The Old Boys Stalked By Modern Times

A stalking victim finds unsolicited support from her caste khap. Here’s why it signals no gender-just turn.

- Pragya Singh

HARYANA’S khap panchayats are in the news again, this time for a rather unusual reason. The Kundu khap, a self-regulated caste panchayat of the Kundu Jat clan, hit the Rohtak

Jind highway last week demanding justice—hold your breath—for a young woman. Vernika Kundu, a young DJ from Chandigarh, was recently stalked by two men and later complained that the police had watered down charges against the alleged stalkers. The Kundu khap warned the Haryana government of a wider agitation unless kidnapping charges were restored.

Quite in contrast to the stand taken by the Kundu khap in the Chandigarh case, Haryana’s khaps have earned a bad rep­utation due to their harsh diktats against women and young people. Khaps wield considerable influence over society wherever Jats are the dominant caste, and the institution has inv­ited opprobrium for imposing sanctions defending caste orthodoxy from social change. In fact, the word ‘khap’ is most closely associated in the public mind with the phrase ‘honour killing’—brutal, cold­blooded murders of couples who seek to marry outside their caste, or within the gotra (clan), whose members are considered by the khaps to be con­ sanguinous either by actual kinship or historically close ties.

Considering the khaps’ unabashed app­eal to patriarchal orthodoxy, their zeal to prevent or punish the breaching of boundaries that sustain hierarchies of caste, many are surprised by the Kundu khap’s stand in the stalking case. Vernika’s everyday life, after all, would be in violation of many of the taboos khaps are known to have imposed on young women—from using mobile phones to wearing jeans, the khap list of don’ts for women is long. A financially independent working woman who looks “westernised” cannot be someone whom a khap would accept as a role model for women.