Khap Support For Stalking Victim Varnika Kundu Is Insincere, Smacks Of Double Standards, Says AIDWA Head

Jagmati Sangwan, head of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) says in an interview with Pragya Singh that khap support for Varnika Kundu, the Chandigarh stalking victim, is insincere. In another outrageous case of harassment in Haryana, two sisters had taken on a Jat man on a public bus but the Jat caste councils slandered the victims, and they still await justice.

How do you look at the khap panchayat of the Kundu Jats, which recently spoke out in support of Varnika Kundu?

Khaps always try to find a foothold among the powerful. Varnika Kundu’s father is an IAS officer. Plus she is a Jat and is herself empowered. That is why, when the khap noticed wider support for her cause in Haryana society the khaps chimed in, hoping to get accolades. Two years ago, two sisters were sexually harassed while traveling in a bus in Rohtak. In that case, the khaps created an environment of hatred towards the girls.

How did they do that?

Initially, the khaps held functions to honour the sisters and wanted the government to reward them for bravery because they had stood up against harassment. But when it turned out that their aggressors were Jats and the girls belong to the backward class, the khaps switched sides. They withdrew support from the girls and joined the Jats in a smear campaign. They held meeting after meeting, declaring the girls serial offenders. Thousands of Jats attended these meetings to attack the girls in the most shameful way. They used all the strength of their caste against the girls.

What exactly did the Jats and khaps do, which denied those girls justice?

One of the worst things was to circulate fake videos in which the girls seemed to be thrashing other men, as if they habitually beat up men. That, principally, is how the khaps worked in an organized way to deny them justice. The girls were even assured of bravery awards on August 15 but later the promise was withdrawn. It was terrible because they were unable to fight back.

You say the videos which went viral had been faked?

What else? Of course, they were faked—the source of those videos should be brought in the open. The videos were used in a shameless campaign of victim-blaming. We should have an extensive probe to find their source.

But the Kundu case seems to have gone differently. The khaps supported Varnika. Why is this?

The difference is, for a girl from a poor and backward class family it is impossible to withstand the khap’s onslaught. However, even in the Chandigarh case, exactly the same strategy was used at first. The Chief Minister initially said that “if” some truth is found in Varnika’s allegations, the case will go ahead. Haryana BJP chief (Subhash) Barala said that “in a few days the truth will come out”as if there was some conspiracy against his son. Actually, in every such case, the strategy is the same. They question the girl’s ‘character’, giving the perpetrators an escape route.

Doesn’t this demonstrate khap hypocrisy? They relax rules of so-called tradition and moral values but not for everybody?

Absolutely—the khaps work with prevailing power relations in mind. Everybody in Haryana knows that powerful people and politician’s children are free to marry into any caste and even marry within villages, but they force the poor to listen to their diktats against precisely these things.

Yet, many khap diktats nobody seems to obey—like ‘bans’ preventing women from using mobile phones or wearing jeans?

Mobile phones, clothes, personal relations, have to do with women’s aspirations and desire for freedom. Khaps speak against these things to exert control over women, whenever they sense their control over women slipping. Today, things like cell phones are a means of upward mobility. Yet khaps create an atmosphere so that women are stopped from using these things. So it is not as if what the khap leaders say doesn’t have any effect.