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In Balah, a village from district Karnal, a goddamned part of rural Haryana, a family regained its lost honor by killing their daughter who had dared to elope with a guy from her own village. The reason proffered by the family was that marrying someone from the same village is as good as marrying one's brother or sister.
Most of the villagers of Balla, Karnal have never heard of the national pledge (which has a funny line somewhere in between that goes 'All Indians are my brothers and sisters"), since in India every village is a nation in itself and has its own national pledge. But some educated villagers of Balah who have been exposed to our national pledge have adopted it, replacing the word Indians with Balahians. Being dedicated village patriots, unlike the rest of Indians who often get confused between national anthem, national pledge and national song, they follow seriously the dictum "All Balahians are my brothers and sisters" and don't take kindly to anyone from their village engaging in non-brotherly or non-sisterly activity with any member of the opposite sex of the village. Anyone daring to do so brings immediate dishonor to the entire family and needs to be immediately bumped off to restore back the lost honor. In order to carry out the dastardly deed, the brotherly/sisterly love that every Balahian feels for every other Balahian is temporarily forgotten. Once the dirty and violent deed of hacking to death the eloping couple is done, Balahians regain the brotherly/sisterly feelings for every other Balahian. And also the lost honor.
What does the word honor mean?
Honor as is universally understood represents respect, dignity, character of a person and a cocktail of many other things depending upon the geographical location where the person is achieving or losing his honor. Honor in most of the backward parts of India means a lot more than respect or esteem earned in society. In these parts, honor is the ultimate possession - more important than life itself. If you lose your honor, you either kill the person responsible for your lost honor or kill yourself.
Most of the villagers of Balla, Karnal have never heard of the national pledge (which has a funny line somewhere in between that goes 'All Indians are my brothers and sisters"), since in India every village is a nation in itself and has its own national pledge. But some educated villagers of Balah who have been exposed to our national pledge have adopted it, replacing the word Indians with Balahians. Being dedicated village patriots, unlike the rest of Indians who often get confused between national anthem, national pledge and national song, they follow seriously the dictum "All Balahians are my brothers and sisters" and don't take kindly to anyone from their village engaging in non-brotherly or non-sisterly activity with any member of the opposite sex of the village. Anyone daring to do so brings immediate dishonor to the entire family and needs to be immediately bumped off to restore back the lost honor. In order to carry out the dastardly deed, the brotherly/sisterly love that every Balahian feels for every other Balahian is temporarily forgotten. Once the dirty and violent deed of hacking to death the eloping couple is done, Balahians regain the brotherly/sisterly feelings for every other Balahian. And also the lost honor.
What does the word honor mean?
Honor as is universally understood represents respect, dignity, character of a person and a cocktail of many other things depending upon the geographical location where the person is achieving or losing his honor. Honor in most of the backward parts of India means a lot more than respect or esteem earned in society. In these parts, honor is the ultimate possession - more important than life itself. If you lose your honor, you either kill the person responsible for your lost honor or kill yourself.
Honor, as per backward India's definition is a mysterious possession which can be lost in the following cases:
- If your son or daughter marries or elopes outside of your caste, you lose it
- If your son or daughter marries or elopes outside of your religion, you lose it.
- If your son or daughter marries or elopes inside of your (gotra) sub-caste, you lose it
- If your son or daughter marries or elopes inside of your village, you lose it.
In all such cases, you can regain the lost honor by killing your son or daughter along with the person with whom he or she has eloped.
But there are also situations where you lose honor because of your own misdeeds. For example, if you take a loan from your friendly, neighborhood shylock for purchasing seeds and fertilizers needed for planting a crop, but are unable to pay back the loan due to crop failure, then you lose your honor. In such case, you kill yourself rather than continue living dishonorably as a loan defaulter.
In India, lacs of small farmers routinely kill themselves every year after losing their honor due to their inability to pay back their debt to local shylocs. Their deaths are falsely misrepresented by media, government, rural activists and bleeding-hearts as suicides, when in reality they are just a different version of honor killings. To be more precise, honor self-killings. Only that can explain why the indebted farmers of India never chose any other option of escaping the loan sharks, like running away from their village and becoming anonymous, migrant laborers in big towns or declaring themselves as 'bankrupt' as indebted people from less backward parts of world do when they are left with no money to pay back their debts. Another option the 'dishonored' farmers rarely exercise is killing the shylock who is tormenting them before killing themselves. Preoccupation with matters relating to their honor prevents them from exercising saner, more rational ways of evading the grip of money-lenders or avenging their future death before honor self-killing.
If the government of India properly understood the nature of farmer suicides, it wouldn't need to grapple with the issue by ad-hoc measures such as waiving of farm loans. It can simply declare all farmers ending their lives as criminal offenders guilty of honor self-killing.
Conclusion:
Honor is a dangerous, a heinous, life-threatening conferment by society that should be avoided at all costs by every sane person. Since there is no clear-cut, acceptable-to-everyone definition of the word, what constitutes 'honor' often depends upon crazy whims and fancies of the society. If the society surrounding you is as mentally retarded as the society surrounding poor, dead Sunita and her equally dead lover, you will be totally doomed all your life walking on tight-ropes, ever in danger of falling and losing your honor. Hence its better to live without honor. Live your life lightly; live your life dishonorably.
But there are also situations where you lose honor because of your own misdeeds. For example, if you take a loan from your friendly, neighborhood shylock for purchasing seeds and fertilizers needed for planting a crop, but are unable to pay back the loan due to crop failure, then you lose your honor. In such case, you kill yourself rather than continue living dishonorably as a loan defaulter.
In India, lacs of small farmers routinely kill themselves every year after losing their honor due to their inability to pay back their debt to local shylocs. Their deaths are falsely misrepresented by media, government, rural activists and bleeding-hearts as suicides, when in reality they are just a different version of honor killings. To be more precise, honor self-killings. Only that can explain why the indebted farmers of India never chose any other option of escaping the loan sharks, like running away from their village and becoming anonymous, migrant laborers in big towns or declaring themselves as 'bankrupt' as indebted people from less backward parts of world do when they are left with no money to pay back their debts. Another option the 'dishonored' farmers rarely exercise is killing the shylock who is tormenting them before killing themselves. Preoccupation with matters relating to their honor prevents them from exercising saner, more rational ways of evading the grip of money-lenders or avenging their future death before honor self-killing.
If the government of India properly understood the nature of farmer suicides, it wouldn't need to grapple with the issue by ad-hoc measures such as waiving of farm loans. It can simply declare all farmers ending their lives as criminal offenders guilty of honor self-killing.
Conclusion:
Honor is a dangerous, a heinous, life-threatening conferment by society that should be avoided at all costs by every sane person. Since there is no clear-cut, acceptable-to-everyone definition of the word, what constitutes 'honor' often depends upon crazy whims and fancies of the society. If the society surrounding you is as mentally retarded as the society surrounding poor, dead Sunita and her equally dead lover, you will be totally doomed all your life walking on tight-ropes, ever in danger of falling and losing your honor. Hence its better to live without honor. Live your life lightly; live your life dishonorably.
