One can hardly miss an invite for afternoon tea at the Bharatiyam, a swank restaurant at New Delhi's Constitution Club, with a man whose beliefs put tradition over the Constitution. 'I will be the only one in the room in a white turban – you will have no problem recognising me,' the voice on the phone chuckled beforehand. Sure enough, in his 60s and over six feet tall, Chaudhary Ramkaran Solanki stands out against the office-goers at the restaurant, dressed in the traditional garb of the Jat – a spotless white shirt, turban, dhoti, with a matching white moustache (see pic). I was curious to meet Solanki, the head of a body of khap panchayats (caste councils) whose coverage extends to 360 villages in and around Delhi. The khaps are social institutions that date back centuries but lack sanction under Indian law. This year, however, khaps have been increasingly in the news due to their tacit support for the recent spate of killings, in the name of 'honour', across several states in North India – as well as the realisation of their influence over local-level politics.
Khaps might strike many as anachronistic, defying reason in the eyes of the liberal, urban observer in India and elsewhere. But there is little that is particularly eccentric about Solanki. He wields the latest cell-phone model and is clearly media-savvy – hence our meeting in the heart of Lutyens's Delhi. Khaps are battling forces 'bent on undermining ancient practices', Solanki stresses, and over the course of our conversation he is willing to give little ground. I try to steer the conversation towards the recent 'honour killings' – brutal murders of young men and women who wanted to marry for love, defying community norms – and the widely held view that village elders, who make up the khap panchayats, support such crimes. Solanki makes it clear that he does not want to comment on the honour killings. But he would like a government crackdown on couples who dare to engage in same-gotra (clan) marriage.
In July, Solanki says, he organised a meeting of community elders from villages in and around Delhi to deliberate the issue. At the end, they gave an ultimatum to both the central government and the state government of Haryana: amend the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 to ban marriages within the same gotra and within the same village, in deference to local custom. In November, there will be another meeting to take a final decision on the issue, he says. Yet the focus on 'same-gotra marriage' seems a shrewd attempt to deflect attention from the broader issue of marriages of choice, of which same gotra-marriages are a subset.
When pushed to speak his mind on the honour killings, Solanki gets testy. 'Why should I talk about it?' he asks, his voice rising. 'No such case has been referred to us. All the noise about honour killing is being made by NGOs and the media. Khaps have nothing to do with any killing – these are individual matters of families, and the vast majority of young people listen to us. Ninety-nine percent of people in India have arranged marriages: they respect tradition.'