The Khap Panchayat of Haryana wants the
Government to lower the age of marriage of boys and girls, and that when they
(youth) reach the marriageable age, they should be allowed to get married
legally. This move would help contain crimes against girls. The representative
of Maha Panchayat, Sube Singh, in a statement at Rohtak, went to the extent of
saying that films and TV serials, in which the teen-aged are presented in
sexually enticing and fashionable dresses, are responsible to a great extent
for sexual crimes and excesses against girls. This creates sensual sentiments
in teen-aged boys and girls prematurely, and they experience it in their
practical life. Besides, modern culture and lifestyle also is a great cause for
the waywardness and sexual anarchy of the tender-aged. – (The Times of India, October 6) Earlier, leader of Jat Mahasabha of
Haryana, Om Prakash Man had also made such a demand. The leader of Meham
Chaubeesi Khap Panchayat, Randhir Singh also supports this demand. In the
backdrop of these statements of Jat and Khap leaders are the incidents of
sexual assaults on young girls that took place recently in Delhi and Haryana.
Government won’t do it
After a hue and cry raised by some
quarters, certain Khap leaders and Khap panchayats rejected the said statement
or proposal or kept themselves aloof. The leaders of Khap Maha Panchayat and Jat
Maha Sabha seem to be educated, far-sighted and realistic. They should have
stuck to their demand; however they should not have expected its approval from
the government. For, this government has been practicing double standard. On the
one hand it raises voice against social and sexual crimes and enacts stringent
laws but on the other hand creates and promotes all those causes and grounds that
serve as the source of these crimes; on the one hand it highlights the ill
effects of wine with the help of big advertisements and hoardings and warns
against the dangerous and fatal consequences of its consumption but on the
other hand ever widens the network of government liquor shops and centers so
that the government exchequer might be strengthened. Then this situation should
also be seen in the backdrop of globalization and the aspirations of being the
world power. The obscenity, nudity and waywardness which the Khap and Jat
leaders are complaining against are being imported from the west. The government
will not lower the age of marriage because it will stop the foreign aid
received in the name of birth control.
Awake the society
The social disaster modern culture can
create as pinpointed by the leaders of Haryana was also highlighted by the
chief minister of West Bengal Mamta Banerjee in a function in Kolkata on October
15. These leaders must raise such issues with the government. But the real work
is to revolutionize the society against these moral ills. (And for this) all
those sections and religious groups, who are fed up by these issues, will have
to be brought to one platform. As for Muslims, they agree hundred per cent with
the Khap and Jat leaders in regard to sexual crimes. A representative
conference of all these leaders should be convened in which a united, common course
of action should be devised. First of all, attention will have to be paid to media
which is the biggest source of promotion of obscenity, shamelessness, nudity
and waywardness. And, why only sexual crimes? This media is also the source of
promotion of social and religious injustice. If Khap, Jat and Muslim leaders do
this work jointly, it would be a great service to the country. Every sensible
person of every section of society will support them.
"I think its very good, and Islam also order it, good step to stop crimes against women"
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