their reality,” she said, adding that women would marry according to their own wishes.

“Why doesn’t the government take action against such people?” she questioned, apparently referring to the diktats of khap panchayats.

However, talking to The Tribune, woman khap pradhan Santosh Dahiya said that they had decided to form a 30-member committee that would visit all the villages and further constitute an 11-member committee in each village to approach younger women in schools and colleges and engage in a dialogue with them regarding prevailing social norms and customs related to marriage.

When asked about the rationale behind the meeting when there was no counterview that needed to be discussed, she said they had invited young women from universities, but everyone favoured the decisions of the khap panchayats.

Dahiya said they had written letters to the President of India, the Prime Minister, the Union Law Minister and the Leader of Opposition, demanding that live-in relationships be criminalised so that society and families could be saved from breaking down. “We have also sought meetings with them to discuss this issue,” she said.

Dahiya said the khap panchayats, as such, were not opposed to love marriages.

“We have social norms and traditions under which men and women who belong to the same village are considered brother and sister, and thus they cannot get married, as that would change their relationship from brother and sister to husband and wife. Similarly, couples belonging to gohaand (villages that are considered brother villages) too cannot get married due to the same concept of brotherly relations. Couples of the same gotra are also considered to belong to the same ancestry, so a boy and girl who have the same gotra (clan) are considered distant siblings, and marriages between them are therefore not possible,” she explained.

However, some khap panchayats, such as the Chahal Khap and Satrol Khap in the Hisar and Rohtak regions, have allowed relaxations in their rigid social norms, especially those related to gohaand (bhaichara villages), in the past, in view of the difficulty in finding matches for boys.

When this was pointed out to Dahiya, she said that although some khap panchayats had liberalised their social norms, the Naugama Khap Panchayat had taken no such decision. She claimed that even the women of the khap panchayat supported the decision of the khap panchayats.

Dahiya maintained that “gun culture” and “gund culture” — referring to obscenity — had become prevalent in society to a dangerous extent. She also stressed the need to reach out to the younger generation and encourage them to focus on their careers and education rather than deviate from the right path, for their own betterment and that of society.

Notably, the Naugama Khap had decided that couples who entered into matrimonial ties in violation of the prevailing social norms governing marriage would not be allowed to live in villages under its influence across 21 villages in Jind district. The khap panchayat meeting held in Ramrai village on August 1 had also opposed live-in relationships and demanded that the government criminalise them.