Haryana's khap panchayats have, over the years, been issuing diktats to inter-caste lovers who married, with or without their parents consent, to annul their marriage. Those who dared to defy their diktats and their families were invariably ordered to leave their ancestral village with the government acting as silent spectators. What has now brought the issue into the sharp focus and raised many disturbing questions is the lynching of a youth who, accompanied by the Punjab and Haryana High Court-appointed warrant officer and police, had gone to bring back his wife from her parents village last week. The gravity of the issue cannot be grasped without a brief narration of the facts as reported in the media:

Ved Pal Mor of Matour village of Kaithal district who was practising medicine in Singhwala village fell in love with Sonia. Her parents objected to the affair and arranged her marriage with another youth. About a week before the wedding on March 18, Ved and Sonia eloped and tied the knot in court. The khap panchayat of Banwala gotra (sub-caste) objected to their alliance on the grounds that the villages shared boundary and had bhaichara (brotherly relations) between them. In a meeting held on March 20, the panchayat issued a fatwa to kill the couple and “save the honour of the community” prompting the youth to approach the court again. The couple was provided protection but the khap managed to separate the duo about a month back and bring the girl to her parents house. Ved took legal recourse again and was provided a warrant officer who accompanied by Ved and police went to Sonia's village to execute the court orders of reuniting the couple. Subjected to mob fury, Ved was lynched while the warrant officer escaped with injuries and the police fled the scene.

Khap panchayats, the legacy of the caste bedevilled state and claiming to be the representatives of their respective areas Jats, might have played some useful role in the community's social affairs in the gone by years of the once most backward Haryana. But their usurping the powers of judiciary without inviting any punitive response from the authorities can only be attributed to the conspiracy of silence of the abettors. Khap panchayats violate human rights and infringe upon individuals freedom and their right to choose life partners. They act as prosecutors, judges and executioners claiming to be dispensing what they consider justice and the government and its local police and civil administration helplessly watch the innocents being punished. Reports periodically appear in the media of the police arresting people whom it suspects to be planning to commit crime. But here is the case of the khap panchayat deciding at its meeting on March 20 to kill the couple and neither the police nor the civil authorities take any preventive action by registering a case and arrest those who publicly declare their resolve to kill the innocent couple.

The state's ruling leadership has failed to discharge its governance duties by advancing the alibi that the phenomenon of khap pnahcyats illegal actions is a “social issue”. They forget that maintenance of law and order and taking action against the violators of individual freedom and human rights are not social issues. Once the issues of sati and dowry were also considered social issues. But the government had to make laws to eradicate these social evils. What prevents the Haryana government from treating the khap panchayats as lawbreakers and enact a law to ban them or atleast to prevent them from continuing their illegal activities? The situation is particularly ironic as Haryana has been a major centre of Arya Samaj's reformist movement and most of its ruling families have been staunch Arya Samajists.

Perhaps the reason for the failure of the successive state governments to act against khap panchayats is vote bank politics. The political parties presumably fear that if they annoy the khap panchayats they might lose the Jat votes. The opposition parties have also been playing a disgusting role. They would take the government of the day to task for its minor lapses. But they have maintained criminal silence on the government's failure to check the illegal actions of the khap panchayats. They perhaps fear that they would lose votes if they ask for action against the illegalities of khap panchayats.

Once considered to be India's one of the most backward states, Haryana has made tremendous progress since its birth in November 1966 to become country's one of the most developed and forward looking states with highest per capita income and per capita investment. Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda repeatedly declares that he wants to make Haryana as India's number one state and that he is striving to see his ambition fulfilled. He has indeed made considerable progress in that direction. But if he fails to check khap panchayats from continuing their illegal actions and incursions into the domains of judiciary and law and order authorities, Haryana will stand the risk of being labelled as still a socially underdeveloped state. It will sully Hooda's image of a leader striving to make Haryana as the country's number one state. Will he act determinedly and fast to escape earning such a stigma? (IPA Service)