It is as much wrong to outrightly reject the demand of certain caste leaders to enact a law to ban the within gotra marriage is wrong is to condone the ‘honour' killings. It is time the social and political leaders put their head together to find a common ground to find a solution to the issue that has given rise to widespread strife and violence.

Man, it is rightly said, is an animal, but social one. In pre-civilisation stage, there hardly existed any difference between man and animal. Our anthropologists say chimpanzee is the ancestor of the present mankind, though some religions differ on this thesis. Man could, then, fail to distinguish between his mother and wife. In fact, there was nothing like a wife or a mother or a parent. Everyone was then just a man or a woman and any relation between the two was just sexual, what we call, the animal instinct, nothing else. In fact, a person then had a right for a night's stand with full right and freedom to free sex which many cherish even today.

Evolution of society

In the course of time, the human beings evolved themselves into a family and civilisation advanced. Man's faculties to think developed and paved the way for the institution of marriage and family which recognised someone as wife and husband and their children. Sexual relations beyond marriage gradually were forbidden. The institution of family paved the way for the evolution of the institution of society which framed its own rules, ethics, morals and traditions. The collective will of the society became the law for its members, a law anybody could dare of violate only at the risk of drawing wrath of other members of the society. There was no government or administration in the form we have today. The writ of the society, the village and society elders reigned supreme. In the course of time, the institution of rajas, maharajas and kings developed. What they decried became the law for the society, yet the latter continued to honour the collective wisdom of society elders. Except in very rare instances, the rulers did not interfere with the tenets of the society.

As religions evolved and developed, the teachings and preachings of the faiths one subscribed also started having the upper hand, in some cases, even over-ruling the social dictates. Yet, both the society and the religious believers adopted themselves to respect each other's feelings and the social order remained in tact. 

Caste system

The institution of family has also been responsible for the evolution of the caste system in the country. That it is in our blood and veins is a fact of social and cultural history. We may pose to be liberal in our thought, yet when it comes to striking marriage, our first priority is our own caste. Even those who converted themselves to other religions, many still continue to flaunt their Hindu surnames -- Pandits, Thakurs, Sonis, Rathores, Reddys and the like --  among our Christian and Muslim brothers.