Unelected Councils in India Run Villages With Stern Hand

“We do not know what the law is,” he said on a recent boiling afternoon. “We only know what is decided by the khap panchayat. Here it is not the Supreme Court that decides. It is the khap panchayat that decides.”

For generations, these unelected councils of male elders have dominated life in many villages, mostly across northern India, exerting social control through edicts that govern everything from marriage to property disputes. But the councils are coming under growing national scrutiny as their extrajudicial rulings — especially those blamed for the spread of so-called honor killings — are challenging the concept of the national rule of law.

In recent months, an assertive Supreme Court has issued opinions condemning the councils as illegal bodies, and the controversy is expected to spill into this summer’s “monsoon” session of Parliament. Legal advocates are pushing for a comprehensive law establishing criminal penalties to deter the khaps from issuing their edicts.

Meanwhile, khap leaders are unrepentant and pushing their own agenda in Parliament by demanding alterations to make Indian marriage laws reflect their conservative traditions.

“They are mobilizing for protests,” said Ranjana Kumari, a women’s rights advocate. “And they are capable of organizing a very huge protest.”

The legal battle is another example of the growing pains in Indian society as the rippling influences of modernity collide with ancient beliefs and practices. Khap panchayats often seem to be trying to stop the advance of the modern world: some khaps have ordered bans on women wearing tight clothing and have even tried to ban the use of mobile phones by people in college or younger, since the devices are tools that couples can use for furtive contact.

Khap leaders contend that their councils create social cohesion and order, while providing speedier justice, in the absence of effective local government. They justify their strict edicts on marriage as being rooted in religious belief and say that their practices have prevented inbreeding and other health issues — claims disputed by their critics as wrongheaded and outdated because village populations are far larger today.

Here in the state of Haryana, khap panchayats dominate many villages and exert heavy influence on the political system. Much of Haryana is populated by Jats, a north Indian caste divided into subgroups known as gotras.

Traditionally, villages are run by a particular gotra with its own khap panchayat, which adjudicates local disputes and upholds marriage customs, including the belief that men and women within the same gotra, and the same village, are considered brothers and sisters and are prohibited from marrying.

It is the khaps’ unyielding position on marriage, which they say derives from ancient Hindu texts, that has thrust them into the heart of a national controversy. Critics blame their edicts for directly or indirectly provoking honor killings of couples who marry within the same gotra or village. In other cases, social pressure has driven young women to commit suicide.

Khap panchayats often order residents of a village to boycott, whether socially or economically, families whose children defy the marriage custom. In some cases, khaps have even ordered that couples be killed, though more often the social pressure they create is the issue; many times, a killing is actually carried out by family members seeking to escape social shame and ostracism within their village.

At a time when a younger generation of women is becoming more independent, many critics believe that the khaps are desperate to maintain traditional controls over women and property, which is intertwined with marriage.

“It’s all about social control and control of the girl,” said Kirti Singh, a lawyer who argues cases before the Supreme Court.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.