"If an untouchable marries a non-Dalit girl, then he must be put to death. If untouchable commits adultery with a Hindu woman, then he is to be burned alive" (Matsya Purana, 227.131; Vaishtha Grhyasutras and Dharmasutras, 21.1-3; Manu 8.374).

O Hindu,

In the bright day of India,
In a Hyderabad central university
That calls itself
A temple of learning,
Her Kapu/Reddy parents finally abducted her,
Tore our future
From her womb,
And killed my child
In 2010:
Because she chose
To hold my hand,
Because we dared
To dream
In the same
Future tense.

Just as Miryalaguda
Pranay Kumar,
He didn't touch your god;
He only touched
Your girl's hand.
Pranay Kumar, a Dalit boy,
Amrutha, a non-Dalit-caste girl,
Two hearts daring
To conjugate love
In the same future tense.
For that
You dragged him
From the road
From his Dalit mother and Vaishya wife
The whole city was watching
While you beheaded him
Just as Nagaraj was
Beheaded by Muslims
For marrying
Their daughter
In Hyderabad.
The whole city watching,
Their own fear reenacted
As righteousness.

You call it honour.
Look closely:
It is just caste,
Stripped down to its blade.

You broke my teeth
For speaking equality.
You tied my wrists
For crossing your road
Toward her house.
Burned my body
By the Parliament in daylight,
So the sun would have to witness.

In the morning,
The papers said,
"Dalit love affair turns tragic,"
Or "clash between lower and upper castes."
The word "Dalit"
Was public
To teach a lesson,
Behind the word "inter-caste tensions,"
Behind the phrase "sensitive case."

No.
Call it by its name:
Genocide,
Dalit Genocide.

Her Hindu/Muslim father washed his knife
In the language of purity.
Said,
"My daughter was misled.
Our lineage was threatened.
Our family was laughing.
Our relatives are laughing.
Our caste is laughing.
The village was laughing.
The city was laughing.
The Parliament was laughing."
"Better a dead child
Than a Dalit son-in-law."

Her mother tore her own hair
Instead of tearing
That lie in half.
Centuries of Sanatan-Sharia training
Whispered in her ear:
Obey the religion,
Obey the caste,
Obey the god,
Obey the Allah,
Obey the purity,
Obey the Hindu,
Obey the Muslim,
Obey the men,
Who looks nothing
Like the beheaded Dalit boy
On the ground.

You say the killing
Brings back honour,
Restores the Hindu order.
Saves Sanatan-Sharia face.

Whose face is saved
When you stomp
On Dalits?

What kind of honour
Must be fed
On young hearts
To stay alive?

In the caste panchayat,
You talk of tradition.
You talk of custom.
You talk of how
"Such things never happened
In our grandfathers' time."

But we know that time:
Dalit men were hanged
For looking too handsome,
For looking too long,
For looking too white,
Dalit women stripped
For standing too straight,
Dalit couples buried in fields
Bodies sunk in wells,
Generations taught
That love itself
Is pollution
If it crosses
The visible caste fence.

Total dehumanisation
Is not only in the killing.

It is in the way
The dead Dalit
Becomes a lesson:
"See what happens
When you forget your place."
It is in the way
The Dalit girl's name
Is erased from the family,
Her clothes burned,
Her photos torn,
Her memory
Recast
As sin
Instead of courage.

It is in the police file
Where his life
Is reduced
To a few lines of ink,
Where the officer sighs,
"Inter-caste matter,"
And suggests a "compromise"
With the same mouth
That blessed the murder.

It is in every whisper
That calls their love
An insult,
Their touch
A crime against birth,
Their desire
A stain on the
Hindu/Muslim
Their future
A curse to the
Hindu/Islamic soil.

Honour, you say,
As they bury him
In an unmarked patch of dirt,
Refusing even a stone
To carry his name.

Honour, you say,
As you lock her indoors
Until her eyes forget
How light feels.

Honour, you say,
As you celebrate
Another border defended,
Another caste wall rebuilt
With my Dalit bones.

But there is another story
Running underneath:

In the untouchable ghetto untouched
By respectability,
A Dalit mother
Holds the framed photo
Of a son who wanted
To be more than
Cheap labour and fear.
She presses her forehead
To the glass and whispers:
"Your love was not the crime.
Their Hindu/Islamic
Honour was the weapon.
Their honour
killed you."

In some cramped room,
Another Dalit girl
Reads about them in secret,
Feels a pulse of rage
In her throat:
If loving is dishonour,
Then let us dishonour
Every rotten Hindu/Islamic law
Written in the name
Of Hindu/Islamic god and blood.

You tried to make
An example of me:
This is what happens
When Dalits forget
Their status.

But examples
Can cut both ways.
His death becomes a question,
Etched into the Hindu/Islamic skin:

What kind of nation
Protects a caste's pride
Before a child's heartbeat?
What kind of god
Accepts prayers
From hands still wet
With the blood
Of a Dalit boy who only asked
To be human,
To be equal,
To be loved,
To be seen,
To be called
Someone's own?

Total Dehumanisation:
Is when an entire system
Decides that a Dalit life
Is worth less
Than a non-Dalit pride.

Honour killing
Two words twisted
Into a mask
To hide the oldest truth:
You are not defending honour.
You are defending
Your satanic Hindu Dharma
Your satanic Qur'anic verses,
A caste hierarchy,
That cannot survive
A simple act
A Dalit hand
Holding another
Without your permission.

Remember him.
Remember her.
Remember all the names
We never learned,
Because their stories
Were strangled at the source.

Write them on walls,
In court petitions,
In poems and protests,
In vows whispered
Over classrooms:

No more honour
Built from our dead.
No more pride
Over our extinguished futures.

We will love
Across every line
You draw in our blood.
We will live
Where you said
We do not belong.
We will marry
Without your blessing,
Without your approval,
Without your mythology
Of pure and impure blood.

And one day,
When your children ask
What honour means,
You will point
To my Dalit grave.
You will point
To a world
Where no Dalit heart
Is ever again made to pay
For loving like everyone else.