'Haryana's shameful social heritage'

[RobbieS]

@All

First of all Gotra syatem is not resposible for any of these but their leve of uneducation.
I find the people of Hariyana most pathetic in whole India as they nither have sense of education nor respest to women. I simply hate their toung in which they dont have respect to any one.
Compare this to East UP where overall income level is on much lower side but Women get much much more respect because the level of education(I am not telling about educational institutes in genral).

Further GOTRA syatem is to maintain blood purity and made to prevent diseses that could carry to next genration. We(my faimily and area) as a Hindu dose follow this but in case of any discontinuty no one is going to be punished.

Never use those words for your countrymen. Every community has its ills.

 

[peacekeeper]

@All

First of all Gotra syatem is not resposible for any of these but their leve of uneducation.

Further GOTRA syatem is to maintain blood purity and made to prevent diseses that could carry to next genration. We(my faimily and area) as a Hindu dose follow this but in case of any discontinuty no one is going to be punished.

The family may not punish anybody but it is the society which render the family pariah if anyone of the family members are involved in gotra marriages . so it is the societal pressure which forces them to inflct punishment to there family members.

 

[RobbieS]

Thank you for clarifying what is Gothra (Gotra).

You're welcome. Just to add, its similar to the concept of a Clan like amongst the Scottish. Sometimes there are sub-branches and sub-Gothras within a single Gothra. For eg. amongst Punjabi Jatts, Sidhu-Brar is the bigger clan/Gothra and there are smaller sub-Gothras like Sivia, Bahia etc. In a rigid Gothra system, like the one followed by the Hindi speaking Jatts a person cant marry in any of the sub-gothras as well.

 

[RobbieS]

The family may not punish anybody but it is the society which render the family pariah if anyone of the family members are involved in gotra marriages . so it is the societal pressure which forces them to inflct punishment to there family members.

Good point. A family is pressured by concepts like family honor and pride into committing these acts.

 

[Bhim]

Haryana's shameful social heritage


Sukhbir Siwach, TNN, Aug 28, 2010, 02.05pm IST




It was a national debate on a news channel. Tempers were running high, so were the decibels. The subject was explosive - Haryana's khaps and their diktats. In the midst of this charged atmosphere, a voice rose above the rest, silencing them all. Seema, a law graduate and resident of Karora village, made an allegation that changed the course of the debate. Her brother had been executed for marrying a woman from the same gotra, but that was not what Seema wanted to talk about on the primetime show. It was another shameful reality of Haryana villages she wanted to expose - incest.

"Khaps should look into their homes before passing fatwas on lovers and crying hoarse about honour. Incest is rampant in the state and virtually every home is affected. Where is the honour anyway ?" she screamed.

Early this week, the state was shocked when a pregnant girl was strangled by her parents and her body dumped on the outskirts of Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district. Her crime: she was reportedly having an affair with her brother-in-law and her vengeful elder sister had complained to their parents.

In another embarrassing case earlier this year, a farmer in his early 50s developed a sexual relation with his 30-year-old daughter-in-law in a village in Kaithal district. Their liaison continued for almost a year. The matter even reached the village panchayat, which ordered separation of the two unlikely partners so that the woman could go back to her husband.

And only last month, Sonepat was jolted by the gruesome murder of two minor girls, just 12 and 14. They were killed and their bodies flung in a canal by their uncles and grandmother after their "affair" with a cousin was exposed. The police said the kin of the victims were enraged when they allegedly caught the minors getting intimate with their cousin. In Yamunanagar, a girl complained to the police that her father-in-law had raped her just a few months after her marriage.

These are not isolated incidents: incest is reportedly a real part of life in rural Haryana. "It's a menace nobody wants to talk about. Even the elders are setting a bad example, " says D R Chaudhary, member of the Haryana Administrative Reforms Commission. The elders, predictably, blame this perversion on the growing sway of the west over the state's youth.

When Kurukshetra-based Ramesh Kumar's daughter married a close relative, he blamed it on urban influence. Now he is fighting a legal battle to have the marriage declared null and void, terming it a contravention of the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The mothers of the newly-wed couple were apparently related, being granddaughters of the same person.

The incidence of incest may be higher in rural areas. "Social mores in villages are different. People here are very conservative and there is no scope for interaction between men and women and boys and girls outside their homes. So, they often end up having relationships with members of their accessible, extended family, " says Balbir Singh, a social activist in Fatehabad district.
Experts believe that such relationships have survived behind closed doors for many years. But given the modern means of communication and the proliferation of the media, the skeletons are now tumbling out of family cupboards.

The youth, interestingly, believe that incest is a traditional practice and not a new reality. "Yeh to hame virasat mein mili hai (incest is a part of our tradition), " says Naresh Kumar, a villager in Rohera in Kaithal district. Sociologists, in turn, say that the ethnic history of the region is full of such instances.

"In the pre-Independence era, in some parts of north India, the father-in-law almost had the right to physical relations with a daughter-in-law, and in most cases the female was not in a position to resist much. The very young husband also had no say in the matter. Widows would routinely be married to a brother of the dead husband. Sharing of the wife by brothers was also not uncommon, " says Ravinder Kaur, a professor at IIT-Delhi.

What adds to this problem in Haryana is its skewed *** ratio caused by rampant female foeticide. "Its effects are now being felt on intimate relationships within and without the family. The shortage of marriageable women can have many unintended consequences, especially when only one out of four men find a bride (as in the case of Haryana) in their own community, " adds Kaur.

Kumar's 35-year-old nephew, Roshan, is yet to get any offers for marriage. "We are at a loss, wondering what to do, " says Kumar. A growing army of bachelors has become a problem in the state, leading to more illicit relations.

Yet, there seems little the government and social organisations can do about this. Haryana has not seen any strong social movement in recent years and there are very few NGOs working on such issues. While a Haryana court was quick (it took three years) to deliver the death penalty to five khap members accused in the sensational murder of Manoj and Babli in March this year, it took a Bhiwani court around five years to give its verdict in a shocking case of incest that surfaced almost a decade ago.
In a letter to Bhiwani senior superintendent of police, an 18-year-old girl spoke of how her father and cousin exploited her sexually for seven months. "My father used to **** me. Not only this, my uncle and his son too sexually assaulted me, " stated the girl.

"My mother was usually sent to sleep in another house and I was made to sleep with my father. My mother was not aware of all this. When I told my boyfriend and he objected, my father and cousin beat him up and also got a false case registered against him. When I threatened to go to the police, I was locked up, " she wrote in the letter.

It was only after the girl said she would tell her mother that she was released from her confinement. The girl then ran away with her boyfriend and a case of abduction was slapped on the boy. Nobody knows where the couple is today.

Chilling tales of incest and abuse have been pouring in from all over the state. Inquiries reveal that physical relationship with a husband's brother is not considered 'unusual. ' "Such relations are not objected to. They are considered a family's 'internal affair', " says Prem Singh, a farmer-leader from Kaithal.

In a study conducted by the UNICEF in 2001 to gauge the context of abortions involving 83 adolescent girls in the age group of 10 to 19 years in Rohtak district, it was found that incest was a common cause. "It was responsible for pregnancies in 16 per cent of the cases. We have even had cases of girls getting pregnant through their kin, including fathers and brothers, " says Sonia Trikha, who's associated with the UNICEF. Many feel the situation has worsened in the last decade.

Leaders of gotra-based khap panchayats blame the law for protecting those who are guilty of incest. "A scheduled caste girl had run away with a boy from her family. Later, they married and even got police protection, " says Badan Singh, leader of the Kalayat khap. Another prominent leader, Om Parkash Dhankar, president of the Dhankhar khap, complains about new social trends: "Illicit relationships are on the rise. Even a Supreme Court ruling spoke of permitting live-in relationship without marriage. "

But Seema blames the khaps for shifting the focus from the real problems. "The problem, " she says, "is not of love marriages, or marriages within gotras and villages, but incest. Marrying out of choice is not a crime, incest is. Khap leaders should be addressing the problem of incest and check this evil instead of hounding people who are in love. "



INCEST IN MYTHOLOGY

If you thought Greek tragedies such as Odeipus Rex were embarrassing in their details of incest, our own epics and mythological texts are no less. They, in fact, abound with instances where men and women have conjugated with close kin. For instance, in the Mahabharata, Arjuna was married to Subhadra, the daughter of his aunt Rohini. Then there is the union of Yama with his twin sister Yami;Manu, son of Vivasvat, and his sister Sraddha;Prajapati and his daughter Ushas;Pushan and his sister Surya;Sukra and his three sisters;Satrajita and his 10 sisters;Nahusha and his sister Viraja. Purukutsa's queen Narmada after her husband's death obtained a son through her own brother

WHY IN RURAL HARYANA?

Skewed *** ratio; 860 girls for 1,000 boys

Very conservative society;girls and women are allowed to speak openly with only close relatives

A large number of girls and women don't work outside their homes

Social resistance to love marriages

Read more: Incest: Haryana's shameful social heritage - India - The Times of India Incest: Haryana's shameful social heritage - India - The Times of India

Shocking as it may sound, but this is quite true in a small section of society, which were banzara(Gypsy).
Most have settled in Haryana and adjoining Rajasthan, they have nothing to do with caste, and their tradition goes back to ages.
Now that they have settled in villages and towns, but this horrific tradition is still practised. The practise is confounded by decling *** ratio of females. This decline is not natural, but the societies own fault of selectively killing female fetuses.
Both are highly condemnable acts and I hope the good society influence prevails upon them.

 

[Nahraf]

Now the low number females of marriage age will force the men to look afar in southern and eastern India where the female/male ratio is natural. Nonetheless 30-40 million less females will cause lot of social unrest. The rich and famous will get brides while the poor and unaccomplished will stay single. This may cause rapes, kidnappings, prostitution and homosexuality. The best solution is for Indian army to recruit men from these areas so that they can be disciplined and not cause social unrest.

 

[Bhim]

Now the low number females of marriage age will force the men to look afar in southern and eastern India where the female/male ratio is natural. Nonetheless 30-40 million less females will cause lot of social unrest. The rich and famous will get brides while the poor and unaccomplished will stay single. This may cause rapes, kidnappings, prostitution and homosexuality. The best solution is for Indian army to recruit men from these areas so that they can be disciplined and not cause social unrest.

You are right to say this, the men from Haryana have started to buy brides from other states. You will be amused that there is a prize for the age and qualification.
In my opinion this is all acceptable, but this inhuman act of wife sharing or incest is most condemnable. And the media is doing a good job to bring this issue to public.
Further more this could have been curtained if the politicians had wanted, but this was not done due to vote bank. So all of this again comes down to our worthless corrupt, money grabing devilish politicians.

 

[RobbieS]

Now the low number females of marriage age will force the men to look afar in southern and eastern India where the female/male ratio is natural. Nonetheless 30-40 million less females will cause lot of social unrest. The rich and famous will get brides while the poor and unaccomplished will stay single. This may cause rapes, kidnappings, prostitution and homosexuality. The best solution is for Indian army to recruit men from these areas so that they can be disciplined and not cause social unrest.

While you are right in your assessment of the impact that this imbalance will have on the society, I dont think the Army is a solution. Army has its own criteria for the people its want to choose. Its no social reform center.

The only way is the painful and slow way of social change through education and openness. Maybe the judiciary has to get active as the politicians are busy tapping into the Jatt votebank. But the biggest responsibility will lie on the Hindi-speaking Jatts themselves. How long do they want to stick with this malaise and watch their community not only get left behind but slowly rot?

 

[Gucci]

Now the low number females of marriage age will force the men to look afar in southern and eastern India where the female/male ratio is natural. Nonetheless 30-40 million less females will cause lot of social unrest. The rich and famous will get brides while the poor and unaccomplished will stay single. This may cause rapes, kidnappings, prostitution and homosexuality. The best solution is for Indian army to recruit men from these areas so that they can be disciplined and not cause social unrest.

he best solution is for Indian army to recruit men from these areas so that they can be disciplined and not cause social unrest

u r suffering frm indian army phobia

 

[Gentle Typhoon]

Haryana is pathetic in everything, people are rude, no manners.

I also find Delhi very frightening. It has a very inhuman and arrogant look to it. I feel very insecure. I just can't read the place (NCR).

The culture of a society is governed by its geography and history. Delhi was constantly invaded from the northwest and the years of strife and war appear to have had an impact on the people of Delhi. Often, South Indians are ready to adjust, but North Indians do not budge an inch. Maybe history also has something to do with the fact that the people of Delhi are so loud, superficial and flashy.

Best city in India is Bangalore IMO.

 

[Gucci]

Haryana is pathetic in everything, people are rude, no manners.

their language is very pathetic anotherwise they r fine.

 

[peacekeeper]

Haryana is pathetic in everything, people are rude, no manners.

there are pathetic people like this na

Kalpana Chawla

It was at the Karnal Flying Club that Kalpana Chawla, a native of the city, first became interested in flying. She did her schooling from Tagore Baal Niketan Sr. Sec. School, Karnal (haryana) in 1976

 

[Gentle Typhoon]

^ Karnal, Ambala and Yamuna Nagar are very nice and area surrounding Punjab. I have been to all places.

 

[Nahraf]

u r suffering frm indian army phobia

No.

I dont think the Army is a solution. Army has its own criteria for the people its want to choose. Its no social reform center.

But is better to keep single men with no opportunity of marriage in the army which can also be considered sort of confinement with discipline. Gangs of young men with nothing to do cause more crimes than any other age group.

 

[Gucci]

^ Karnal, Ambala and Yamuna Nagar are very nice and area surrounding Punjab. I have been to all places.

i m from yamuna nagar,frm where u belong