Byline: Sat Singh

Haryana’s women have been making great strides in sports, cinema, science, and other fields for many years now, but it took Manushi Chhillar’s Miss World win for khaps in the state to sit up and take cognisance of the fact that it’s high time they stop trying to bind women in the chains of regressive social norms and accord them their long-due freedom, dignity, and respect. Soon after the 20-year-old won the pageant, the Chhillar-Chhikara khap comprising 11 villages in Haryana and Delhi banned celebratory gunfire — a status symbol in the male-dominated society — and loud DJ music in weddings.

Now, other Haryana khaps are following in its footsteps and freeing the society of regressive, patriarchal social and cultural norms. Eight months after a Haryana government magazine described the ghoonghat or veil as the ‘identity’ of the state, one of Haryana’s biggest and most influential khaps (an age-old clan-based administration system) has taken a progressive stand and decided to do away with this symbol of women’s oppression. The March 2017 issue of Krishi Samvad, a supplement of the government’s monthly Haryana Samvad magazine, had published a photograph of a veiled woman captioned ‘Ghoonghat ki aan-baan, mahra Haryana ki pehchan (the pride of the veil is the identity of my Haryana)’, triggering an outrage from social organisations and the opposition, which said it reflected the “regressive” mindset of the BJP government.

Discarding this misplaced sense of pride, the Malik Gathwala khap, on February 19 at an event in Gohana in Sonepat district — also known as Jatland — cast aside the ghoonghat and decided to sensitise women to shun the age-old practice. This watershed decision for the empowerment of women in the state was taken as part of a six-point resolution, which included bans on female foeticide, celebratory firing in marriages, marriages during daytime, dowry etc.

The gravity of the resolution can be gauged by the fact that it was passed on the birth anniversary celebrations of Malik Gathwala Khap’s ancestral leader Dada Ghasi Ram Malik, and in the presence of dignitaries like Bihar governor Satyapal Singh Malik, Union steel minister Birender Singh and Haryana agriculture minister Om Prakash Dhankar.

Chief of the khap and grandson of Dada Ghasi Ram Malik, Baljeet Singh Malik, said the decision was long overdue on their part to sync their society with the modern world, which accords women an equal status to men. “The society that resists change gets lost in the past, however strong or large it may be. Our girls are becoming IAS / IPS officers, doctors, engineers, bagging medals in the Olympics. Would this have been possible if they had remained under the veil?” asked Malik (66).

He added that committees have been formed to hold meetings with cluster khaps and impress upon them the importance of this decision. “If people are okay with daughters not wearing veils in their paternal houses, then they shouldn’t have a problem with daughters-in-law not wearing veils either,” he said.

Santosh Dahiya, women’s wing president of Sarv Jatiye Sarv Khap Mahapanchayat said that the ghoonghat was not traditionally part of Haryana’s culture. “The practice was started here only after foreign invasions to protect women from the invaders. Like in the south, there was no purdah system here,” she said.

Haryana girl Geeta Phogat, who won India’s first-ever gold medal in the Commonwealth Games (2010), and on whom Aamir Khan’s Dangal was filmed, is happy that the winds of change have started blowing in her home state. “I come from a nondescript village in Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri district where the women, most of whom help the male members of their families in agricultural fields, have to sport a veil round the clock. Their life is already tough and the veil makes it worse,” said Phogat, the brand ambassador of the government’s Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao campaign. Phogat said it would be an honour for her to support the Malik Gathwala khap in motivating women to shun the old-age practice without any fear and contribute to the nation’s progress.

Sunil Jaglan, the initiator of the Selfie With Daughter campaign, welcomed the landmark decision. Jaglan, who also runs the Lado Swabhiman Utsav campaign, said the ghoonghat would have been ditched centuries ago had it been forced on men, but it’s women who have been bearing its burden.

Lauding the initiative, Poonam Boora, president of the Boora khap, said the Malik Gathwala khap should be congratulated for breaking the shackles put on women ages ago. “My father-in-law Chaudhary Om Prakash Boora discarded the veil for his five daughters-in-law at a time when Haryana was not even formed as a separate state.He encouraged us so much that all of five of us did our high studies and became successful in our own fields,” said Poonam, who is PhD in Hindi. She said that at a Boora khap meeting scheduled for March 5, she would put forth a proposal to take up the matter in their khap as well and liberate women formally from the ghoonghat.

However, observers like Jagmati Sangwan, former general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, are of the opinion that the Malik Gathwala khap’s decision was a result of the Supreme Court (SC) ruling on January 17 that it was illegal for parents or khap panchayats to interfere in the decisions of adult men and women of different castes to marry. The SC was hearing a 2010 petition by NGO Shakti Vahini against khap panchayats seeking directions to the Centre and state governments for preventing honour crimes.

Saying that this was not the case and that the Malik Gathwala khap was different from other khaps, Malik said that in 2013, it had taken yet another progressive stand by relaxing a marriage norm related to the gotra (the equivalent to clan, gotra broadly refers to people who are descendants in an unbroken male lineage from a common male ancestor). “Jats don’t marry in their grandmothers’ gotras. Since the people of Malik gotra were facing problems in finding good matches for their sons/daughters in other gotras, we held a meeting and decided to relax that norm,” said Malik, who unsuccessfully contested assembly election in 2014.

Either way, there couldn’t be a more welcome news for the women of Haryana.

Photos: Under the Lado Swabhiman Utsav campaign run by initiator of Selfie With Daughter Sunil Jaglan, women folk shunning their veil from stage in front of village elders at Bibipur village of Haryana's Jind district.

-Women in Haryana learning computers shunning veil at a Haryana village.

- A woman panch of a Haryana village under veil. All Photos by Sat Singh/101Reporters.