KOCHI: Kevin P Joseph’s spouse family may not feel content now. They might be feeling penitence. Besides this, a thick fume of entropy may have engulfed and charred down the peace and tranquillity of the family. The mores and social etiquette are put to qualms. This entropy is brought to remain long.
Numerous authors, NGOs, philanthropists, social lovers and other right-minded citizens all over the world, especially in Africa and Asia, have foreseen imminent honour killings and their ramifications. They have started sundry campaigns to combat the scourge. Some of them are still on.
The United Nations has estimated that around 5,000 honour killings take place every year. It can be attributed to the apathy of the police or attrition in the police training system. One can even fetch the judiciary or political system to the docks. These pillars of the government have limitations to influence in our mundane affairs.
The Supreme Court, of latest, has enacted that khap panchayat or similar bodies are not eligible to decide on marriage issues. This is a step intended to avoid honour killing possibilities.
Ted Hughes, a British writer in his poem ‘Hawk Roosting’, used hawk as a metaphor to humans. Like the hawk, the basic instincts of a human is cruelty and murder.
Killing a man or his wife is an easy task for a group of goons. The anxiety based on family status stokes the situation for the worse.
It does not imply that instincts are unable to rein. Human beings are moral animals with special intellectual ability as distributed from a hawk. Basic instinct is an untoward behaviour in the context of embarrassment. A hawk kills for food while a man kills to safeguard his reputation.
Prestige itself has the tendency to be buoyant and obsolete. In a civilised society, barbarism and savage spectacle of violence cannot be counted as normal.
The rancid odour of the cold blood is unabated through the media. Pre-historic Neanderthal and other primitive tribes have endowed with this culture.
A human basic instinct of violence leads to impertinence. There is nothing honourous about killing someone, but there is an honour if let the couple live without fear.
If a murder is committed to save from a timely embarrassment, it can ruin the age-old family reputation. Tolerance elevates one’s stature to above-the-ordinary contours of society.
Such men can achieve success out of failures. Further, accepting failure from one’s kin provides the latter with a better opportunity to correct his or her failure in life. In family relationships, nouns such as ‘loss’ and ‘winning’ is ephemeral.
The rigid and parochial caste system in India stands as a provoking menace. When one marries from another community, their entire sociology goes through an ordeal. When inter-caste or inter-religious marriages take place in families, they are looked on, despised and humiliated. This stigma persists long. In certain cases, such families are isolated from social and family functions. All these apprehensions are synchronised and catalysed into ‘honour syndrome’.
In fact, religion and caste shall not be brought to the contours where the family statuesque is in peril. In any account, family need not be put to test. Religious institutions should impart harmony and peaceful culture for the benefit of the society. This is the threshold of modifying human basic instincts.
Cultural values, moral sermons, clemency, wisdom, dynamism, doctrines, unsullied living and tolerance can be practised.
In the wake of these, people can survive and surmount all tight corners. Tolerance can distil predicaments away. No religion says to torment others.
Impartial education leads to intelligence and reformation of inner concepts. Intelligence can topple evil ideas from a mind and imbibe fresh optimism. One can hope that humanity will be driven ahead with the right knowledge, right thinking and right living.
The author is a retired lecturer in journalism. The views expressed by the author are his own. He can be contacted at gopi3001@gmail.com