Inter-caste Marriages along with an Introduction to Khap Panchayat

Abstract

The wrongness or wisdom of a community’s practices and perspectives, their intrinsic impact on autonomy, liberty and self-worth, as well as the parents’ concern over impulsive and unreflective choices—all these factors are backbone and crucial to the forefront of fulfilling caste obligations. Believed to be as a sacred institution, marriage binds man and woman in a pious relation and an obligation to fulfil during lifetime. It provides a relation to their meaning. Marrying within similar caste implies that both boy and girl are from the same community. At village level, Inter-caste marriage generally means that boy and girl are from different castes where one of them is from a lower caste. The three most important elements, the 3Cs which are kept on the high priority list are caste, creed and culture. Indians had an orthodox and traditional mindset from many years that marrying outside the caste is a sin and, therefore, they can’t even imagine such marriages. They still carry this conception in their mind that marriages are only possible in the same caste and community, and the same is still in many parts of our country a taboo for most people in the earlier days and even at present too. But with the passage of time, things changed, and inter-caste marriages also became a part of the society. Inter-caste marriages are being considered as the religious and prominent social customs and hence, were viewed as the best means to remove the barrier of caste system. It is believed that when the Almighty created woman and man, he did not assign any caste to them, so how we human beings can separate this God’s created world into castes and communities by our own. Customs and religious practices were so strict and merciless that even sometimes the boy and girl were hacked to death by their parents due to the pressure from the society. But in this moving and changing phase of social transition, the tensions as well as the conflict between past social practices and an individual freedom constitute important points of the community’s ability to contemplate and provide for least hurting or painful solutions. Yet the problem is the menacing phenomena of repressive and deadly social practices in the name of honor killing and all which triggers violence and hatred from the influential members of community. And how best to tackle it is the question and thus in this background, the role of law to grasp such situations assumes greater significance. Inter-caste marriages in today’s life are mainly confined to metro and urban cities and areas. The rural parts of the country still have a long way to go to come out of the arena of separating them from these harsh and illegal religious practices like Khap Panchayats and adopt inter-caste marriages.