Punjab panchayat forces couple to live as siblings

Chandigarh Jan. 31: A council of village elders in Haryana’s Rohtak district has ordered a young man and his wife to separate and henceforth treat each other as “sister” and “brother” because their three-year-old marriage “violates sacred traditional bonds” based on caste and kinship. Incredulous as it sounds, the khap panchayat or caste council, besides commanding Satish and Kavita Berwal to alter the status of their relationship, also wants them to surrender custody of their ten-month-old son Raunak. “They have been living in sin and we cannot allow this to continue,” said a panchayat representative in village Kheri, where the couple have been residents since they got married. “The boy belongs to the Berwal gotra (kinship group) and the bride is a Beniwal and these two gotras have shared a centuries-old bhaichara (brotherhood),” he said. Also incensed that Satish’s family had concealed Kavita’s true lineage for three years, the elders publicly humiliated the boy’s father Azad Singh Berwal by parading him with a shoe in his mouth. He was also directed to pay a penalty of Rs 3 lakh. “The money will be dep-osited in a bank and used for the upbringing of the illegitimate child they have bro-ught into this world,” Kheri panchayat member Hawa Singh told reporters adding, “the family has been given 28 days to send Kavita back to her father’s village. Failing compliance with the panchayat’s edict they will face sterner action.” Helpless in the face of aggressively enforced caste tradition, while Satish and his family appear to have conceded, the young wife said she is prepared to fight. “How is it possible for a man and wife to suddenly become brother and sister? My father and I have sought audience with the maha-pa-nchayat at Meham later this week,” Kavita said, adding she would petition the high court at Chandigarh if the elders at Meham also failed her. Meanwhile, district police officials, who were recently issued fresh instructions on dealing with such disputes, remained typically reticent. “We have not yet received any complaint in the matter,” said a senior police officer evidently nervous about having to take on the Meham Chaubisi — Har-yana’s most influential caste council. There have been dozens of similar instances where Haryana’s powerful caste panchayats have sought to enforce their will on people particularly young couples. In June 2007, two young lovers — Manoj and Babli — were murdered and thrown into an irrigation canal. The following year, Jasbir Singh and his six-month pregnant partner Sunita were strangled by the girl’s father and brothers who later displayed the bodies outside their village home in Karnal. But in perhaps the most bizarre instance to date, in July 2009 villagers bludgeoned to death a young man who had defied gotra or kinship traditions to marry the girl he loved. 21-year-old Vedpal was lynched in the presence of 15 armed policemen and a court-appointed warrant officer assigned to protect him. While the Punjab and Har-yana high court has intervened in most such cases, Haryana’s politicians have remained aloof perhaps fea-ring electoral repercussions of tampering with tradition.

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