New Delhi: The high-flying Congress MP from Kurukshetra, Naveen Jindal, has shown his support for the infamous khap panchayats - the caste councils who oppose same gotra or sub-caste marriages and have often given barbaric orders against couples who have defied them.
Texas University educated Jindal has written a letter to the khaps saying he is going to take their message to the Centre. The khap panchayats demand that the Hindu Marriage Act be amended to ban same gotra marriages.
"I just feel, because they are part of my parliamentary constituency, I have told them, they wanted to come and meet me and they wanted me to take the views to the government, to which I said 'yes, I am duty bound so I would listen to you and I would take your views to the government' Jindal said.
But support for these panchayats goes beyond party lines in a state where khaps enjoy a hold over the sizeable jat community.
"It was INLD who first supported non inter sub-caste marriage as it has been scientifically proven not right," Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Om Prakash Chautala said.
Political rivals may be on his side on this issue, but Jindal's move has clearly not gone down well with activists.
"It's most unfortunate that a young politician who's well-educated, who's a new age politician, who's expected to lead social change, who's supposed to be the young brigade of the Congress, is coming forward and supporting a tradition which is pushing the society back. He's doing this precisely to get the Jat vote in Haryana and it's just this one Parliament seat in his mind," said Ranjana Kumari, from Centre for Social Research.
The diktats of the Kangaroo courts of Haryana, known as khap panchayats, have been grabbing headlines and sparking outrage across the country, especially in recent weeks. And with cases of cold-blooded murder carried out in the name of honour killings continuing unabated, it's perhaps time for the political leadership to categorically state just where they stand on the issue and what is being done to rein in these extra-constitutional bodies.