The Other Half of Humanity
The silent screams echoed in her mind as a life ebbed away, a criminal act was in progress and she was a part of it, however unwilling. Last week gender determination was undertaken and today her unborn daughter lost her life.
The eight-year-old eyed the glass of milk, for one defiant moment she held the glass close to her lips but the next, she quietly kept it back for her brother to drink it. As she walked to school with her brother, she was thankful that she was allowed to study.
Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, for she was too scared to cry lest anybody felt she supported her sister. She sat thinking perhaps a similar fate awaited her. Six months back her sister had hugged her goodbye and left to marry a man of her choice and now her sister was dead. She was killed by the very hands that had raised her.
He stood leaning against the pillar in the hospital, his legs refusing to take his weight. His daughter lay in hospital bed fighting for her life, burnt beyond recognition, it seemed like only yesterday when decked up in bridal finery she had bid him farewell and now…
These snippets are figment of my imagination and yet based on true stories, even as I write an unborn girl child may become a victim of foeticide, a newborn might lose her precious life to infanticide, a young woman might be sacrificed to restore family honour and a bride burned to death at the altar of dowry. According to the first-ever global study on female infanticide by Asian Centre for Human Rights, this is a worldwide phenomenon with 1.5 million girls losing their life every year even before they enter the world.
It’s only since January 2014 that in India, National Crime Records Bureau has started rigorous data collection on honour killing and worldwide also not much data is available, the most frequently referred to figure is 5000 killings per year worldwide as estimated by UN in the year 2000. However, women advocacy groups suspect that it is more than 20,000 per year globally. According to the National Crime Records Bureau statistics in 2015, 7634 women lost their lives to dowry that translates to 21 women murdered per day. I choose to write the word murder and not dowry deaths as the word death somehow lessens the inhuman criminality of the act.
It is said that a leading cause of female infanticide is the desire to have a son, a son who will carry on the family name and will be a financial support. Female child is supposedly by reverse argument a burden who is not only an economic liability but also has the potential of ‘tainting’ that very family name that the son will so proudly carry forward.
Many among us have made our daughters the sole custodian of ‘family honour’. So, every action that she takes is measured against that yardstick and whether it brings ‘honour’ or ‘disrepute’ to the family name, our sons on the other hand are free to be guided by their will because after all boys will be boys.
The economic liability comes to fore when the daughter is ready to be married off, the societal pressure of spending on marriage ceremonies coupled with the demands of dowry is a burden which not many can bear easily and if they are not able to meet these to the desired standards they bid farewell to their daughters not with joy but trepidation in their hearts, for they are scared for their daughter’s future and more often than not their worst fears come true.
The saddest part in this tragedy that unfolds in many households on a daily basis is that many a time the perpetrator is not a man. The grandmother who slips in an extra dollop of cream for the grandson and deprives the granddaughter, the mother who chooses to support or remain silent while her daughter is berated for being a girl, the mother-in-law who taunts the daughter-in-law for bearing a daughter or the wife who suffers silently the tortures of an abusive husband because when she suffers in silence, she not only lets herself down but sends a message to her son that this behaviour is acceptable and communicates to her daughter that being subjugated is her destiny.
Those girls who are lucky enough to be born into families that welcome them with open arms and equip them with the tools needed to grow into confident young ladies, namely education, equal opportunities and support have their own daily battles to fight in public transport, in the marketplace, on college campus, in the office. Whenever they step out they do so with the unfortunate understanding that there is somebody out there who will walk behind them a wee bit too close, or deliberately brush against them while crossing or pass an inappropriate remark or take it a notch higher or more, the list can go on.
As per National Crime Records Bureau up to 3,27,394 cases of crime against women were reported in 2015 alone and these are those that were registered, the actual numbers, considering how many go unreported would be much higher. Many crimes go unreported mainly due to the fact that the victim does not have the confidence in the familial and societal environment.
Each day we should remind ourselves of the fact that as per 2015 world bank data India has 48 million more men than women. If we hope to achieve the equilibrium that perhaps nature intended, we need to protect the girl child and also the woman she grows up to be, we cannot protect her by locking her behind doors but by educating our sons so that they grow up into men who respect women and consider them as equals.
We need to empower our daughters so that they grow up into women who believe that equal opportunity is their right and not a favour dolled out to them. To quote former President of the USA, Barrack Obama, “the future must not belong to those who bully women — it must be shaped by girls who go to school, and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.”
Note: The data included reflects the numbers available at the time the article was written. It was first published in Woman’s Era Magazine.
