---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Venugopalan K M <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:39 PM Subject: (Fwd) The Price Of Love By Bobby Kunhu To:
http://www.countercurrents.org/kunhu290310.htm#HCB_comment_box "Sushma was the younger sister of this accused. It is a common experience that when the younger sister commits something unusual and in this case it was an intercaste, intercommunity marriage out of the secret love affair, then in the society it is the elder brother who justifiably or otherwise is held responsible for not stopping such affair. It is held as the family defeat. At times, he has to suffer taunts and snide remarks even from the persons who really have no business to poke their nose into the affairs of the family. Dilip, therefore, must have been a prey of the so-called insult which his younger sister had imposed upon his family and that must have been in his mind for seven long months. It has come in the evidence that even if the marriage was performed with Prabhu, there were efforts made by the family members of Dilip to bring Sushma back. It has come in evidence that mother of Dilip tried to lure back Sushma and so did her other married sister Kalpana who actually went on to meet Sushma in her college. Those efforts paid no dividends. In stead, Sushma kept on attending the college thereby openly mixing with the society. This must have added insult to the injury felt by the family members and more particularly, accused Dilip. Why did he wait for seven months? The answer lies in the fact that Sushma became pregnant and thus reached a point of no return. Till such time as she became pregnant, there might have been some hopes in the family to win her back but once she became pregnant, even that distant hope faded away and, in our opinion, that is the reason why this ghastly episode took place. As if all this was not sufficient, Dilip himself must have had the feeling of being cheated. It is not that Dilip did not know Prabhu who was living only three houses away from his house. The secret love affair which went on between Sushma and Prabhu for which Abhayraj acted as a messenger must have raised the feeling of being cheated by Prabhu. This was further aggravated because of the so-called higher status of a Brahmin family on the part of Dilip and so- called non-Brahmin status of Prabhu. It has come on record that Sushma was moved to Andheri at the house of Shashidharan and this ought to have added as a spark which resulted in tornado. Dilip undoubtedly was a young person not even having crossed his 25 years of life and not having any criminal antecedent. If he became the victim of his wrong but genuine caste considerations, it would not justify the death sentence. The murders were the outcome of social issue like a marriage with a person of so-called lower caste. However, a time has come when we have to consider these social issues as relevant, while considering the death sentence in the circumstances as these. The caste is a concept which grips a person before his birth and does not leave him even after his death. The vicious grip of the caste, community, religion, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality. The psyche of the offender in the background of a social issue like an inter-caste-community marriage, though wholly unjustified would have to be considered in the peculiar circumstances of this case. " This convoluted reasoning on one hand upholds the sanctity of death penalty as the highest form of punishment and then goes on to assert that the above crime is not heinous enough to attract the highest punishment. It reduces the culpability of the offenders on the ground that caste and gender considerations can mitigate the intensity of the crime. I thought the highest court of the land would argue otherwise - that the casteist and patriarchal motives that spurred the crime would aggravate the intensity of the crime. You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
