Can we understand men and their masculinity without comprehending honour?

On the 28^th of May the Prime Minister inaugurated the new Parliament House in India to both accolades and criticisms. But the news of the wrestlers’ protests also dominated the media. For a month the elite wrestlers of the country had been demanding in vain action against the chief of the wrestling federation for several acts of sexual harassment including against minors. Even though there are strict laws against such acts, the authorities have been loath to act, as the person concerned is a senior ruling party legislator and seems to enjoy social and political immunity. This is nothing new in a deeply entrenched patriarchy like ours. Complaints of sexual harassment especially of child sex abuse are routinely shushed up by the family, to protect their own family honour, and the victim is often accused of making it all up or misinterpreting an ‘innocent’ gesture of affection. Many times, she is made to feel guilty for providing some form of ‘temptation’. In this case too, the situation has proceeded according to the script, and the accused has even called for review of the concerned laws because they are open to abuse.

Men Patriarchy and Honour

What is interesting in this case is that the Khap Panchayats, a traditional patriarchal body in several states of North India have intervened in favour of the women wrestlers. Khap panchayats are often in the news for their statements relating to the control of women. They have in the past given diktats against women’s use of mobile phones, justified early marriage, prohibited women from wearing jeans, warned against love marriage and so on. Here their role appears reversed. It may seem a political opposition to the ruling party and not a change of heart, but that is an easy explanation. True, the first set of khap panchayat leaders are from the opposition, but their concern for justice for the women wrestlers is rooted in the sense of honour, their masculinity and is deeply patriarchal.

Two decades ago, when I was learning about the nature and manifestations of the deeply entrenched violence against women, we had visited Bundelkhand, a region in central India. Here I had met with a weeping father, who was upset because his daughter had been forced to take her life for his inability to meet the ‘dowry’ demands of her in-laws. With tears streaming down both eyes he told me his plan for revenge. Around the same time, we came across a story from near Gorakhpur, where a man on coming to know that his daughter had eloped with a man from another caste, had not only killed his daughter and son in law, but his wife and other children, and then committed suicide. The journalist enquiring the case had informed us that man was reported to be very sad before he went on his homicidal spree.

The term ‘crimes of honour’ was becoming popular around the same time. This label was being applied to situations where fathers or brothers would often kill and maim their own daughters and sisters when these women ‘dared’ to love someone who the family didn’t approve, and often from a different race, caste, or religion. In some cases, honour was also implied in cases of ‘acid throwing’ where young men would throw sulphuric acid across the face of women, who again ‘dared’ to refuse their plea for love and marriage. Honour, it appeared to me, was deeply connected with gender and patriarchy and with the control of women’s sexuality, reproduction, and continuity of the family line. It also seemed to be common across the many countries that made up South Asia. Early marriage, often seen as a result of backbreaking poverty, was also due to anxiety around the girl’s growing sexuality and familial honour. Marriages arranged strictly according to caste lines were also a manifestation of the same concern.

Over time I have realised that honour is not just another manifestation of patriarchy but is intrinsically related to how men perceive themselves. It is part of their identity and masculinity and has many dimensions. And it is not limited to men from South Asia. There is literature around honour from Europe, Latin America, Australia, and it is not necessarily related to violence against women. Men, especially those who have an alternate sexual orientation, are forced into marriage for honour. Dueling was a practice between ‘men of honour’ in Europe, where they challenged one another to a fight with sword or pistol, when such men felt that their honour had been slighted. To understand the different ways that honour can be slighted, it is probably necessary to understand how honour is constructed. Over the years there has been an increasing understanding of how men and masculinities around the issue of violence against women and girls. However with widespread misogyny, social polarisation and violence between communities, it is important now to understand ‘honour’ and its overall role in the construction of masculinities.

Intersecting hierarchies and honour

The term intersectionality is now used to understand how race and class create differing layers of discrimination among women. In our work with men on gender equality we have found this approach very useful in understanding the privileges and subordinations men experience due to their class and caste positions in society. It has underpinned our work on rights, equality, and justice. As I observe how men think, feel, and respond, I realised that men’s sense of who they are and their sense of right and wrong, appropriate, and inappropriate is influenced by a range of influences. While these certainly include class, caste and gender, they also include religion, ethnic background, place of origin and history, linguistic affiliations; the list can go on. And these influences determine how a person feels about himself and relates to others.

The term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is used to describe a phenomenon where men always aspire to be in positions of control and domination, even when they are subordinate. Honour in my understanding is also tied to it. Honour adds  a sense of ‘justice’, giving it a strong moral justification. ‘Dishonour’ or the loss of honour creates a deep sense of injustice and thus creates a need that it has to be ‘redressed’ or even ‘avenged’.

Across the world and certainly in India there is a huge underswell for rearticulating the meaning of ‘justice’. Justice at a philosophical level is a balance between the freedoms and obligations of an individual in a society. There are differences in opinion on  how this balance is defined and how it is achieved. Dominant social ideologies help shape this balance. Within patriarchal systems the pre-eminence of men is a given, within the caste-system the caste order is given, and these are justified through agencies like scriptures or even precedent. Religion or was used for a long time to justify a ‘morality’ for racism in Europe and the US. The ‘Übermensch’ or overman (or superman) of German philosopher Nietzsche provided a moral justification for the Nazis of Germany. Today these seem ridiculous or even perverted but they continue to have a very powerful control over a large section of people’s imaginations. When the perceived balance between ‘should be’ and what ‘is’ changes, ‘honour’ is at stake and all forms of retribution become justified. This retribution can manifest in the rape of women and equally in the lynching of men or of genocide.

The idea of equality and human rights for all are relatively new ideas in the history of humankind and were accepted less than a century ago. In the last 75 years, i.e., since the acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the international level and the Constitution in India, there has been a sea change in the way society is imagined. Untouchability has been outlawed in India, gender equality is coded into law and policy as well as everyday practice. People’s lives and the relationship between people have changed. Many have benefited in terms of their material circumstances, societal perceptions as well as self-concept. But many have also lost their privileged position in society. Privileges that had accrued from their gender, class, caste, ethnicity, place of residence and so on.

Reconciling equity with loss of honour

More men have lost more. And this loss is not easily accepted as being ‘just’ since no loss ever is. One way of recouping the ‘gender equity’ related losses, at least in India has been to frame gender equity as a ‘western’ or alien concept and feminists as being anti-men. Indian traditions have always ‘valued’ women such ‘losers’ argue. Caste hierarchies are often denied by the urban middle class Indian claiming that ‘we never discriminate’, or ‘it’s a rural phenomenon’. However, if you see any gathering of such urban upper castes the erstwhile elites, you will rarely see a Dalit, and if there is one, he will rarely make a contrary noise. Instead, he may often join in with affirmative nods in the now fashionable discussions around how caste-based reservation, or affirmative action kills merit, even though personally having benefited from it. New elites from erstwhile depressed social groups now wear their newfound status as their source of honour, because being from depressed groups is rarely honourable.    

For those men who have lost their honour, through loss of class, caste or gender privileges, there is now no honour to claim, so the sense of injustice rankles. There is then a search for a new axis of honour which can be morally justified and claimed without threat. This is where in India the conflation of religious identity with national identity is useful for a vast majority of such men. Religion was at the heart of the partition of British India into the secular India and religious Pakistan. Even though there have been religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims on a more or less regular basis it was rarely justified as being morally or even legally ‘right’. There are several studies on the religious profiles of those arrested and how the police took sides, but it was much later that state powers morally and legally justified such inter-religious (called communal in India) violence. The violence against Muslims is now seen as just retribution, a reclaiming of honour, not only from an interloper community, but from a community that actively undermined the ‘grand Hindu’ traditions of India through few centuries of Muslim rule. For many of those who have lost three of their earlier badges of honour, religion is the new badge they proudly wear and it also gives them a bonus honour of being patriots.

The support that the Khaps have started providing the struggle of the women wrestlers provides an interesting disruption of the religious badge of honour that has carefully crafted by the politics of religious polarisation between Hindus and Muslims. In this case both the parties involved, the Hindu majoritarian political party that continues to provide immunity to the accused and the Khaps, both wear their Hindu religious badge with pride. One has been a complement to the other, in most cases. The one big exception was the farmers’ protest that went on for nearly a year and was called off only when this same government recanted. This is a second disruption, and that too within the space of eighteen months. We do not know yet whether this will be a disruption of the same magnitude. But no matter what happens, till the millions of young men in our country regain some new form of social and economic security, and feel comfortable within a framework of equity, they will keep looking for illusory sources of ‘honour’ to recoup for what they feel they have lost with the new and modern conceptions of equity and justice.