In this antediluvian casteist patriarchal society, honor killing crimes are engraved to the very core. From parents killing their own children to a family training their 9-year-old son to shoot his aunt for daring to commit the horrific crime of marriage of choice; The age old horror cases of honor killings come as no surprise in India, which ironically involves the killing of the victim.
The miscarriage of justice occurs in the violence and killing of women on the pretext of honor to maintain ‘order’ in the society. In places of ‘honor culture’, marriage is nothing but a caste and gender dictatorship that is warranted by the traditional village councils and male members of the dominant caste. Hypogamies marriages, which allows the basic right of choosing their own partner (it involves either the woman marrying a lower caste man or a man marrying a higher caste female), in such places are considered a major taboo and a threat to their caste hierarchal society, punishable by death. The men and women exercising their basic right of freedom are hunted down, scourged, ostracized, forcibly married or brutally killed by their own family members.
Although in major parts of the urban India it has rescinded, it is still deeply rooted in the larger portions. In these regions, a woman’s honor is her family’s business, women are considered as ‘humare ghar ki izzat’ in India, meaning ‘the honor of our family’ and this izzat/honor is oppressed, regressed and bounded in shackles, in control of the family member. Her constitutional right to marry out of love would ‘tarnish’ the image of the family in society and thus the ownership of her body and her decisions are solely in hands of the patriarchal heads of the family.
Honor killing is an evil and amongst multiple hazards for this social transgression and breach of human rights, the most important cause would be lack of education. The lack of proper education causes the decaying of these senile minds which stops their mental health and thus abuse of power is forthcoming as the judgment of what is right and wrong fades away. To curb and eradicate this menace for good, awareness on such topics must be widespread and severe, merciless judicial actions should be taken against these horrific crimes of honor killings because honor killing has no place, now, in the 21st century.
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