PRAGOTI

A complex range of value systems took root among the emerging bourgeoisie as well as the middle classes of our country, ranging from conservative outlooks steeped in caste and community based thinking to more modern outlooks based in notions of secular law, scientific thinking, equality and rationality. This explains to an extent the phenomenon of honour killings in urban India.

Rani Rohini Raman, a JNU researcher working on honour killings, writes on the significance of a recent verdict of a Haryana district court, awarding death sentence to those guilty of killing a young couple - Manoj and Babli.

Moneylenders and sexual harassers in Namakkal district run into spirited opposition from a communist activist. Their response - brutal murder. An article on martyr Veluchamy who was killed for taking up cudgels for women harassed by lumpen money lenders in Tamil Nadu. 

The feudal mentalité already predisposes people to view all those who are non-elite, non-male in sub-human categories since this mentalité is based on inequity, dependence and filial piety. When the market economies’ need to accumulate capital is interwoven with this mentalité, it turns all those who are categorised non-elite, non-male as mere instruments of capital accumulation. It converts them into veritable “animals with tongue” (the famous Aristotelian categorisation of farm animals as “animals without tongue” for cattle and horses and “animals with tongue” for human slaves) for the feudal-in-mentalité-but-capitalist-in-currency man.