The Other Silence

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society“ – Jiddu Krishnamurti

On one side of the spectrum we have righteous patriarchs putting an end to their progeny’s life to prevent familial dishonour while at the other end of the spectrum we have incestous fathers peddling their daughter to strangers for quick money. The former is prevalent in the northern states of India while the latter is unnervingly common in the south, namely Kerala.

Movie poster of KHAP, a 2011 Hindi film, based on the Manoj-Babli honour killing case and Khap Panchayats in villages of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which order honour killings.

This practice of subjecting one’s offspring to death(or an horrendous life) is unprecedented. The single purpose of every living organism on this planet is the propagation of its species.  Fathers are actively destroying their only chance of seed dissemination by tarnishing their daughters, which is beyond comprehension for a species that is said to be blessed with divine wisdom. At this point in time, it would be wise of us to excogigate on what exactly is being accomplished by our fathers who art on Earth.

A major fart-point(non-scientific term) of the human brain is its incapability to grasp individual exclusivity. This also extends to his environment but thats a topic for another post. The fathers are in-fact attempting to think on behalf of their children(global phenomenon). Although the author ponders on who exactly is the child in the scenario since the elder parent is unable to control his emotions just like in the case of a new-born baby. This is the second fart-point of the human brain, the inability to dissociate emotional and rational thought.

In the case of honour killings, why don’t the fathers just take their own lives if they feel that way about it? And  when it comes to killing someone, no matter how you justify yourself, it is an action that can never be reinstated. This phenomenon is much more globally spread than just in our Bharat Mata.

An Iraqi woman, Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, whose family had moved to Phoenix, Arizona, was hit by her father’s Jeep Grand Cherokee in October 2009, as she walked across a car park. She lay in a coma for two weeks in hospital before dying.

By his(Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48) own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter was getting too westernized which brought shame on him and his family.

It is worrying that Kerala and Maharashtra are the two states with maximum arrests pertaining to child pornography. From 2007-2009, Maharashtra registered 27, 17 and 25 cases and for Kerala the figures were 20, 39 and 44. The fathers who peddle their children are the by-product of a predominantly patriarchal approach to marriages. The husband calls the shots and the wife stays mum. Some may argue that Kerala culture entertains some kind of matriarchal structure too but you need to understand that even in that scenario, the patriarch holds the right to veto the decisions. The only way forward is for the proliferation of ‘mutualistic marriages‘ among the population in our God’s  forsaken country.

Mutualistic marriages feature a companionate relationship between the husband and wife instead of the clichéd dominant husband and submissive wife. For both the above mentioned diseases plaguing patriarchs of modern India and around the world, mutualistic marriage entails as cure. Imagine a man walking over to kill/rape his daughter and finding the lovely gaze of his wife looking at him through his daughter’s eyes.  There is no better moral conditioning than this.

For further reading:

Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and Women in Twentieth-century Britain by Marcus Collins.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Wikipedia