Shafiq Ur Rahman Khan

O nce, I asked writers who had already written on the issue of ‘Khap Panchayats’ that “what’s the role played by caste in the brutalities of ‘Khap Panchayat’ i.e. how Dalits suffer in ‘Khap Panchayat’ system? They replied there is no such survey or measure available to check out this, ‘Dalits’ are killed when they marry in another caste but in Haryana the problem is of ‘Khap’ (marrying within ‘Khap’) or the other replied ‘Khap Panchayats’ are against modernization’ not against “Dalit’. I wasn’t satisfied with the answers, so I tried to search and write this article explaining with brief history what led the increase in the number of Khap Panchayat’s illegal decrees, ‘fatwas’ against Dalits. ‘Khap’ (group of 84 villages) is a system of social administration and organization in northern India (highly influencing in Haryana, Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh). Khap Panchayat’s whole-sole motive/purpose is to work and maintain clan/caste system alive (which they have done with perfection...

Delhi’s Inter-State Bus Terminal is dizzyingly chaotic, full of buses spewing diesel fumes, vendors flogging newspapers and cold drinks, weather-worn porters and hordes of weary travellers, their belongings stuffed into plastic shopping bags or hard-shell suitcases. Amid this mêlée, in June 2007, an ambitious 23-year-old named Gaurav Saini first laid eyes on Monika Dagar, a 19-year-old university student with whom his life would soon become devastatingly entwined. “When I first saw her, I felt that there was something in my eyes like tears,” Gaurav recalls. “In my whole life, I had never seen such an innocent face.” The two had first made contact six months earlier in one of the many internet chatrooms that allow young Indians to overcome geographical barriers, parental restrictions or their own shyness to search for kindred spirits. Gaurav came from a lower middle-class Delhi family keen to give its children a secure foothold in India’s booming knowledge economy. His father, who had a...