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As loved ones turn killers : Anindita Majumdar News - India Today
What is common to the Aarushi murder case, the murder of siblings in West Delhi by their cousin for the sake of property, and the increasingly popular remedy that husbands and wives are using to settle marital discord? The alleged murder of kin, by kin. An unthinkable, 'unnatural' thing, one that by all books is not something kin do. But as news reports over the past few weeks, nay, years would testify that is exactly what seems to be happening.
Relationships
Most murder reports claim that police investigations point towards a known person having committed the crime due to the ease with which they gained access to the victim(s). It is not only familiarity, but also a kind of intimacy that the known murderer offers to the yet-to-be murdered victim. What shall we call them? Crimes of passion, or honour killings? If proven guilty, Aarushi's parents will not be the first to have killed their kin to safeguard some vague sense of honour. Many parents have done and continue to do so - in connivance with village panchayats, local elders and other kin. Back in 2000, Jassi Sidhu was killed by her mother and mother's brother because she eloped and married a boy in Ludhiana against their wishes. Only now is the police in Canada - from where Jassi came - arresting the mother and uncle.
And passion it seems is splitting the married/ unmarried couple apart, rather than bringing them together. It may be due to extramarital dalliances, or a tussle over property but trust within the marital bond is not something that is a given anymore. NRI Sumit Handa killed his wife Niranjana in October 2011 ostensibly because she was having an affair, but most importantly because she wanted to get out of the marriage. The crime it seems was well-planned for Handa was able to hold out till November-December, when he was finally arrested, without arousing any suspicion. In 2010, Rajesh Gulati, who killed his wife because she 'nagged' him too much and then went on to stuff the refrigerator with pieces of her body packed in black bags, was 'relieving' stress. He was hoping to avoid paying maintenance to his wife after they separated on grounds of domestic abuse.
So what makes kin relationships so special? Many sociologists and anthropologists have tried to answer the question by looking at models of altruism, and codependence, at notions of amity and the pull of genes, blood. In reality kinship has always been marked by ambivalence. As Peletz, the anthropologist notes, emotions and feelings mark relations of closeness and distance - kinship relations are those that have ambivalence hidden in them. This is what makes kin special.
There is ambivalence in the ways kin perceive each other, behave towards each other. Property disputes bring out the ugly side to the celebrated notion of fraternal amity. Slighting relatives is a common occurrence especially at times of life cycle rites, such as marriage, death or birth. Friends and acquaintances may become more important than kin.
The Indian family and ties of kinship have been changing for some time. The unchangeable, supposedly immutable character of one of the pillars of Indian society - the joint family - has for long now been a has-been. It may make stray appearances, but is not the original tour de force. The shift to nuclear, individualised units, shift to fluid marriages and live-in situations, higher rates of divorce, even though a largely urban phenomenon, are nonetheless an interesting reminder of the ways in which the process of kinship or making kin and keeping them is becoming an act that can be compromised.
Expression
Is what happening then - loss of trust, and the displacement of 'kinship' amongst kin a sign of the times? In North India where honour and izzat come to be represented in the woman and through control over her body, kin ultimately become the repositories of tradition and the arbitrators of personal freedom. But then the personal and the individual never really exists within the Indian familial understanding of relationships. Veena Das speaks of how masks are employed by relatives to hide the real face of relationships. In protecting the biradari, and respecting the parents over the wife (a person married in, and not related by blood) the husband willingly and publicly beats up his wife in case she protests or disobeys. But in private he makes up for it by apologising to her for his 'bad' behaviour. This 'keeping up of appearances' for the sake of the family, and elders over personal intimate relationships is under threat. Now, faces are being unmasked primarily because women, through education and information, are unwilling to be repositories of izzat and sharm - an otherwise double bind.
Both crimes of passion and honour killings stem from the 'bad faith' plaguing modern relationships in modern society. The disjunct between individualism and the community was never more marked. The earlier ambivalence and ambiguities that kin felt for each other are now coming out in the open. The transition from families laying down the law, to moderating and accepting the views of the young, and the old never happened in the Indian context. It is no wonder then that psychological studies of adolescents note how they feel strangulated and controlled both by peer and parental pressure. There are no support systems, and the grandparental generation today has hardly got the kind of access they had some generations back to their grandchildren.
Strangely, revenge seems to be the recurring motif in most of these 'household murders'. There is no altruism or selflessness attached to such an understanding of relationships. Whether collective or individual, this kind of tit-for-tat is a sign of extreme intolerance, primarily towards appreciating persons as individuals. This kind of violence goes unpunished many times, because those who perpetuate it close ranks around the murderer. The most recent example would be of the khaps and the ways in which they abet and shield the culprit.
Tradition
Our horror at seeing young men and women, parents and children kill each other for whatever reasons is slightly misplaced. Indians and Indian society have been a silent witness to such horrors for long. What makes dowry murders truly tragic is not just the killing of the bride by her in-laws but the earlier silence of her parents in acknowledging their daughter's plight. Earlier, Sati was a kind of collective violence perpetrated against the wives of the house. In honouring the memory of the women who were in many ways 'killed' by their kin through temples and lavish cenotaphs, the extended kin group wishes to perpetuate the supremacy of the patriarchal family. Today this has taken a different more overt form, that is all.
There are plenty of instances where mythology and literature stand testimony to overt and covert violence in intimate relationships. Beginning from the Oedipus Myth to the Dostoevsky novel, The Brothers Karamazov, antagonism has never been absent from kinship. But contemporary readings of murder as quick-fix solutions to enmity, honour, or a lack of adjustment are a sign of the ways in which society is unable to come to terms with how relationships are to be understood. The family as the 'haven' and the 'home-one-can-always-go-back-to' has never been more under scrutiny, as today.
What is common to the Aarushi murder case, the murder of siblings in West Delhi by their cousin for the sake of property, and the increasingly popular remedy that husbands and wives are using to settle marital discord? The alleged murder of kin, by kin. An unthinkable, 'unnatural' thing, one that by all books is not something kin do. But as news reports over the past few weeks, nay, years would testify that is exactly what seems to be happening.
Relationships
Most murder reports claim that police investigations point towards a known person having committed the crime due to the ease with which they gained access to the victim(s). It is not only familiarity, but also a kind of intimacy that the known murderer offers to the yet-to-be murdered victim. What shall we call them? Crimes of passion, or honour killings? If proven guilty, Aarushi's parents will not be the first to have killed their kin to safeguard some vague sense of honour. Many parents have done and continue to do so - in connivance with village panchayats, local elders and other kin. Back in 2000, Jassi Sidhu was killed by her mother and mother's brother because she eloped and married a boy in Ludhiana against their wishes. Only now is the police in Canada - from where Jassi came - arresting the mother and uncle.
And passion it seems is splitting the married/ unmarried couple apart, rather than bringing them together. It may be due to extramarital dalliances, or a tussle over property but trust within the marital bond is not something that is a given anymore. NRI Sumit Handa killed his wife Niranjana in October 2011 ostensibly because she was having an affair, but most importantly because she wanted to get out of the marriage. The crime it seems was well-planned for Handa was able to hold out till November-December, when he was finally arrested, without arousing any suspicion. In 2010, Rajesh Gulati, who killed his wife because she 'nagged' him too much and then went on to stuff the refrigerator with pieces of her body packed in black bags, was 'relieving' stress. He was hoping to avoid paying maintenance to his wife after they separated on grounds of domestic abuse.
So what makes kin relationships so special? Many sociologists and anthropologists have tried to answer the question by looking at models of altruism, and codependence, at notions of amity and the pull of genes, blood. In reality kinship has always been marked by ambivalence. As Peletz, the anthropologist notes, emotions and feelings mark relations of closeness and distance - kinship relations are those that have ambivalence hidden in them. This is what makes kin special.
There is ambivalence in the ways kin perceive each other, behave towards each other. Property disputes bring out the ugly side to the celebrated notion of fraternal amity. Slighting relatives is a common occurrence especially at times of life cycle rites, such as marriage, death or birth. Friends and acquaintances may become more important than kin.
The Indian family and ties of kinship have been changing for some time. The unchangeable, supposedly immutable character of one of the pillars of Indian society - the joint family - has for long now been a has-been. It may make stray appearances, but is not the original tour de force. The shift to nuclear, individualised units, shift to fluid marriages and live-in situations, higher rates of divorce, even though a largely urban phenomenon, are nonetheless an interesting reminder of the ways in which the process of kinship or making kin and keeping them is becoming an act that can be compromised.
Expression
Is what happening then - loss of trust, and the displacement of 'kinship' amongst kin a sign of the times? In North India where honour and izzat come to be represented in the woman and through control over her body, kin ultimately become the repositories of tradition and the arbitrators of personal freedom. But then the personal and the individual never really exists within the Indian familial understanding of relationships. Veena Das speaks of how masks are employed by relatives to hide the real face of relationships. In protecting the biradari, and respecting the parents over the wife (a person married in, and not related by blood) the husband willingly and publicly beats up his wife in case she protests or disobeys. But in private he makes up for it by apologising to her for his 'bad' behaviour. This 'keeping up of appearances' for the sake of the family, and elders over personal intimate relationships is under threat. Now, faces are being unmasked primarily because women, through education and information, are unwilling to be repositories of izzat and sharm - an otherwise double bind.
Both crimes of passion and honour killings stem from the 'bad faith' plaguing modern relationships in modern society. The disjunct between individualism and the community was never more marked. The earlier ambivalence and ambiguities that kin felt for each other are now coming out in the open. The transition from families laying down the law, to moderating and accepting the views of the young, and the old never happened in the Indian context. It is no wonder then that psychological studies of adolescents note how they feel strangulated and controlled both by peer and parental pressure. There are no support systems, and the grandparental generation today has hardly got the kind of access they had some generations back to their grandchildren.
Strangely, revenge seems to be the recurring motif in most of these 'household murders'. There is no altruism or selflessness attached to such an understanding of relationships. Whether collective or individual, this kind of tit-for-tat is a sign of extreme intolerance, primarily towards appreciating persons as individuals. This kind of violence goes unpunished many times, because those who perpetuate it close ranks around the murderer. The most recent example would be of the khaps and the ways in which they abet and shield the culprit.
Tradition
Our horror at seeing young men and women, parents and children kill each other for whatever reasons is slightly misplaced. Indians and Indian society have been a silent witness to such horrors for long. What makes dowry murders truly tragic is not just the killing of the bride by her in-laws but the earlier silence of her parents in acknowledging their daughter's plight. Earlier, Sati was a kind of collective violence perpetrated against the wives of the house. In honouring the memory of the women who were in many ways 'killed' by their kin through temples and lavish cenotaphs, the extended kin group wishes to perpetuate the supremacy of the patriarchal family. Today this has taken a different more overt form, that is all.
There are plenty of instances where mythology and literature stand testimony to overt and covert violence in intimate relationships. Beginning from the Oedipus Myth to the Dostoevsky novel, The Brothers Karamazov, antagonism has never been absent from kinship. But contemporary readings of murder as quick-fix solutions to enmity, honour, or a lack of adjustment are a sign of the ways in which society is unable to come to terms with how relationships are to be understood. The family as the 'haven' and the 'home-one-can-always-go-back-to' has never been more under scrutiny, as today.
