“How would this world be like without women; give it a thought,” cautions one of the hoardings put up at busy intersections in Srinagar as part of a massive drive launched by the Jammu and Kashmir government to save the girlchild following the recently released Census report pointing at a shocking rise in female foeticide in the state.
The report says there are only 859 females against 1,000 males in the state. In 2001, for every 1,000 boys under seven in the state, there were 941 girls. Now the number is further down and with that Jammu and Kashmir has emerged as next only to the states of Punjab and Haryana. The experts attribute the dismal figure to the growing menace of girls being killed cruelly before they are born, a trend which is new to the Muslim-majority state.
Worried at the interim Census report showing a sharp decline in sex ratio in the state, chief minister Omar Abdullah called for immediate remedial measures and “action on ground” to check the menace of suspected female foeticide and infanticide. He posted on micro-blogging website Twitter, “We are the third worst state in this regard after Punjab and Haryana. If anything needed a mass movement and public appeals it would be this.” The chief minister promised “harsher penalties for anyone aiding or abetting female foeticide.” During past few weeks, various government agencies have sealed nearly 150 unauthorised genetic clinics, imaging, scanning and ultra-sonography centres in the Valley. State health minister Sham Lal Sharma has been reviewing the progress of the work done by his department in keeping a tab on “unscrupulous elements” within the fraternity. Simultaneously, people are being warned of the legal corollary of pre-natal sex selection or determination and also probable bearing of female foeticide and infanticide in years to come on the society through a door-to-door campaign underway or newspaper advertisements, Radio and TV messages and various other medium. “We are trying every trick in the book to save the girl child in the state but it depends mainly on the people how to go about it and I think politicians, religious leaders, social activists and the people in media can play a positive role in the effort,” said a senior officer of the state health society, which is in the forefront of the campaign.
The officials said that over one hundred establishments have been rejected registration which failed to fulfil the criteria or norms under Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Sex selection or Determination (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. A special drive has been undertaken by the department of health services to implement the act in letter and spirit, which includes directing all district authorities to seal down any unauthorised genetic clinics or genetic counselling centres, imaging and scanning centres and ultra- sonography clinics. However, in an open letter to the chief minister appeared in vernacular newspapers earlier this month, the affected business has alleged harassment at the hands of the concerned authorities. The charge is rejected by the authorities saying, “It was but expected from a vicious group involved in something which is prohibited under law.”
The issue has, meanwhile, united the politicians in a state where dissent has often led to mayhem. Last week, key separatist politicians Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik joined the campaign against “dukhtar kushi” or female foeticide. “It is a matter of shame that Kashmiri Muslims are aborting their girl children,” the Mirwaiz told a Friday congregation at Srinagar’s Grand Mosque. He cautioned the people that the practice was profoundly “un-Islamic” and reminded them of a saying of Prophet Muhammad that “a man having two or three daughters will join him in the Heaven and they will be as close to each other as two fingers in the hand are.”
Mr Malik termed the decreasing ratio of girl child in Kashmir as the greatest ignorance in modern times. “It is undesirable and unethical trend which is dragging us back into the Stone Age,” he said. In a Facebook note, he again invoked the relevant portions of Koran and traditions of Islam and said foeticide is a grave unpardonable sin equivalent to murder. Lucknow-based Dar-ul-Uloom Firangimahal, one of the oldest Islamic seminaries of India, had recently issued a fatwa or religious decree which says it is “un-Islamic” to abort the foetus after determining its sex. “Islam does not permit abortion,” said Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangimahali, chief of the widely respected seminary and a senior member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an apex organisation of the Muslim community in the country. He added, “Just as a murder is a sin, to cut off a part of the body (foetus) is also a sin in the eyes of Islam…It is the duty of the human beings to consider the girls as gifts of the god. Society will progress only if the girls survive.”
Jammu and Kashmir is not just about Islam or Muslims. No doubt, the latest Census shows the steepest decline in districts in the Valley the predominantly Hindu Jammu region of the state had a low child sex ratio even in 2001. For that reason, the authorities are roping in clerics and community leaders from other religious and regions of the state as well in the campaign. According to Yashpal Sharma, a senior official of the National Rural Health Mission, as many 700 letters have been sent to various leaders — both Muslims and Hindus — in the state seeking their help in the effort to save the girl child.
The provisional 2011 Census data released at the end of March painted a bleak picture of India’s gender imbalance.
It showed that the child sex ratio in the country has declined to 914 females per 1,000 males-the lowest since Independence. According to the United Nations population data, the global sex ratio is 984 girls to every 1,000 boys. Terming practice of female foeticide and infanticide in many parts of the country a “national shame”, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh called for launching a crusade against it. He said, “The provisional population for Census 2011 has been released recently. While most of the news appears to be good, the falling child sex ratio is an indictment of our social values.”
As the most dramatic decline has been in Jammu and Kashmir, where the ratio plunged to 859 girls for every 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group, down by 82 points from 10 years ago, a special attention to arrest the trend is being paid to the state. However, many here see a solution not in a crackdown on the unlicensed use of ultrasound scanners or those found involved in determining the sex of a foetus, which is illegal in India or sex-selective abortions but in transformation of the society.
“More important is how to chuck out the social evils we the people of Kashmir as a whole have been overwhelmed by,” said Ms Saba Khan, a local activist. She points out that many people go in for female foeticide mainly because they view a female child will turn as a financial burden for them and they would require hefty dowries to marry her off.
Gul Afroz Jan, a professor of law at Kashmir University, claims she had first raised the alarm that female feticide was rampant in the Muslim-majority Valley about four years ago but she was ridiculed. She was quoted in a recent interview as saying she had done a study for which she interviewed 100 pregnant women and 10 of them told her that they had gone for sex selective abortions. “In a patriarchal male-dominated society like ours, preference for a male child is in our psyche,” she said, adding “A son perpetuates our family name and line while a girl is thought to be a burden, to be married with a huge dowry.”
“We ought to wage crusade against such philosophy and the people who profess,” said social activist Zareef Ahmed.
The Prime Minister had while referring to the falling child sex ratio said improving it was not merely a question of stricter compliance with the existing laws but what was more important was how people view and value the girl child in our society. He had said, “Our girls and women have done us proud in classrooms, in boardrooms and on the sports field. They have broken existing barriers to prove their worth in almost every sphere.”
Taking a cue from that, the Jammu and Kashmir’s health department had also adopted an innovative way to improve the sex ratio. During its door-to-door campaign, it is telling people how girls are doing better in various examinations and how they are occupying high positions. And sounding a warning of future difficulties; How their world will look like without women being in there.