Sunday, June 6, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Female Feticide
Female feticide
An evil that still haunts India
An evil that still haunts India
There is a complex relationship between Indian religions and their attitude towards Indian women and this has been in evidence for millennia. On the one hand, Indian women are revered as mothers ( amma, maa, words in India for mother that are applied to all adult women) and the revered creators of a new life. On the other hand, Indian women are reviled as an expensive waste and burden on society. Many Indians will dispute this with me as it is unpalatable to accept; but this is a fact borne out by India’s current, appalling female poverty rate.
The Indian woman is worshipped as a goddess with enormous powers. Indian religion is one of the few practiced today with several revered goddesses whose skills and powers are multivariate. Despite this elevation to mythical status as Goddesses of extreme power and ability, the Indian woman can, in many circumstances be abused and disempowered, sometimes confined to a second class life. Indian women are exalted as self sacrificing mothers and martyred Satis (self immolating widows) and in underdeveloped India, hated for the pain they bring to a family purportedly because of the cost of their dowries for marriage.
Celebrated for their beauty and wisdom in many aspects of Indian society, women are equally suppressed and repressed in other aspects. It’s a dichotomy of attitude that stretches back into the mists of human beginnings as far as the collective Indian memory is concerned. It is not a socio-philosophical thought process easily acknowledged by modern Indians and indeed, many who read my thoughts would either rebuke me for making such assertions or they would deny these ideas and opinions vociferously. But major issues with gender inequality are a reality in India today and have always been the case since time immemorial. They have remained problems despite all of India’s current rapid developments and progress. Again, the reader who once reprimanded my thinking about India’s caste systems also said my ideas are out of date, Indian women are now progressing fast. I don’t disagree progress is being made in urbanized India but it is reportedly slow and has been shown to be not as much as most urban Indians would love to believe it is. Indians cannot deny that gender bias favoring men and boys exists within the fabric of their culture.
One aspect that we as Indians, must all feel horribly ashamed of is female feticide. I do place the blame for female feticide in a large part on that historical Lucipher of the Indian Scriptures, the Sage Manu who wrote the Manusmriti or to whom that ancient scriptural text is attributed. Sage Manu was, in my opinion, a disaffected misogynist Brahmin man who decided to ensure the power of his sex through scriptural pronouncements. Manusmriti sets out to humiliate the feminine sex as much as Sage Manu could for millennia to come. He wrote about how women were less than half of the value of man, how they were to obey their husbands at all times, how they were lost to the family of their birth at marriage, how they had to be sold and grooms bought with the dowry among many other such pearls of advice to Indian men. Again many people will hate me for voicing these openly anti-Manu sentiments.
Sage Manu asked Indian men to treat their cows and their sons with greater respect and to see them as being of greater value than their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. Manu was, in my (unbiased, sic) opinion, an arrogant and stupid man whose writings distorted the future thinking of an entire nation of Hindus, contorting their beliefs into unintelligent, inhuman, misogynistic practices. His Manusmriti should be buried into the mists of history and never ever be revived. It’s a scriptural text that, in my view, should never have been written.
The pervasive influence of Manusmriti or Manu’s writings, despite them being more than 2 Millenia old, is self evident even in modern India. I say so because even today, so many Indians believe they MUST have a son. To this goal, they kill or terminate their unborn daughters (strong but sadly truth inspired words), cleverly adapting the use of the pre-birth ultrasound scan. The clever use of the prenatal ultrasound to preemptively ascertain the gender of their unborn fetus at an early gestation is widespread in India though on paper the practice is illegal.
Only a corrupted society with a gender biased mind could have evolved, from such a modern scientific development like pregnancy ultrasound, such an evil practice of sexing the fetus for illegitimate reasons. The practice of gender specific, female feticide based on early pregnancy, ultrasound guided gender determination of the fetus is widespread in India today. Hidden but widespread. Very much hidden though.
I’ll take you back to a story from the early 1990’s. When I was a young and ambitious Registrar in training, in the subject of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in the UK, I saw a woman come in to the hospital I worked at and have a termination of pregnancy at 16 weeks. She died from the surgery a few days later because she had an undiagnosed uterine perforation that haemorrhaged post termination so excessively that she lost her battle to live. The fetus was a female and later, we learnt, that due to family pressures, her husband and she had had the gender of the fetus pre-determined in India a few weeks before her termination in the UK. They had undergone fetal sexing via ultrasound whilst they were in the Punjab on holiday. Having already a small firstborn daughter, the man had decided they needed a son (not another daughter) and the couple therefore came in for a termination. They withheld the vital piece of information from the hospital that they had had the fetus’s sex determined in a clinic abroad.
I was devastated as were all the doctors and nurses when she died a traumatic and agonized death at such a young age, she was only 25 years old. The reason she died was purely because her married family wanted her to have a sonand not another daughter. Such an enormous sacrifice is what this poor young woman paid for the arrogant cultural wish of her in-laws and her society.
Then, I read a book in 1993, with the somewhat disturbing title ‘May you be the Mother of a 100 sons’ , written by a journalist from the USA. It was a superb commentary on the problems of female feticide within India. Several famed Gynaecologists were exposed as performing these sex specific feticide surgeries for high fees. When I heard that this institution had bestowed honorary Fellowships on at least 2 of the Gynaecologists implicated in performing gender specific abortions, I took a personal risk as a whistleblower and I complained against these doctors to the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. But did I get anywhere? No. I learnt a lesson that holds true even today in the 21 st century; be it in New Zealand, the UK or India; men close ranks at that level.
I was given some whitewashed blather by the then College President. He went on to me in his letter about how things could not be proven and how the Collges could not withdraw the grave honor bestowed upon these female feticide providing surgeons etc. I did not buy it then, I don’t buy it now. It was a case of a revered historic institution like the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, when confronted by such unsavory goings on by its members, simply turning a convenient blind eye to some major crimes for form’s sake. Twenty years later, I remain of the view this action of the College at the time was a dreadful thing to have done, turning a blind eye to such major crimes against girls. Such an action by an institution specially charged with the protection of the well being of women is most difficult to understand. I acknowledge the College has come a long way in developing policy and that the College now has a firm stand against such nefarious operations. It should have investigated those ‘ Honorary Surgeons’ who were promoting female feticide in India rather than honoring them as part of a boys’ club.
In a seemingly heartless culture, some Indian communities continue to kill their newborn daughters committing female infanticide because these girl children would have been too expensive to sustain (Salem - Tamil Nadu, refer the charity Thottil or Cradle which adopts out unwanted newborn baby Tamil Girls). Now to compound this despicable cultural aberration, some Indians have gone on to develop a method by using modern technology like prenatal ultrasound to kill daughters before they actually achieved birth. The Economist reported only in February 2010) that the World Health Organization and the UNICEF report a loss of 60 million or more girls and women due to female feticide surgeries in India and China. Yet, the draft book reader, who got upset with my commentary on female feticide, claimed I had not moved on with the culture of India today and he accused me of very old fashioned views!
I think his review of my commentary on the subject provided me with proof of his and other Indian attitudes, i.e. the attitude of Indian denial. If Indians can turn a blind eye to female feticide then they do not have to see what worldwide statistics from reputable scientific papers show. These statistics show that we have, as a global community, suffered the loss of an entire generation of girls and women and thus dangerously upset the gender ratio. This should be called gynocide as a version of genocide, as it means the annihilation before birth, of a generation of girls and women.
Millions of Indian baby girls have been aborted by Indian society since the mid 1980’s when ultrasound prenatal sexual determination of the fetus became technologically possible. These Indian female babies were aborted due to the cultural obsession of a nation with producing only male babies and heirs. Thankfully, that cultural obsession is changing now, but the attitude is changing with exceptional slowness. Finally, after much media exposure of these cruel practices, there are now Indian laws prohibiting gender typing at pregnancy ultrasounds but this stuff still goes on in secret. The operation of selective female termination (female feticide) also still goes on albeit well hidden from view, it is just given another title, another reason.
The Indian woman is worshipped as a goddess with enormous powers. Indian religion is one of the few practiced today with several revered goddesses whose skills and powers are multivariate. Despite this elevation to mythical status as Goddesses of extreme power and ability, the Indian woman can, in many circumstances be abused and disempowered, sometimes confined to a second class life. Indian women are exalted as self sacrificing mothers and martyred Satis (self immolating widows) and in underdeveloped India, hated for the pain they bring to a family purportedly because of the cost of their dowries for marriage.
Celebrated for their beauty and wisdom in many aspects of Indian society, women are equally suppressed and repressed in other aspects. It’s a dichotomy of attitude that stretches back into the mists of human beginnings as far as the collective Indian memory is concerned. It is not a socio-philosophical thought process easily acknowledged by modern Indians and indeed, many who read my thoughts would either rebuke me for making such assertions or they would deny these ideas and opinions vociferously. But major issues with gender inequality are a reality in India today and have always been the case since time immemorial. They have remained problems despite all of India’s current rapid developments and progress. Again, the reader who once reprimanded my thinking about India’s caste systems also said my ideas are out of date, Indian women are now progressing fast. I don’t disagree progress is being made in urbanized India but it is reportedly slow and has been shown to be not as much as most urban Indians would love to believe it is. Indians cannot deny that gender bias favoring men and boys exists within the fabric of their culture.
One aspect that we as Indians, must all feel horribly ashamed of is female feticide. I do place the blame for female feticide in a large part on that historical Lucipher of the Indian Scriptures, the Sage Manu who wrote the Manusmriti or to whom that ancient scriptural text is attributed. Sage Manu was, in my opinion, a disaffected misogynist Brahmin man who decided to ensure the power of his sex through scriptural pronouncements. Manusmriti sets out to humiliate the feminine sex as much as Sage Manu could for millennia to come. He wrote about how women were less than half of the value of man, how they were to obey their husbands at all times, how they were lost to the family of their birth at marriage, how they had to be sold and grooms bought with the dowry among many other such pearls of advice to Indian men. Again many people will hate me for voicing these openly anti-Manu sentiments.
Sage Manu asked Indian men to treat their cows and their sons with greater respect and to see them as being of greater value than their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. Manu was, in my (unbiased, sic) opinion, an arrogant and stupid man whose writings distorted the future thinking of an entire nation of Hindus, contorting their beliefs into unintelligent, inhuman, misogynistic practices. His Manusmriti should be buried into the mists of history and never ever be revived. It’s a scriptural text that, in my view, should never have been written.
The pervasive influence of Manusmriti or Manu’s writings, despite them being more than 2 Millenia old, is self evident even in modern India. I say so because even today, so many Indians believe they MUST have a son. To this goal, they kill or terminate their unborn daughters (strong but sadly truth inspired words), cleverly adapting the use of the pre-birth ultrasound scan. The clever use of the prenatal ultrasound to preemptively ascertain the gender of their unborn fetus at an early gestation is widespread in India though on paper the practice is illegal.
Only a corrupted society with a gender biased mind could have evolved, from such a modern scientific development like pregnancy ultrasound, such an evil practice of sexing the fetus for illegitimate reasons. The practice of gender specific, female feticide based on early pregnancy, ultrasound guided gender determination of the fetus is widespread in India today. Hidden but widespread. Very much hidden though.
I’ll take you back to a story from the early 1990’s. When I was a young and ambitious Registrar in training, in the subject of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in the UK, I saw a woman come in to the hospital I worked at and have a termination of pregnancy at 16 weeks. She died from the surgery a few days later because she had an undiagnosed uterine perforation that haemorrhaged post termination so excessively that she lost her battle to live. The fetus was a female and later, we learnt, that due to family pressures, her husband and she had had the gender of the fetus pre-determined in India a few weeks before her termination in the UK. They had undergone fetal sexing via ultrasound whilst they were in the Punjab on holiday. Having already a small firstborn daughter, the man had decided they needed a son (not another daughter) and the couple therefore came in for a termination. They withheld the vital piece of information from the hospital that they had had the fetus’s sex determined in a clinic abroad.
I was devastated as were all the doctors and nurses when she died a traumatic and agonized death at such a young age, she was only 25 years old. The reason she died was purely because her married family wanted her to have a sonand not another daughter. Such an enormous sacrifice is what this poor young woman paid for the arrogant cultural wish of her in-laws and her society.
Then, I read a book in 1993, with the somewhat disturbing title ‘May you be the Mother of a 100 sons’ , written by a journalist from the USA. It was a superb commentary on the problems of female feticide within India. Several famed Gynaecologists were exposed as performing these sex specific feticide surgeries for high fees. When I heard that this institution had bestowed honorary Fellowships on at least 2 of the Gynaecologists implicated in performing gender specific abortions, I took a personal risk as a whistleblower and I complained against these doctors to the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. But did I get anywhere? No. I learnt a lesson that holds true even today in the 21 st century; be it in New Zealand, the UK or India; men close ranks at that level.
I was given some whitewashed blather by the then College President. He went on to me in his letter about how things could not be proven and how the Collges could not withdraw the grave honor bestowed upon these female feticide providing surgeons etc. I did not buy it then, I don’t buy it now. It was a case of a revered historic institution like the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, when confronted by such unsavory goings on by its members, simply turning a convenient blind eye to some major crimes for form’s sake. Twenty years later, I remain of the view this action of the College at the time was a dreadful thing to have done, turning a blind eye to such major crimes against girls. Such an action by an institution specially charged with the protection of the well being of women is most difficult to understand. I acknowledge the College has come a long way in developing policy and that the College now has a firm stand against such nefarious operations. It should have investigated those ‘ Honorary Surgeons’ who were promoting female feticide in India rather than honoring them as part of a boys’ club.
In a seemingly heartless culture, some Indian communities continue to kill their newborn daughters committing female infanticide because these girl children would have been too expensive to sustain (Salem - Tamil Nadu, refer the charity Thottil or Cradle which adopts out unwanted newborn baby Tamil Girls). Now to compound this despicable cultural aberration, some Indians have gone on to develop a method by using modern technology like prenatal ultrasound to kill daughters before they actually achieved birth. The Economist reported only in February 2010) that the World Health Organization and the UNICEF report a loss of 60 million or more girls and women due to female feticide surgeries in India and China. Yet, the draft book reader, who got upset with my commentary on female feticide, claimed I had not moved on with the culture of India today and he accused me of very old fashioned views!
I think his review of my commentary on the subject provided me with proof of his and other Indian attitudes, i.e. the attitude of Indian denial. If Indians can turn a blind eye to female feticide then they do not have to see what worldwide statistics from reputable scientific papers show. These statistics show that we have, as a global community, suffered the loss of an entire generation of girls and women and thus dangerously upset the gender ratio. This should be called gynocide as a version of genocide, as it means the annihilation before birth, of a generation of girls and women.
Millions of Indian baby girls have been aborted by Indian society since the mid 1980’s when ultrasound prenatal sexual determination of the fetus became technologically possible. These Indian female babies were aborted due to the cultural obsession of a nation with producing only male babies and heirs. Thankfully, that cultural obsession is changing now, but the attitude is changing with exceptional slowness. Finally, after much media exposure of these cruel practices, there are now Indian laws prohibiting gender typing at pregnancy ultrasounds but this stuff still goes on in secret. The operation of selective female termination (female feticide) also still goes on albeit well hidden from view, it is just given another title, another reason.
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