Women are the receiving end in Indian society. They are will treated or tortured at every stage. A girl child is in bondage from her very childhood. She is under constant, vigil First by the parents, then her husband and finally her own children. Not only that, she is often condemned to death even before she is born. This is called female killing in the womb itself.
In ancient India the birth of a girl child was hailed as auspicious. An old Indian proverb lies down that a home without a daughter is like a body without soul. The coming of a daughter in the house was compared to the advent of Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and Saraswati, the Goddess of fine arts. The usual blessing of a father at the time of his daughter’s marriage was: “May you excel in learning and public speaking”. No ceremony was considered complete without the presence of women. The belief was that “No home is complete without a woman.”
The situation, however drastically changed during the middle Ages when India was subjected to frequent foreign invasions. The invaders batty also comprised of women suffered badly, infanticide and ‘Purdah’ became prevalent. Sending a girl to school became risky. There was, therefore, sudden decline in female literacy and the position of women in society. This tradition lasting till today and the killing of a fetus has started with a boom.
The problem of female fetus is widespread in urban centres. With the help of new techniques it has become possible to determine the sex of the unborn baby or the fetus, and if it is found to be a girl child then, this is followed by abortion. Clinics offering such service have come up all over the country.
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There are severing laws against the misuse of parental diagnostic techniques, which are meant only for detecting abnormalities in the unborn infant. The doctors, however, violate this law. Not a single case has been fielding so far under the law, which forbids such an unethical practice.
Today, the problem is quite widespread in the northern states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. There are pockets of Tamilnadu where killing a girl child is practiced traditionally. The tribes, the Toda, The Kallar and the Gounder, earlier lived in war zones are facing torture of army soldier. They started to kill the girl child in order to keep the population of women down and thus save them from rape by invading armies. In Rajasthan also, a girl child is looked upon as a curse because her father has to lie low before the father of boy at the time of match finding.
Upon attaining puberty, a girl is considered to be a security risk, a likely source of trouble for the family’s honor and reputation. Then there are economic reasons for her killing. She is a liability for her parents from the cradle ceremony to the marriage. There has been not let up in the dowry system, which breaks the back of the parents. She is got rid of in order to save the family properly from partition. In some communities there is a dirty superstition that is a daughter is killed, the next child will be a son. In China also, the eldest male child inherits the property look upon the male child as their protector and supporter in old age. This gender-bias leads to the killing of girl child.
The greatest tragedy is that women themselves permit the death of their daughters as mercy killing. Unwanted baby girls are often left on the road or in the maternity homes at night. This is due to the unhealthy sex before marriage or due to the husband of may died, who is the only source to take of her and her baby. This unhealthy practice has caused a great imbalance in the ratio of boys and girls in several states and communities. To prevent this situation we must provide proper education and the laws, that are presently could not trap the criminal, should be strict. So those, all the people who engage in this child infanticide crime, think twice before doing it.
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By
Sagar Mehta
Email: ujjwalmedia-at-gmail.com