Justifying murder in the name of family honour

You might just miss it tucked away inside your newspaper.

- Namita Bhandare

A few paragraphs that don't even begin to tell the story. The one of love, and dying for it. The one where choosing a partner is not just a radical act but also life-threatening.

The serious-looking bearded man, HM, tells me that he is a "survivor" of a painfully familiar tale. Falls in love with the "wrong" sort, as in wrong caste. There's another complication: She had been married off as a child, so, for her to fall in love as an adult with somebody else becomes a question of family honour; an honour vested in her and dependent on her toeing the line.

HM from Jaipur tells me about the whispered phone calls. The restrictions on her movements. The threats. The physical abuse from her family pressuring her to fulfil the terms of an illegal marriage. And then he learned she had died. Her family said by suicide. No police complaint was ever filed. No case registered. That was in 2018.

I met HM at a consultation on honour killings—the inappropriately named term for the murder of young people by their parents for marrying against caste and faith.