You’re right. It’s shocking. I don’t think the parents were thinking at all, in this case. Had they been thinking a little bit logically, they wouldn’t have done anything like this.

I am sure in their mind the perceived value of ill-honor brought on by Angel was many times over than Angel herself. However, they failed to realize that the ill-honor brought by Angel’s actions gets combined with the ill-honor they bring on themselves by their act of killing. They didn’t realize that they can’t deal with ill-honor by committing an even bigger one.

About honor killing, i just expressed some understanding of mine, w.r.t to events that i witnessed personally.

The problem is that we never understood the issue fully.. Its not that the parents consider killing more of a honor.. Rather, they resort to this extreme ways, because they lost the honor.

Sukumar,
I do not support honor killings. I said, lack of trustable third person intervention, aggrevated the situation, both for the girl and her parents..

I will just quote with my personal example.. some 10 years back one of my relative got a fight with his wife and his wife went to her parent’s home, with a vow for divorce. My grandmother, and some few other women, intervened, and went to the wife’s family, repeatedly, reached an agreement, convinced her, and now they remain together as a family, with their two daughters..

If no one has intervened at that time, it would have collapsed both my relative’s family.

So, this type of social support is absent in cities, which takes its toll, during critical situations, because of isolation.

There are more serious situations i witnessed my life.. One of my (cousin) sister, went away with her lover, and married him, throwing her parents and relatives away by insulting them. The next day, her parents and other two sisters, remained inside the home for the whole day, ashamed of coming out, because of that incident. No one blamed them, or teased them… but the undue attention because of this news and the need for facing relatives and neighbours, put a heavy pyschological pressure… It was a great disgrace for them to face such unfortunate situation..

They had lot of affection towards her.. But, the incident left a deep hurt, that they did not see her when she had a child, or call her for her sister’s marriage (although they cried heavily)..

here too, the situation was brought under control, when relatives stepped in and supported their family..

Marriage is an important life time function in any family.. Loss of honor in such areas has a devastating effect.. particularly, in more orthodox and religious families as in angel’s case..

What’s the solution for such problems?

Counselling, creating social cohesiveness, creating awareness among young people to behave responsible, etc, are some ways to tackle such situations.

Its not that parents have to adjust.. the children should also realise and understand the sensitivities of the parents…

Sreedhar is right. What is shocking is that we consider this convoluted sense of honor to be so important that we will kill our own child? This is beyond any reason or justification or logic. It is plain wrong – i would say it is “galactically stupid” of the parents to murder their own daughter.