The phrase 'honour killing' is so limitedly defined in our society and culture that the mere mention of these words provokes a certain fixed image in the listener/reader's mind.
A dusty road in Haryana or Rajasthan. A couple, running fast. The girl is in tears, the boy, fiercely determined, as he tries to outrun the SUVs chasing them. But fate catches up, the usually upper-caste Hindu girl and the generally lower caste or non-Hindu boy are caught. The patriarch of the girl's family says something about honour and pride and maligning the family name, and then they are shot dead. The family returns home, having reclaimed their 'honour'. Until - if at all - the ever-diligent police catches them and teaches them a lesson about how there was no honour in this crime, it is often too late.
Alas, the world is not a fictional show, and this definition of honour killing is way too limiting to exemplify what lies at the core of this philosophy: controlling or denying the agency of a girl or a woman.
The horrendous and bone-chilling murder of Radhika Yadav, a rising tennis coach, at the hands of her own father underlines the need to broaden the definition of honour killing.
Where Is The 'Honour'?
Human Rights Watch describes the act as follows: "an honour killing is the murder or acts of violence against a (typically female) family or clan member at the hand of a (typically male) family member in which the perpetrators believe that they brought shame upon the clan, community, or family."
The reasons for a female member of the clan/family to be targeted could include choosing love, refusing arranged marriages, being the victim of a sexual assault (yes, truly. By being a victim, the woman inadvertently brings shame to the family).
But this definition, once again, doesn't go deeper into the issue of patriarchy's need to control female agency.
Yadav, a 25-year-old tennis player, who later became a coach after a shoulder injury, ran her own tennis academy in Haryana. One morning, in the supposed safety of her own Gurugram home, she was shot at five times by her father, Deepak Yadav. She was cooking breakfast for him at the time, ironically. Four bullets hit her, three in the back, one in the shoulder.
Her father allegedly told the police then that he was tired of the taunts by his fellow villagers, who laughed at him for having a financially independent daughter who had 'too much freedom'.
Beyond Caste And Religion
There is an apparent cycle of the usual patriarchal pressures. Radhika's tennis buddy and friend, Himaanshika Singh Rajput, has accused Deepak of "controlling" every aspect of her life. In a social media post, she lamented the loss of her friend and claimed that the father continuously shamed her for wearing shorts, talking to boys, and living life on her own terms.
This last part lies at the heart of 'honour killings'. A woman who dares to exercise some agency is like a glitch in the matrix of patriarchy that needs immediate debugging.
To elaborate, around July 8 or 9, two men on a bike tried to throw a heavy sack under a flyover in Ludhiana. When some passers-by objected, they were first told it's rotten mangoes, and then, that it was a dog's corpse. The only thing rotten there was the lie. In the sack was the body of 25-year-old Reshma, a woman from Lucknow who came to Ludhiana to stay with her in-laws.
The police quickly tracked the killers: her in-laws. During the interrogation, they allegedly confessed that Reshma was not very obedient, that she would often go out without their permission even at night, and that this led to constant friction at home. There is no love, affair, or the usual elements of an 'honour killing', but only an untameable daughter-in-law, proclaimed by our society to carry the burden of the whole clan's honour. So, the in-laws strangled her to death. The mother-in-law was simply a complacent tool in this whole saga.
The Role Of Women
In an academic paper titled Men And Women As Victims And Perpetrators Of Violence, professor Mahima Varma's insights into how women, too, become 'honour killers' of other women and girls, can help us understand the above two cases. I say two because Radhika's mother, Jyoti, was in the house at the time of her murder, but she claims she didn't hear anything. So far, she has also refused to make an official statement to the police.
Coming back to the paper, the author says, "Women's complicity or silence in caste-based killings stems not only from ideological socialisation but also from economic dependence on male kin. Across generations, women (such as mothers, grandmothers and aunts) internalise patriarchal and caste norms, making them passive or active participants in violence."
Financial dependence is a great tool to control the agency of a woman in our current societal structure. Since Radhika was independent, she became an outlier against this norm. As revealed in her chats with her coach, Radhika was fed up with the constant power struggle at home, where her father was increasingly frustrated about her 'free life'.
Radhika wanted to escape, move to another country, as revealed in these chats. But that would deeply impact the family; a man already tired of the taunts of the villagers worried about what they would have said if they found out the daughter had severed ties with the family unit.
That people have turned Radhika's case into a Hindu-Muslim debate on social media only shows how narrow our definition of honour killing is. People need to confirm their biases; many believe Deepak did an honourable thing by honour killing a daughter who must have had relations with a Muslim boy. He is being valourised online in a sickening display of patriarchy wrapped in Islamophobia, and lauded for "saving" the daughter from an imaginary interfaith relationship.
However, the religion/caste and love angle doesn't even need to exist to hurt the 'honour' of patriarchy. In its annual publication on 'Crime in India', the NCRB recorded only 33 cases that the police and authorities classified as communal or caste-based honour killings in 2021.
A Skewed Dynamic
Meanwhile, a UN report on global homicide claims, "36 percent of homicide victims at the hands of a partner or a family member were male, while 64 percent were female between 2011 to 2017." There is clearly a gap between the communal undertones and the real number of women killed by family.
In May of 2023, a man in Thane killed his 12-year-old sister on the mere suspicion that she could have been in a physical relationship with someone. His proof? The child's period blood. He first first tortured her physically with burns, then killed the child. There was no interfaith love angle.
In March of 2023, a married woman in Noida was killed by her brothers to 'protect family honour'. Najma was in a bad marriage, and the brothers suspected she had an affair and was drinking alcohol. So they killed her and dumped her body in Hindon river.
A quick Google search for 'daughter killed by father' or 'sister killed by brother' gives you a host of results. The majority fall under the traditionally understood paradigms of honour killing - inter-caste or interfaith love stories. But many involve seemingly innocuous 'offences', as mentioned in above cases.
On the other hand, cases where mothers or sisters are killing sons and brothers because they are uncontrollable or have offended the family honour in any way barely exist. The mothers don't feel offended by taunts like 'your son is too independent'. Sisters cannot take it upon themselves to 'control' the family honour by harming a brother should they doubt him of having female friends.
Honour, always, resides in female agency. Or rather, in the absence of it.
Which is why we need to move beyond the presumption that honour killing is a way of preserving caste and religious bloodlines - it is, and has been, an excuse to erase female agency.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
