The spurt in the number of “honour killings” in Tamil Nadu in recent years is a Stark indicator of the growing bang of patriarchal caste.
It is a loss so cruel. For 25year old N.Nandish, a Dalit man, and 23 years old S.Swathi, who belonged to the Vanniyar community(a most backward caste, or MBC) life was slowly returning to normal after they got married at a temple on August 15, 2018, and registered a marriage a month later. The couple braved extreme hostility from Swathi’s family, which believed that with the marriage the family honour had been compromised and caste sanctity violated. The couple decided to settle down in Tamil Nadu’s Hosur town, which borders Karnataka and is about 50 kilometers from Soolakondapalli village in Keishnagiri district, where their families lived.
The couple who had also sought protection from the police, went missing on November 10. Nandish’s brother N.Shankar lodged a police complaint at the Hosur police station, which registered a case of missing persons and faxed photographs of the couple to police stations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Three days later, the Hosur police station received a message from the Mandya police station in Karnataka that Nandish body had been recovered from the Shivana Samudra river. Two days later, Swathi’s body, in a highly decomposed state, was also found.
Preliminary investigations reveal that Swathi’s family had baited the couple to their village with the promised that their marriage would be solemnised with traditional customs. They then took the couple to Karnataka, where they strangle them and threw the bodies into the river. The girls body bite multiple hack wounds. Her head was shaven, apparently in an attempt to shame her, and her womb, witha three month old feotus in it, had been ripped open, both the bodies bore signs of abuse.
Swathis’s father, Srinivasan and his relatives were arrested for the crime. Shankar told Frontline that Srinivasan relative and other member of his caste had encouraged him to kill his daughter and her husband. “We took all precautions but failed to save them,” he said.
The incident, is just one example of “honour killing” a euphemism for casteist murders wherein people who consider themselves protectors of caste and culture zealousy safeguard caste endogamy by killing young men and women who marry out of caste. A spike in such killings numbering about 200 in Tamil Nadu since 2013, is testimony to the existence of a society that frowns upon and suppresses an adult’s right to choose their spouse.
One such murder that hit the headlines was that of Veluchamy Shankar, who belonged to the Pallar Scheduled Caste community, in 2016.