An open letter to Khap leaders Part-3
One question is therefore clear - 'Are the villages of India and the village communities walking with the nation or as Baba Saheb said, they are, just sinks of localism, dens of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?
IF A law is passed in favor of the Khap panchayats, then why should we continuously curse Rajiv Gandhi for a legislation in back date in the case of a poor woman Shah Bano? In that case too, it was the low-rung politicians like Shahab-ud-din who held the parliament to ransom and held demonstrations/rallies everywhere. Imagine, that the uneducated though so called erudite leaders of village panchayats of Rajasthan hold the governments to ransom in a similar way for the passage of a law in favour of child marriages! The matter doesn’t stop there. Some communities of Rajasthan are also known to be true worshippers of the Sati temples if not the Sati tradition itself in this 21st century. They would continue to think that the Sati is a symbol of woman power and devotion to her husband and would completely turn a blind eye towards the fact that these hapless Satis died for no fault by sitting on the funeral fires of their deceased husbands, leaving their children as orphans. Their properties went into mischievous hands of mischievous relatives who left the children to live a wretched life of hunger. These communities would also coerce the governments to make a law which permits women to become Satis and also which permits the worship of Satis in the Sati temples. Today in this modern era wherein India is proud to be a close friend of the US and is a global market in itself,, we are unfortunate enough to witness cases where social reformer’s both hands are cut by villagers when she goes to stop a child marriage. In one case, a woman died, may be accidentally at the funeral fire of her deceased husband but even before it could be ascertained whether it was accident or Sati, the people of the concerned village were seen lying horizontally on the ground to prostrate before the ashes of the so believed Sati of their village! So dear gotra lovers, your campaign may open a hornet’s nest and a myriad of Indian communities may make a queue outside the parliament for the passages of laws in their favor. Blackmailing politicians for votes , they would make them dance to their tunes and have their way.
It was also funny to witness that in the said conference some learned speakers made a fine misuse of Mahatma Gandhi’s conviction in the village panchayats. Gandhi was against adult franchise and he believed in village republics. He believed that only elected members of the panchayats should be the voters for assemblies and parliament while a bulk of the local decisions should be left to the panchayats. The speakers saw virtue in Gandhi’s vision for the sake of their own frivolous principles. Did Gandhi visualise these panchayats which give bizarre verdicts in cases of marriages like declaring a husband-wife as brother-sister? One proud member of a khap panchayat said that the khap in his village doesn’t not order killing but it orders the parents of the erring couple to sell their land property and leave the village! This too is a deprivation of the fundamental right of a citizen to own property anywhere in this democratic nation. One of the opponents of these leaders rightly asked the khap leaders whether they ever contemplated on other issues like the environment, poverty or development or they had simply a one point programme of asserting their authorities regarding the gotra? Are these so called ‘informal social organisations’ as Bhupinder Singh Hooda prefers to call them, concerned about the education system of their villages? One really feels miffed at the wisdom of the social leaders of Indian villages.
While concluding this article, I suddenly happen to remember a date 4 Nov. 1948 when Baba Saheb Ambedkar introduced India’s draft constitution in the Constituent Assembly. A part of his long speech also dealt with Indian villages. He said that many honorable members of the Assembly lamented that the new constitution was not built upon Village Panchayats and District Panchayats. But Baba Saheb simply poo poohed the objections of these tear-shedders who had pointed out to Metcalf’s theory that the ‘village communities lasted where nothing else lasts’. Baba Saheb just questioned this survival by saying – ‘ The question is, on what plane they have survived. Surely, on a low, on a selfish level… What is a village, but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit’ (The Essential Writings of BR Ambedkar edited by Valerian Rodrigues pp 485-486).
One of Baba Saheb’s own agonies was that the villages never moved ahead of where they were and were never a part of the progressive march of the nation. This may further be elaborated by the fact that the self-styled self-righteous rightists and the so called owners of the legacy of this great nation have always cursed Bobington Macaulay for bringing the English education and hence civilization in this country. The miserable state of affairs in the villages of our country is a fitting answer to such Macaulay baiters whose education system educated the woman of India and emulated her to man. It is the Macaulay-educated urban woman who reached the space, who occupied positions as big as the president or the Prime Minister of India and the CM of many a state. One of the erudite speakers in this conference was clearly saying that the khap panchayats do not allow women as members of the panchayats. One question is therefore clear – ‘Are the villages of India and the village communities walking with the nation or as Baba Saheb said, they are, just sinks of localism, dens of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? One prays that you are all able to answer this question to your good selves.
It was also funny to witness that in the said conference some learned speakers made a fine misuse of Mahatma Gandhi’s conviction in the village panchayats. Gandhi was against adult franchise and he believed in village republics. He believed that only elected members of the panchayats should be the voters for assemblies and parliament while a bulk of the local decisions should be left to the panchayats. The speakers saw virtue in Gandhi’s vision for the sake of their own frivolous principles. Did Gandhi visualise these panchayats which give bizarre verdicts in cases of marriages like declaring a husband-wife as brother-sister? One proud member of a khap panchayat said that the khap in his village doesn’t not order killing but it orders the parents of the erring couple to sell their land property and leave the village! This too is a deprivation of the fundamental right of a citizen to own property anywhere in this democratic nation. One of the opponents of these leaders rightly asked the khap leaders whether they ever contemplated on other issues like the environment, poverty or development or they had simply a one point programme of asserting their authorities regarding the gotra? Are these so called ‘informal social organisations’ as Bhupinder Singh Hooda prefers to call them, concerned about the education system of their villages? One really feels miffed at the wisdom of the social leaders of Indian villages.
While concluding this article, I suddenly happen to remember a date 4 Nov. 1948 when Baba Saheb Ambedkar introduced India’s draft constitution in the Constituent Assembly. A part of his long speech also dealt with Indian villages. He said that many honorable members of the Assembly lamented that the new constitution was not built upon Village Panchayats and District Panchayats. But Baba Saheb simply poo poohed the objections of these tear-shedders who had pointed out to Metcalf’s theory that the ‘village communities lasted where nothing else lasts’. Baba Saheb just questioned this survival by saying – ‘ The question is, on what plane they have survived. Surely, on a low, on a selfish level… What is a village, but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit’ (The Essential Writings of BR Ambedkar edited by Valerian Rodrigues pp 485-486).
One of Baba Saheb’s own agonies was that the villages never moved ahead of where they were and were never a part of the progressive march of the nation. This may further be elaborated by the fact that the self-styled self-righteous rightists and the so called owners of the legacy of this great nation have always cursed Bobington Macaulay for bringing the English education and hence civilization in this country. The miserable state of affairs in the villages of our country is a fitting answer to such Macaulay baiters whose education system educated the woman of India and emulated her to man. It is the Macaulay-educated urban woman who reached the space, who occupied positions as big as the president or the Prime Minister of India and the CM of many a state. One of the erudite speakers in this conference was clearly saying that the khap panchayats do not allow women as members of the panchayats. One question is therefore clear – ‘Are the villages of India and the village communities walking with the nation or as Baba Saheb said, they are, just sinks of localism, dens of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? One prays that you are all able to answer this question to your good selves.
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