As the previous episode on Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayathe chose to present only selected facts and bordered on being judgmental with its weight against doctors, I was disappointed for the first time with the show. Adding to that, Aamir played a bad anchor, often cutting into the speaker’s words or even trying to put some of his own into their mouths. But the episode on 3 June 2012 against honor killings was certainly a better one, despite Aamir being still the bad anchor that he has been the earlier episode. He even went a step ahead this time and edited what the Khap Panchayat elders had to say in retort or in defense to his comments. Agreed that they were dogmatic and insensible with their views, but when they were invited on the show, the audiences want to know what they have to say on the allegations. Also, it does not need a master mind to notice that the research has also been going down compared to the first two episodes. May be they started saving their energies for the climactic episodes. Sigh!

But, the issue discussed during the show was certainly deeper than the inadequacies of the show. A staggering statistic revealed on the show was that in Punjab there are 25 couples who apply for protection daily against any offenses they are vulnerable to. The fact that a couple feels a need for security for loving each other is a thought that shudders me and to think that there are scores of them can only mean that there is something totally wrong with how these matters are conducted at domestic level. I can understand parents holding a slight grudge on their children for going against their wishes, but as long as it is all within their family it should be fine as we learnt from Alka and Uday on the show. However, the intervention of a non-judicial system resulting in passing Fatwas against them in the name of upholding some age old traditions and false self-esteem, even without a right to do so, is downright condemnable. 

One of the elders of the Khap Panchayat on the show claimed that the illiterate and ignorant has only traditions and customs and not a constitution based on which he leads his life. While this has some truth in it, the problem with these traditions is that they are not transparent enough to the same illiterate. If someone says marriage within a Gotra is against the tradition, the efforts should be spent on explaining why it was so rather than enforcing it without a reason to give. Earlier, when the world was a smaller place, marrying within the same Gotra was considered equal to incest and hence it was unacceptable, but with the world being infinitely diverse than when this tradition was proposed this does not hold true any longer. In any case the most any Governance or Panchayat can do is to educate people of the demerits of this, just like the ‘Smoking Kills’ on cigarette packs and the decision to be left with the individual if he wants to do it despite knowing everything about it. 

Towards the end of the show, Sanjay Sachdev, the head of Love Commandoes brought along with him a statement claimed to be from Supreme Court that inter-caste marriages are the way ahead for the country and they can make us more diverse. While I have some reservations on this statement which in itself is debatable, he provided a bit of relief in the show. But the question to be asked remains “When two adults decide to marry and want to spend their lives together, does society or their families have the right to break the marriage or prevent it from happening through force? “. I think the answer should be No and let the couple face the consequences (Pun Intended)