Of White and Black by Anoushka Singh

Of White and Black

By Anouksha Singh | Graphics by Rosann Anthony CW: descriptions of violence and killing forced to watch her husband die mercilessly at the

This week, I woke up to a different trend on social media. My Instagram feed was filled with my girlfriends posting monochrome photos of themselves. Some looked natural, others like supermodels. Meh.

I didn’t think too much of it until my roomie-slash-bestie informed me that it was to raise awareness about the protagonists are pushed down the balcony of their

Turkish ‘honour killings’ against women. That hit home. I’ve lived in Delhi, India for the better part of my life. When you stay in North India, the phrase ‘honour killing’ is thrown around every once in a while. Or a month.

In India, there’s a caste system in place. Marrying outside your region or caste isn’t just frowned upon – it’s downright forbidden. You can’t do it unless you have a death wish. It’s like Romeo and Juliet, or in our case, Laila and Majnu. Yet there are dozens of couples out there who do get married by eloping, and then are subsequently hunted down by those they’ve ‘shamed’ her boyfriend snapped the picture. Then I thought

(a.k.a. their family). It’s a concept practiced more in the rural areas, but I wouldn’t put it past certain traditionalists living in the city.

There are various NGO’s in India that work towards helping the victims of such ‘hate and honour crimes’. One named Evidence released a report stating that over 190 known killings had taken place in the last five years with these numbers is that India’s National Bureau of Crime doesn’t accurately represent the figures on such crimes. The reason: they’re often committed by local village councilmen.

When we talk about the missing women in Turkey, we have proof of their disappearances or murders. We have the photos to serve as proof that these women died of violence, of abuse; that they were subjected to feticide. The victims of ‘honour killings’ in India do not get that privilege. But it’s not the journalists; rather, it’s the local government hiding the truth. In most cases, it’s the women who bear the brunt of daring to fall in love. Being lit on fire, murdered by hitmen; even by their own brothers and fathers. In some cases, it’s both: the husband and the wife. In the worst cases, it’s like a torture scene in a movie, where the wife is hands of her family.

There was a Bollywood movie named Dhadak (2018) that represented these themes well. I remember the ending well – it was of impending doom as the hero and the love child of the main house by the heroine’s brother. It’s shocking, graphic and when the screen pans out to show the lifeless bodies of the female lead’s family, it reproduced the terror and fear that countless women face in reality. It was talked about for a while before the public moved on to the next online trend.

When I saw my friend from high school post a monochrome picture of herself laughing, I smiled. I smiled because I saw the caption which stated that in the southern state of Tamil Nadu alone. But the issue

about how happy and lucky she was to be in love. Not everyone got that chance. The women and men in India who dared to love are a testimony of that fact.

Of course, there are progressives out there. But we’re still far from reaching the point of total acceptance, where we can make the decision to fall in love for ourselves. I’ve always idolised my parents: they were rebels of the 90’s. They came from different cultural backgrounds; my mum was a fearless woman from Mumbai whose parents hailed from the northern state of Punjab, while dada came from the eastern state of Bihar and pursued his love for hockey full-time. They defied the whole caste-region dynamic. I can only hope that every person in India can one day hope to do the same.