Disturbing similarities between Qandeel Baloch murder and Delhi honour kiling
What is it that makes men kill women for the sake of so-called "honour"? It most certainly isn’t a sense of honour for the very act of a cold-blooded, pre-meditated killing of a family member is repugnant.
It is in fact a deep sense of patriarchy, of male entitlement so deeply entrenched in our society that when it is challenged, it raises its ugly head to command supremacy through violence. The veil of "honour" over this repulsive act is euphemism at its worst.
Pakistani model Qandeel Baloch’s murder at the hands of her brother reminds me of a case of "honour-killing" I covered about six years ago.
It was not reported from some remote area in the back and the beyond of the country. The murders took place in the upwardly mobile locality of North-west Delhi, Ashok Vihar.
The accused Mandeep, Ankit and Nakul, men in their early 20s, were from Wazirpur, a village subsumed into Delhi. These young men belonged to modern India, were exposed to the world at large, and yet they displayed archaic instincts sadly synonymous with the subcontinent and its people.
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| Pakistani model Qandeel Baloch was strangulated by her brother in the name of saving family honour. |
At first it was very hard to fathom why these young men, brothers and cousins of the women killed, would go into a murderous rage over the women's choice to marry whom they wanted to.
After all, these were young men of the 21st century who too might sooner or later fall in love and want to marry women of their choice. They did not belong to the arranged marriage era. They were not the elders of the family who came with the baggage of archaic views.
But soon it became crystal clear just why, even today, there is a huge chasm in the fulfilment of desires or exercising of rights between men and women in crucial aspects of life.
As the family came to the Ashok Vihar police station and I started speaking to one of the girls’ cousins, he said something most startling on live coverage.
He started off by narrating stories of how much the girls were loved and how much they were pampered. They were even given fancy cars to travel to college, he claimed.
It seemed as if at least this cousin was mourning the loss of his loved ones but then came the concluding sentence, "And this is how they repaid us? By marrying out of their choice? By dishonouring the family? So what is so wrong if their brothers killed them?"
I was taken aback by this brazen justification for a criminal act, and even as I started to debate this point with him, he was whisked away by the police.
As the boy left I suddenly realised what he meant and what many young boys like him have been brought up to believe.
In fact, it is a clever ploy to conceal archaic mindsets so as to be able to "gel well" in a modern society. These men are trained to allow women "freedom on a leash" and women are trained to know "this much and no more".
So on the face of it, while it may appear that many of these women enjoy equal rights as their brothers, when it comes to making crucial life decisions they can only be made by the men.
That a man’s freedom be total but a pound of flesh be exacted for a woman’s freedom, is deeply disturbing.
More so because many women may not be able to judge that their so-called transgression may lead to a violent retribution.
If a woman’s act of choosing to lead life on her terms can bring disrepute to a family, what would a man’s act of having his hands covered in blood achieve for the family?
Above any honour is a person’s right to life and absolutely no one, even those who she owes her birth to, have the right to snatch it away from her.