In Haryana, a 70-year-old Sarpanch changes a centuries old tradition by permitting intercaste and intra-khap marriages



It has been a busy day for Subedar Inder Singh. Juggling press interviews and queries over the phone, he has been on the move, snatching moments to search for cellphone numbers in his scraggly pocket phone directory and calling his supporters to keep tabs on his detractors. “If you do anything new, there will always be resistance. I have tried to change a 650-year-old tradition,” says the 70-year-old Sarpanch of Satrol Khap in Haryana’s Hisar district. Known as the state’s largest khap (a local-area brotherhood of sorts), this one under the leadership of Singh called a panchayat, a gathering of elders, on 20 April and decided to allow intercaste marriages as well as weddings between families from within the 42 villages that constitute the khap.

Across the country, intercaste marriages have been frowned upon by traditionalists all through the ages. Rural Haryana’s traditional norms, however, also disallow matrimony within the same Hindu gotra (a grouping defined by lineage) and among residents of villages within the same khap. Alleged ‘violations’ of these norms have resulted in shocking cases of violence—with many young lovers lynched by mobs—in the recent past.

In allowing both intercaste and intra-khap marriages—subject to parental consent of course—the Satrol Khap has signalled a relaxation of strictures that has taken many by surprise. To be sure, it has not dared go all the way. Weddings between residents of adjoining villages (known as guhaan) are still a no-no, as a mark of ‘respect’ for the sense of fraternity shared by villages of the same khap. Those would be a little too incestuous for the old guard to bear. “Traditionally, children from within the same gotra and villages under the same khap were considered brothers and sisters. We have relaxed these, but have not removed the system in its entirety,” says Singh, defending himself in the face of stiff opposition from a section of the khap that has threatened to strip him of his leadership for ‘disrespect of tradition’.

The Sarpanch, who acted upon the suggestion of his friend Wazir Singh Mann, who is also a member of the khap core committee, says that the idea took shape over the last year-and-a-half since he became Sarpanch, and is part of an effort to keep up with the times. “The younger generation is moving ahead and honour killings and violence are no answer to this” says Mann, who pushed the reform after he learnt that his 26-year-old niece, training to be a nurse, was keen on marrying a young man of a neighbouring village; the trouble was that both belonged to villages—Ratti and Pushti—of the same khap. Faced with the inconvenience of having to find a proposal for an educated Jat girl who was past the age of 26—considered over-age for matrimony in these parts—and the threat of embarassment should the girl elope with her boyfriend, the family’s elders sought a practical solution. “We knew the family and the villages are just about 30 km apart,” says Mann, “All our men have been in the military and this boy is also in the Army. Why look for somebody among strangers?”

While most khap members agree that keeping up with the times is the order of the day, they admit that a skewed sex ratio in the state is another factor. “There is a dearth of girls in Haryana and khap restrictions add to the problem of finding suitable matches. There are over 100 boys who are unmarried in our villages,” says Captain Mahabir Singh Lohan, another member of the core committee. “The alternative available is to search for girls outside the khap, which takes a huge chunk of options away (since the khap controls 42 villages spread over 400 sq km in the district),” he says. “The other option is to bring a bride from the Northeast or South,” he adds with thinly disguised disapproval. “If we can get girls from within our culture, even if from a lower caste, it is better than bringing in an outsider. This has also led to cases of trafficking, which is not good for society,” he adds. According to Lohan, who runs a brick kiln in the village, every village under Satrol has about 15-20 women brought in from other states as brides over the past ten years.

Thirty-five-year-old Sehram Singh is a tea stall vendor at the local anaaj mandi in village Bans, buzzing with labourers and traders dealing with a fresh harvest of wheat. Most khap committee members own trading units in the mandi . Left with just a small scrap of land after a division of family property among four brothers, he runs the tea stall with his younger brother Kamal. As the khap’s latest decision comes up for discussion, both Kamal and Sehram decide to leave the stall, the rest of the men around them stifling their laughter as the two brothers look around in embarrassment.

“They bought a bride for the younger brother through an agent, spending Rs 80,000, but she ran away with their jewellery within a month. Every village has at least two such cases,” reports 26-year- old Rakesh Mann, waiting to be married. With the panchayat relaxing its norms, he believes that such mishaps will be history soon. “Only the rich, with decent jobs, can afford to get a good Haryanvi bride. Even the girls’ fathers look for boys who have money. The rest of us can only think of spending some money and finding a bride from another state—which is not the best option all the time,” says Mann, who runs a shop selling seeds and agricultural equipment in Bans.

With their feudal attitudes, skewed sex ratios and shrinking land holdings, states like Haryana and UP have become hubs of bride trafficking rackets. According to a study done by Drishtee Street Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra, of some 10,000 households surveyed in Haryana, nearly 9,000 had brides from other states. “Most of these brides are ‘bought’ at a rate between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 from states like West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and even Kerala,” says Sunil Jaglan, Sarpanch of Bibipur village in Mewat district, a man who has led several initiatives addressing issues of sex ratio, trafficking and honour killing. Agents, usually truck drivers who travel around the country, promise brides to Jats who cannot find suitable brides within the state. “Earlier, Jats, being the landed class, had no dearth of money. But with time, land holdings have decreased tremendously and employment opportunities are limited,” says Khap Sarpanch Inder Singh. “There is already a shortage of girls in Haryana, so this rule will help Jat boys find suitable brides,” he says.

Singh believes that the centuries-old tradition was instituted to counter the ill- effects of a relatively homogenous gene pool, as would happen down the generations if closely related people were to have offspring. But those fears need to be outlived. “The population [back then] was much less and there were only seven villages under Satrol—hence the name. But we have spread way beyond that and options are limited,” he says. “Children born of inter-state marriages look different and the brides find it difficult to adjust, which is why many of them run away. If we are compromising on race and caste in this situation, then we might as well find brides from within our community.”

The decision has met with resistance from the Pethwa tappa, a cluster of 12 villages that form a sub-unit within the khap, which has announced that it would not allow such marriages and has constituted a committee of its own to debate the matter. “How can they destroy our brotherhood and culture?” asks Phool Kumar Petwar, a tappa leader who wants an opinion poll conducted on the issue.

Both Inder Singh and Mahabir Lohan, however, claim that the decision was taken only after conducting a survey for well over a year. Battling their own long-held prejudices and points of view, the two recount a meeting with young ASHA workers upset about a decision taken by a khap in Jind that decreed that girls be married by the age of 16 to lower cases of rape. “I tried explaining to them that it was a good decision for their own good, as such crimes happen due to unfulfilled sexual desires, but they wouldn’t agree,” Singh says, “Girls are equally expressive.”

Primarily a feudal state with nearly 70 per cent of its Jat population concentrated around districts like Rohtak, Jind and Hisar, Haryana’s sex ratio is the lowest in the country, at 857 per 1,000, according to India’s 2011 census. The female voice remains largely unheard in a khap discourse mainly concerned with nearly 15 per cent of its boys remaining unmarried and children born of brides from other states. Dr Nonica Datta, a historian of Modern India and a professor at Delhi University’s Miranda House, believes that changing norms are an indication of increasing female expression of sexuality and love. “The khap may allow intercaste marriages, but the rules might remain lopsided in favour of an unmarried boy interested in marrying a girl of a lower caste,” says Datta, author of Forming an Identity: a Social History of Jats. “Modern notions of love for a young woman are no longer about finding love after marriage, it is about dating, holding hands and being in love, as it were,” she says, pointing out that most recent cases of honour killing involved a girl daring to exercise agency or choice.

While khaps have found popular support for regressive and repressive decrees, such as not sending girls to schools, banning their use of cellphones and even marrying them off at 16, these brotherhoods have had plenty of support across political parties in search of a vote bank in the state. “This is not a politically motivated move and our aim is to get everyone to agree with us,” says Singh, “Even politicians will back us, you wait and see.”

As the day sets, 32-year-old Meera settles down to cook a meal for her family of ten, including her four children. She came to Bans as a 22-year-old bride from Guwahati with her husband Kamaljeet, who went all the way to the Assamese city in search of a bride. “My father was a farmer and was looking for a match for me after I finished school,” she says, remembering the time she struggled with the language and trying to manage household chores. Her accent is still reminiscent of her ‘otherness’ that bothers the likes of Inder Singh. While Kamaljeet died in a drunken brawl, Meera was married to his younger brother five years ago as part of the karewa tradition in Haryana (originally formulated to keep property within the family). “I haven’t been to my village since then,” she says. Spending most of her time with her husband in the fields, Meera says she has vaguely heard of the decision. “I think it is good. It is not easy to live the way I do,” she says, before heading to the kitchen to cook a meal for her children.