Madurai, May 15: Honour killing may be sporadic in Tamil Nadu but they do happen, and almost always it springs from caste prejudice.
Dalit Murugesan married a backward Vanniyar caste girl, Kannagi, in 2003. The bride’s father, the president of the village panchayat, saw his daughter’s marriage to a Dalit as bringing disrepute to the family. Murugesan and Kannagi were killed. Neither their graduate degrees nor the fact that their marriage had been legally solemnised before an official, saved the lovers.
Similarly, at a village in Pudukottai district in 1998, the local panchayat punished Dalit youths for marrying caste Hindu girls. They were tonsured and paraded in the streets as a warning to others.
Even today, many youngsters who marry outside their caste have to seek protection in police stations.
Last November, in Tiruppur, Sripriya, a Hindu girl from an upper caste was done to death by her father and relatives for marrying Badrakaali, a Dalit.
“Seven honour killings have been recorded in the state in the last two years but the truth is that many more go unreported,” says a social activist, adding that backward caste women who marry Dalit men are the worst affected.
In Tamil Nadu, the caste bias forces couples of inter-caste marriages to desert their villages and seek a livelihood elsewhere — mostly in towns and cities where the caste discrimination is not as rabid. Discarded by their parents and deserted by their relatives, they live a life of their own, in the anonymity of urban neighbourhoods.
But besides the honour killing and other punishments, the existence of caste Hindu-dominated ‘katta panchayats’ (kangaroo courts) continues to rule rural Tamil Nadu. This type of unlawful dispensation of justice prevails even among the fisher folk.
The meenavar panchayat interferes in disputes such as lands, family issues and property. Those who defy the panchayat diktat and turn to legal remedies such as the police or the courts, are either ostracised or face other punishments.
A.R. Meyyammai