The recent move by the Satrol khap of Haryana to relax restrictive marriage norms and induct women into khaps appears like a revolutionary move for these hidebound and regressive bodies. The head of the khap, Inder Singh Mor, has stated that members can now marry among its 42 bhaichara (brotherhood) villages, decreasing somewhat the difficulties of finding brides in this state that suffers from a skewed sex ratio and bride shortage. Even more impressively, the khap has decided to allow inter-caste marriage, a relaxation that strikes at the very heart of caste endogamy, the marriage norm primarily responsible for reproducing and maintaining caste boundaries. Perhaps an even more revolutionary step has been the creation of a woman’s wing of the khap; traditionally khaps have been all-male institutions dominated by older males that enforce social control over their communities in keeping with rigid patriarchal, kinship, age and gender norms. Sudesh Chaudhry has been appointed the head of this wing and it seems has been especially tasked with ensuring the smooth transition to intra-bhaichara village marriages. Breaking another tradition, Mor is also urging youth to become members of khaps and voice their opinions on matters of concern.
Searching for a Bride
Are these steps intended to shore up an increasingly challenged institution or are they simply responses forced due to a difficult demographic situation and a rapidly transforming economy? With Haryana’s current sex ratio standing at 877 women for 1,000 men and an even more abysmal child sex ratio of 830 girls, the number of bachelors has been piling up over the decades, driving many to look for brides in other states. According to the 2001 Census, 10%-15% males in the age group of 25-49 remain unmarried. The census data on marriage in Haryana shows that the crowding of bachelors happens between the ages of 20 and 29. According to the local media, around 50 men in each of Haryana’s 7,000 villages have no prospects of finding a bride locally. Some villages are known to have upwards of 200 bachelors looking for brides. In a society which practises “universal” marriage and where for many marriage is perhaps the only means of achieving social adulthood, the tensions caused by lack of marriageable girls are enormous.
It is therefore not surprising that in this election season slogans like “bahu dilao, vote pao” (you will get our vote if you find us brides) have been as popular as in the 2009 elections. Om Prakash Chautala, a former chief minister, now in jail for an employment scam, had even made this an election promise. Driven to the wall, bachelors are uniting to fight for their own cause. Thus, Pawan Kumar, a bachelor from Jind district set up a kunwara union (bachelors’ union) in 2009 to demand jobs and brides in exchange for votes. Sunil Jaglan, from village Bibipur, similarly set up an Avivahit Purush Sangthan (Unmarried Men’s Association).
Recognising the relationship between bride shortages and sex selective abortions of girls, these groups have demanded that the phenomenon be addressed seriously. The child sex ratio in Haryana improved from 819 to 830 between 2001 and 2011. It is possible that that the enforcement of the PCPNDT Act (Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act 1994) and awareness campaigns conducted by government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have played some role in this turnaround. The major contributions though is likely to be that of declining fertility (the sex ratio at birth improves when fertility transits from an average of three to two children (Bhalla et al 2013) and changing expectations from educated and working daughters. Furthermore, this slight improvement will be reflected in the marriageable age cohorts only after two decades and will not make much of a dent given the past backlog of bachelors. It is therefore not surprising that Haryanvis have been importing brides wholesale from the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam. Brides from several other eastern and southern states can be found in almost every village of Haryana.
Balancing Marriage Reform
Traditionally, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh communities have followed a range of marriage rules prohibiting marriage between the descendants of one’s own gotra, and those of several of one’s ancestors, on both the maternal and paternal sides. Additionally, they prohibit marriage within the village and within its bhaichara villages. Marriage must also take place within the caste. Mor’s relaxation of marriage norms applies to all of the above rules.
However, not to rock the boat all at once, the Satrol khap has decided to retain certain other marriage norms. Mor states that the rule of village exogamy – prohibition of marriage within the village – would still be maintained and as far as possible, people should try and avoid marriage even within neighbouring villages. Another norm that has been retained is the ban on swagotra marriage (marriage within one’s own gotra). This has until now been a non-negotiable rule for all communities, with khaps, in fact, demanding an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act, to make marriage within one’s own gotra illegal. In addition, legal prohibition of marriage within the village has also been sought.
Yet, it is possible that in the changes he has announced, Mor is simply being practical in placing a stamp on what is already becoming a reality on the ground. Due to the extreme shortage of brides in the state, many Jat communities have already relaxed gotra norms allowing marriage to take place with descendants belonging to the maternal grandmother’s gotra (Larsen and Kaur 2013). Many inter-caste marriages also meet with parental approval or have even been discreetly organised by parents. As argued earlier (Kaur 2010), socio-economic changes are also driving some of these shifts. As more families turn middle class, matchmaking criteria have shifted from mere landownership to education, employment, and urban residence, and parents are willing to accept self-choice marriages which meet appropriate caste and class criteria and even seek to arrange such matches themselves. Class transformations rather than conscious social reform might thus be the cause of current shifts occurring in marriage norms. Many Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities are now the beneficiaries of reservations and in a tight job market this is becoming a plus point in the marriage market. Of course, the recent inclusion of Jats in the OBC list might dent this particular advantage of the other OBC communities.
Yet, the changes are not going unchallenged. Resistance to relaxation of gotra norms is seen in the heightened policing of marriage by khaps. Violence in the form of honour killings is being directed by families towards young people who enter inter-caste marriages. Indeed, the resurgence in the activity of khaps coincides with the setting in of a deep marriage squeeze, signifying a heightened competition over local women (Kaur 2010).
Imported Brides
Indeed, it is the influx of non-local brides, allowed to ease the marriage squeeze that is most likely the reason for the Satrol khap’s relaxation of the prohibition against inter-caste marriage. Many community leaders in Haryana have pointed out that these brides have to be accepted out of necessity. Yet, there has been an awkward and uneasy silence around their caste and family backgrounds, aspects that are thoroughly probed in locally arranged, normative marriages. Fears are being expressed, by the Jats especially, that the purity of the Jat race will be diluted by the progeny of such mixed marriages (nasal kharaab ho jayegi). Finding themselves in dire straits, young men have gone to the extent of saying that who they marry is nobody’s business and rhetorically asking whether those who object to their out-of-state brides would be willing to find them local brides.
Local Inter-Caste Marriages
While Mor’s pronouncements may provide legitimacy to cross-region inter-caste marriages, they do not make clear whether marriages between any of the local castes would be accepted or only those between the savarna (twice born) castes, which exclude dalits. A significant number of marriages that have drawn the ire of khaps have involved elopement of Jat girls with dalit boys. Reservations have given a lift to education of dalit males who traditionally lacked access to land, allowing them better prospects in the new economy as well as in reserved jobs in the public sector. Among all communities, government jobs are the most sought after as they promise security and status and anyone with access to a government job is sought after in the marriage market. According to local informants, reservation benefits have begun to be factored into the marriage market, and modern, educated dalit girls and boys will also be advantaged in this regard.
The undercurrents of many of these transformations have led to numerous incidents of violence against dalits. Jats feel threatened by dalits in the spheres of employment and marriage. Under the circumstances, it is highly unlikely that inter-caste marriages in which one partner is a dalit would become easily acceptable in the near future; if the khaps do allow it, it would indeed be a revolutionary step signifying the decline of the importance of caste in social life.
Challenges to Khap Reform
Mor is already facing opposition to his attempts at liberalising marriage norms. Bir Singh Kaushik, a former chairman of the block council in Hansi in Hisar district, held a meeting of 12 villages and condemned the steps taken by Mor and called for his social boycott (Bhandare 2014). It seems though that Kaushik is more concerned about the freedom inter-caste marriage may allow local girls. This harks back to an earlier move in which khaps, in order to address the challenge of runaway marriages, demanded that the marriage age of girls be lowered to 15 years (Deswal 2010). Perhaps they calculate that such a move could also address the shortage of brides – with a lower age at marriage, bachelors could dip into even younger cohorts of women while early marriage would prevent girls from forming unwanted romantic liaisons and “dishonouring the family”. That women’s dreams of empowerment would be smashed is of no concern to the khaps. It would not be surprising if the newly created women’s wing of the Satrol khap is given exactly this task. Arguing that young girls should also get involved in khaps, Sudesh Chaudhry says “Young girls should also get to know which villages they might get married into. They should know where to maintain brotherhood, after all they might marry into those villages” (Ghosal 2014).
There have been some earlier attempts by khaps to bring about a change in their public perception. In January 2014, leaders of 50 khaps who gathered in Meham in Rohtak district, decided to form committees to curb honour killings while discouraging same gotra marriages (Siwach 2014). They were trying to respond to the criticism that they were inciting and encouraging parents and relatives of eloping couples to punish the latter by death.
In 2011, after a spate of honour killings the Supreme Court had termed the khaps illegal and argued that they should be stamped out. Kirti Singh, together with others in the Law Commission drafted a special law against honour killings titled “Prevention of Interference with the Freedom of Matrimonial Alliances” (in the name of Honour and Tradition). However, the draft did not move forward after the khaps challenged the anti-trafficking NGO Shakti Vahini’s petition in the Supreme Court, arguing that the khaps had not even been invited to present their point of view. Madhu Kishwar of Manushi argued the case for the khaps (2013). She argued that they were community organisations that played an important role in social life and that instead of banning them, civil society (of which they are a part) should engage with them and help them to reform those of their views that were outdated. She argued that sufficient laws exist to address honour killings carried out by family members and not due to diktats of khaps. However, in her defence of the khaps she elided over the social control exercised by the khaps through their pronouncements and their many acts of policing and imposition of fines on couples and their families who were seen to violate prescribed marriage norms.
Recently, activist, and now politician, Arvind Kejriwal has also been ambivalent in his condemnation of the khaps. Both Kishwar and Kejriwal appear to make the argument that communities have the right to uphold their traditions and cultural practices and that they represent a form of local self-governance. While coming from somewhat distinct vantage points both make a case for the role of indigenous institutions. According to Ranbir Singh, khaps have known to have played a role in “the movement for prohibition, resistance to the Emergency regime and state repression on various occasions” (Singh 2010: 18). He continues “...in more recent times, they have been fielding candidates and extending electoral support to various leaders, factions and parties” (ibid: 18). For this reason, Haryana politicians can alienate khaps only at their own peril as the latter have the power to command khap members to deliver votes during elections. Yet, it is their virulent attempts to police and regulate marriage in contravention of civil law and their regressive pronouncements on gender issues that have brought them this notoriety.
Conclusions
To what extent the relaxation of marriage norms and the changes made in the membership of the Satrol khap by inducting women and youth will hold, only the future will tell. If more khaps follow suit and adopt more liberal marriage rules, one could argue that the skewed sex ratio of the state would have been able to achieve what intermittent attempts at social reform and decades of government incentives for inter-caste marriages have not succeeded in doing. Patriarchal structures get challenged when material conditions alter; Haryana is facing a demographic crisis as well as a rapidly changing economy; the two together are forcing the hand of khaps to adjust to new conditions. Besides the skewed sex ratio, a generational transition is also underway and a burgeoning youth population will be negotiating changing family, household and economic structures. More off-farm work and greater nuclear living detach individuals from traditional structures of support and force them to strike out on their own. Youth too are divided by caste, class, gender and on many other parameters which define their support for or opposition to change. Those on the losing side of opportunities tend to side with those upholding the old order that guaranteed them minimum securities of life and livelihood.
References
Bhalla, S S, Ravinder Kaur and Manoj Agrawal (2013): “Son Preference, Fertility Decline and the Future of the Sex Ratio at Birth” (http://papers. ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2342286).
Bhandare, Namita (2014): “Khap Inter-caste Marriage Ruling a Sign of Compulsion, Not Reform”, Mint, 24 April.
Deswal, Deepender (2010): “Khaps Want Girls’ Marriageable Age Lowered to 15”, The Times of India, 3 July.
Ghosal, A (2014): “Storm in a Khap: First Woman Member Aims to Bridge Gender Bias”, The Indian Express, 25 April.
Kaur, Ravinder (2010): “Khap Panchayats, Sex Ratio and Female Agency”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLV, No 23, 5 June.
Larsen, M and Ravinder Kaur (2013): “Signs of Change? Sex Ratio Imbalance and Shifting Social Practices in Northern India”, Economic & Political Weekly, 31 August, Vol XLVIII, No 35.
Manushi (2013): (http://www. manushi.in/articles.php?articleId=1680&ptype =campaigns).
Singh, Ranbir (2010): “The Need to Tame the Khap Panchayats 2010”, Economic & Political Weekly, 22 May, Vol XLV, No 21.
Siwach, S (2014): “Khaps to Form Panels to Curb Honour Killings”, The Times of India, 13 January.
