Honor killings, a subject that has gained a lot of scrutiny and publicity in the past few years. It is an act of murdering a woman or girl child by her own family members, who justify their actions by blaming the victim of bringing shame to the family. The status of women in many conservative cultures like ours which are patriarchal to the very core is often described as pitiable. It’s no surprise to anyone that women face a constant threat in our society.
Women in our society are expected to play many roles like that of a daughter, sister, wife, mother and grandmother, just not an individual. It’s almost comical that a gender still regarded as the weaker sex has been given the responsibility to shoulder the huge burden of family honor. Women in our society are expected to act, dress, or talk and live in a certain way. We have defined the very qualities of a good woman and anything that doesn’t fit into that small box of acceptability is regarded as a threat to our very honor. As soon as a girl is born she gets exposed to a certain set of defined rules that she is expected to live by. Being a woman is like walking on eggshells, one wrong step and you go tumbling downwards.
As society that has very clearly shown its preference for male child, women are often considered as a burden or ‘paraya dhan’ meaning alien by their own families. Women are supposed to leave their parents after marriage hence any investment in them is seen as useless. Even if we educate our girl child, we expect her to shoulder house responsibilities as well because house chores are a woman’s job after marriage. If her husband is kind enough to let her work, she should be able to handle both her career and house equally well, god forbid if she fails it’s her parents who will be criticized for raising such a daughter.
Women are expected to be demure and submissive creatures, the very epitomes of sacrifice. From mythology to our current Indian TV shows, everything depicts a good woman as the one who sacrifices for the happiness of her family, who leaves a career to raise children, in-short puts others needs before her own.
Girls in our country are raised with a stark awareness of how different they are from boys. Where boys are given unlimited freedom and options girls are barely given any. How many of you women out there were told to talk in a low voice, be less ambitious, be less aggressive, less demanding or be less at anything because you are a woman.
Women who prefer to behave and live for themselves are often considered as troublemakers or worse still ‘loose women’. Anything that a woman does which is remotely out of line can directly hamper her reputation, and in-turn brings shame upon the family. The men in the family often feel it’s their moral obligation to set the woman straight.
There are many benchmarks on which a woman is judged in our society, and the failure to meet these expectations often raises many questions about her character, how she is raised and her lack of ‘sansakars’. Smoking and drinking is far more injurious to a woman’s character in India than it is to her health. We might have reached the moon and the mars but we still refuse to reach an understanding of women rights and equality.
The problem of gender bias has always been a part of the society, a problem that is so deeply embedded in our society that any amount of education and exposure to the world has failed to rectify. It’s until we make a conscious and collective effort to bring change in our thinking, we are more likely to face the same issues for the next many more years to come.
It’ s about time that we start holding everyone equally responsible for their behavior. It’s time to tell our boys to behave properly and show respect to everyone alike. The society where we are afraid of losing our honor is made of people like us. And it is people who have the power to make that shift.
As a family we are suppose to love each other and care for each other in both good and bad times. Supporting your daughter, sister, mother, grandmother in their pursuit for happiness is honorable. The honor of a family depends how happy, respected and secure its women feel. Rather than raising women who take care of men and uphold family honor, raise a family where men respect women and treat them equal.
Honor, something as precious to us as life itself if not more should be dependent on our own actions. Just like respect, honor is also earned by our own actions. Honor and killing are two words that are complete opposite of each other as honor is a result of good deeds, killing is the biggest committed. How then do we feel that a sin we commit would bring us honor. Killing another living being let alone one’s own child is the biggest shame you bring upon yourself and your family name. Losing the every last specks of honor in pursuit of preserving it is the biggest irony of all.
Ms Tanya Chopra
