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Same-gotra marriage: Khap meet a no-show by Mandakini Gahlot


A large white tent in the middle of an arid ground in Jind served as the venue for a Sarv Maha Khap Panchayat meeting on Sunday. Organisers who were expecting “thousands of supporters” to join their ranks to announce “threats” aimed at everyone from the government to young couples who choose to marry within the same gotra (sub-caste) were in for a disappointment. By 12 noon, two hours after the meeting was to have begun, barely 150 senior citizens had showed up. Ironically, most of the fiery speeches made during the day were targeted at the ‘youth’ who were conspicuous by their absence.

The Sarv Maha Khap, a gathering of khap leaders and representatives from across Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, is a centuries-old tradition that calls on the ‘elders’ of the Jat community to unite in order to take socially crucial decisions. Yet, from the speeches made on Sunday, it is clear that the khap is now fighting for its own existence. “At the meeting in Kurukshetra in April, at least 1,000 people were present. Increasingly, people are beginning to lose interest in these meetings because each one ends without any substantial decision. The young people are completely disinterested in these matters. What can we do?” a septuagenarian khap member, Ram Pal Singh, from Hansi village, said.

At Sunday’s meeting, the khap members were hoping to reach a decision on how best to persuade the government into bringing about an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, that will ban marriages within the same gotra. Instead all of Sunday afternoon was devoted to bickering, infighting, and petty power struggles amongst the khap elite. The meeting was boycotted by various factions of the Sarv Khap because they felt that organiser Satbir Chhahal was “too politically motivated”. One of the these anti-Chhahal factions will hold another meeting on Tuesday.

The meeting was attended by Mahendra Singh Tikait, the Bhartiya Kisan Union leader who is also the sarpanch of the Balian Khap. Earlier in the day, he had addressed a gathering at Sisauli at the BKU headquarters where he threatened to ‘gherao’ Parliament if the government did not bring about amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act. However, at the Jind meeting, Tikait appeared uncomfortable in his new role as the patriarch of khap panchayats. He refused to sit with the rest of the khap leadership on a makeshift podium, and chose to keep his speech rather dull. “If we want to win this fight, we will have to put up a united front. We have to organise ourselves under a united banner,” he told the crowd. Taking Tikait’s advice, the Jind faction has decided to send a delegation to the Tuesday’s meeting.

After going into an impromptu huddle with the khap leaders at the meeting, Chhahal finally announced the outcome of the meeting. “If the government does not comply with our demand by June 20, we will enforce a shutdown in Delhi,” he said.