Ban on women using mobiles backed up by threat of death

SINGLE women have been banned from using mobile phones in a northern Indian village for fear they will arrange forbidden marriages, which are often punished by death.

• More Indian women have access to mobiles, putting them beyond clan control Picture: Getty

The Lank village council decided unmarried boys could use mobiles, but only under parental supervision, council member Satish Tyagi said. Women's rights groups criticised the ban as out-moded and discriminatory.

Marriages between members of the same clan are forbidden under Hindu custom in some parts of northern India, where such unions are traditionally arranged by families. In conservative rural areas, families sometimes deal out extreme punishments, including so-called honour killings, for those who violate marriage taboos. In some cases, village councils have ordered the penalties, though police often try to stop them.

The Lank village council feared young men and women were secretly calling one another to arrange elopements.

Last month, 34 couples eloped in Muzaffarnagar district, where Lank is located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, police said. Among the couples who eloped, eight honour killings have been reported in the past month, police said.

"Three girls were beheaded by the male members of their family after they eloped" with boys from their same clan, said police assistant director general Brij Lal in the state capital of Lucknow.

Rulings by village councils - called panchayats and comprising village elders selected by the community - are not legally binding in India, but are seen as the will of the local community, and those who flout them risk being ostracised.

In Uttar Pradesh, panchayats are powerful and have declared that boys and girls of the same clan should be seen as siblings.

The mobile phone ban for unmarried women is part of a wider, regional effort to curb intra-clan marriage among the three million population of western Uttar Pradesh, Mr Tyagi said. The Lank council ruling, which applies to about 50,000 people, is being considered by councils in the nearby villages.

The conflict is relatively new for the Indian region, where most marriages are still arranged by parents, sometimes without the couple meeting before the wedding.

But young people are mingling more, with more women in schools and offices and greater access to the internet.

Mobile phones have become so common and affordable that even slum dwellers, day labourers and children have them. The local women's rights group Disha said banning mobile phone use for women demonstrated an archaic mindset.

"These help in easy communication, which helps these youth to get jobs. One can't discriminate use of these contraptions on the basis of sex," Disha president KN Tiwari said.