Authors:

Tejaswini Lebaka

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About Paper:

Honor-based violence exists in the unacknowledged intersection between a nation's promise of safety and society's retaliation against dishonorable acts. One of the biggest reasons this phenomenon is so challenging to change is that enforcing the law and protecting individuals from HBV are, more often than not, personal and local issues. Police often view and treat threats as "family disputes" and don't register cases or take signs of threats seriously. Community members pressure victims into retracting complaints or not registering 'one to begin with. Local officials often call for compromise and to let things go. Courts publicly condemn honor-based violence, but the everyday system leans towards reconciliation in practice. This results in a clear legal framework for addressing HBV cases, but an ambiguous operational reality at the local level. This results in various questions: if honor-based violence is so violent, why isn't it effectively addressed by the legal systems? The simple answer is that it isn't due to a lack of enforcement; a more acute explanation is that it's due to "weak enforcement." The deeper, often-overlooked issue is that legal condemnation can coexist with social acceptance; it allows institutions to enforce compliance without challenging the social systems that produce violence. This thesis focuses on examining India, starting from 2006 to the present, as the primary case study because it highlights significant contradictions; while the country has strong constitutional rights, assertive statements from the nation's highest courts, and visible attention to policy issues, there are persisting patterns of coercion and violence regarding "honor", primarily regarding the right to marriage choices. It is an argument that the law can be absorbed and ultimately be rendered symbolic when it isn't properly embedded, especially if the systems meant to enforce it are also embedded into the same honor systems they are intended to oppose. [1-3]

Source:

University of Illinois Chicago

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Co-authors:

Tejaswini Lebaka