Heroism, fake and real

Naveen Jindal is a young parliamentarian and industrialist. At the age of 40, the Congress leader represents the Kurukshetra constituency of Haryana in the Lok Sabha for the second time. Scion of a leading business house, he looks after the rail, steel, and power businesses of the Jindal Group.
He has had his education at the best institutions—Hansraj College of the University of Delhi and the University of Texas. He lives in one of the best localities in New Delhi; his bungalow is worth Rs 137 crore or $31 million.
In the past, he successfully campaigned for the citizens’ right to carry the national flag, a feat that made him a media darling; he has often been portrayed as a young icon, a committed politician, an earnest leader.
In short, he has access to the best in the world, and he is exposed to a variety of influences—presumably, also, the influences of modernity, individual liberty, and the rule of law. And what does he do? He makes out a case for khaps, the caste councils in Haryana and adjoining areas which act as kangaroo courts and dispense with barbaric justice, including lynching!
Then there is Chandrapati, a countrywoman who was widowed 18 years ago and who lives in her soldier-husband’s home in Karora village, Haryana. The 56-year-old woman has two daughters and a son; she had one more son who worked as a mechanic, Manoj. He married a girl of the same gotra (lineage or clan), Babli. For this, his wife’s family murdered the couple in 2007 on the diktat of a local khap. For years Chandrapati fought heroically for justice, which resulted in the first-ever court conviction in an honor-killing case.
The unassuming peasant woman had to face apparently insurmountable problems. Society, the local administration, the countless departments devoted to the cause of welfare state, myriad ‘civil society’ bodies—nobody came to her rescue. She was alone in her crusade against injustice and medievalism. Between one and none, wrote Nietzsche, lies an infinity; but it can also be infinite courage. A nondescript countrywoman from a nondescript village showed just that.
She told an interviewer in The Times Of India (April 4), “First, there was the village boycott. Everyone watches us, nobody comes, nobody speaks to us. We have no relatives in this village either. There was a time when it was difficult to get rations and milk even. The hostility was tremendous. We can’t step out of home without the police. I had to run from pillar to post simply to file the FIR.
“Even after I filed a case against the murderers, the panchayat came to bargain. They wanted to pay us off and offered Rs 1 crore. They said they’d sell land if required. Then they said, ‘You have daughters, we’ll do things to them.’ So the pressure was always there. It’s been three years of living in fear. They can do anything, any time. We face it. We live through it. There is no choice. And it’s not over or anything. I will see this through to the Supreme Court, if it reaches that point.”
No two persons can be as different as Chandrapati and Jindal. While she had the courage and gumption to take on the mightiest, our young parliamentarian decided to make a covenant with the forces of medievalism and barbarity. “I just feel, because they [khaps] are part of my parliamentary constituency, I have told them, they wanted to come and meet me and they wanted me to take the views to the government, to which I said, ‘Yes, I am duty-bound, so I would listen to you and I would take your views to the government’,” Jindal said.
What, pray, are the views of khap leaders? They want ban on marriages between same gotra. Their argument is that tradition does not allow such marriages; the Government should respect the customs of the country; therefore, same-gotra marriages should be legally prohibited. The argument is backed with force—brutal force. And the warning to youngsters is simple: you had better comply, or else…
Khaps say that exceptions were made in the Hindu marriage law, allowing union where customs said so. If local customs were earlier taken into account, they should be done now as well.
The fact is that the existing provisions expand the sphere of individual liberty, by letting marriage between certain tradition-sanctioned relations. Khaps, on the other hand, are hell-bent on shrinking that sphere by limiting people’s choice. And Jindal is “duty-bound” to take their retrograde views to the quarters that matter! So much for the ‘vision’ of our ‘young icons.’
Another, and bigger, icon is Rahul Gandhi who, in the words of Prof. Ravinder Kaur, is “fascinated by caste arithmetic, perfecting the art with modern technology and databases.” Is it moral progress if a cannibal uses spoon and fork? And is it a crusade for liberty if apparently modern, Westernized, and suave politicians masquerade their power-lust and Mandalite means with PR varnish?