Saving the Female Fetus

All it took was a simple sting operation. Send a pregnant woman to a doctor known to perform illegal sex determination tests, have him agree to abort a female fetus and have the evidence on a videotape with the help of a hidden VCR. Dr. Kartar Singh and Anil Sabhani were thus caught on tape with their bloody red hands.

The evidence and the punishment have come a generation too late. I first heard about these sex-determination tests during a visit to a cousin in Gurgaon during 1972 when I was introduced to their new baby son, Sanket. The mother asked me if I knew why he was named Sanket. When I expressed my ignorance, I was told that the name signified the fact that they had a prior indication of the baby’s sex (sanket means ‘indicate’ in Hindi). I understood this to mean that if Sanket had been a girl, I wouldn’t be seeing her that day. My cousin already had a daughter who, incidentally, is well-educated and now earning a bigger salary than her brother.

A whole generation of female babies has been lost in India in the mean time, especially in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Statistics are there in plenty: the British Journal Lancet estimated that over 10 million girl babies were lost in India over the last 20 years; the national average female ratio has gone down from 972 in 1901 to just 933 in 2001 and in Haryana, there are about 861 women for every 1,000 men as opposed to the national average of 927 women to 1,000 men; in the Mansa district of Punjab, there are only 779 females per 1000 males.

The preference for sons over daughters on the subcontinent is quite well known. What is less known is the fact that female infanticide is also a fairly old tradition, especially in North India. The British administrators were aware of this practice even during the East India Company time in 1789. Jonathan Duncan found during his tour for settling the revenues in the Benaras district that the rajputs in Jaunpur district destroyed their female children. In 1795, Duncan was appointed governor of Bombay. He visited Surat in 1800 and was informed during his visit by a minister of the Nawab of Surat that the Jadeja rajputs of peninsular Gujarat in Kathiawad (now Saurashtra) and Kutch killed their female children. Soon thereafter, the British discovered female infanticide in various parts of north and west India. The subject of female infanticide was mentioned in administrators’ reports and correspondence but it was only in 1870 that a law was passed to ban female infanticide.

The British first tried persuasion to fight this evil practice. Viceroy Warren Hastings had devised a judicial plan in 1771 whereby cases involving Hindus and Muslims – the only two categories recognized – were to be decided by Hindu Shastras/Puranas and the Quran, respectively. The British administrators therefore consulted orientalists to dig up some support against infanticide in the Hindu scriptures and found one in the Brahma Varta Puran. The evidence was used to enter into an agreement with the rajkumar rajputs who were indulging in this practice in large numbers.

The agreement stated:

"killing even a foetus was as criminal as killing a Brahmin and that for killing a female or a women the punishment is to suffer in ’narak’ (naraka or hell) called ’kul sooter’ for as many years as (number of) hairs on that female’s body and that afterwards that person shall be born again and become a leper and be afflicted with ’zakham’ (wound)" and whereas the British government in India whose subjects we are, have an utter detestation of such murderous practices, and we do ourselves acknowledge that although customary among us, it is highly sinful... we do therefore, hereby agree that to commit any longer such detestable acts and any among us who shall be hereafter guilty thereof... shall be expelled from our tribe, and we shall neither eat nor keep society with such person or persons besides suffering hereafter the punishments denounced in the above purana and shastra".

The British administrators soon found out that persuasion techniques were not enough and resorting to the shastras and puranas was not working. The offending parties had no intention of adhering to the agreement signed with the British. After more than two decades of signing an agreement, it was found that Jadeja rajputs had only 20 femlaes and 102 males under one year of age. In NWP, an official noted in 1856 that there were 283 boys to only 80 girls below the age of six.

The British administrators finally decided to treat female infanticide as murder and to be tried as such under the English law. They confiscated the estates of the offending fathers and tried them for murder. In some cases, the district administrators gave summary punishments to the father of the infant. They appointed agents to report on cases of infanticide and rewarded them for each reported case. These measures finally reduced female infanticide in India but never completely eradicated the practice.

The female infanticide remained low until the 1970s when the ultrasound tests were developed. These tests, meant to find out any abnormality in the unborn baby, also revealed its sex. The new technology came handy for parents wanting to have only a male child. The legalization of abortion in India made it easy for the parents to abort the unborn child. It became quite common, even trendy, to have an ultrasound test, especially for the second and later pregnancies by parents whose first child was a female.

One of the features of the earlier female infanticide by the British administrators was its high correlation with caste, with the incidence of infanticide much higher for some castes than others. In particular, the practice was widespread among the landowning jats and rajputs, ahirs, gujjars, khatris and mohial brahmins. The custom required that these castes give substantial dowries to their daughters. These castes also practiced hypergamy, a practice under which people of higher subcastes would accept girls in marriage from lower subcastes of the same group but would not send their daughters to families belonging to a lower subcaste. Thus, the higher up one went within the caste, the greater was the incidence of infanticide. For example, Ballantine, an assistant resident at Baroda, reported that though the taluka of Drappa contained more than 400 Jadeja rajput households, there was "not a single female child in any of them". He noted in 1816 that in the whole of Kathiawad "only 63 female children were alive from 1 to 15 years of age in Jadeja rajput households" (He did not give the total number of households in the district). A similar dismal picture prevailed among Khatri Bedi Sikhs in Punjab who considered themselves superior to any other Sikh caste because the founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak, was a Bedi. A British official, Major Lake, submitted a report to the Punjab Board of Administration in 1851 in which he stated that "it is an undoubted fact that there are a 1,000 families of bedis who, for the last 400 years have destroyed all their female offspring".

As the importance of caste has declined in modern India, its place has now been taken by class. Study after study has pointed out that parents of middle and upper middle class people in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi are more likely to resort to ultrasound tests and aborting their female fetuses than parents belonging to lower socio-economic strata. Indeed, as performing sex-determination tests was made illegal and riskier for the doctors, their charges went up and their affordability became a problem for poor parents wanting to have a guaranteed male baby.

Professor Dharma Kumar was a well-known economist and a feminist at the Institute of Economic Growth who smoked cigarettes at a time when it was considered an un-ladylike act in our society. She was among those who were against banning sex selection. At a time when the subject of banning sex-determination tests was being discussed during 1980s, Professor Bardhan, a prominent economist at that time, wrote an article that said that in any society, girls get food and healthcare in proportion to their economic value to the family; therefore parents in North India choose to have fewer girls and their proportion in the society would go down. Prof. Kumar wrote an article arguing that, if this were so and the percentage of girls in the society did go down, they would go up in value. She also criticized feminists for wanting mothers to have the right of abortion while denying the same mother the right to choose the sex of the baby. As she put it:

"In order to provide focus to the discussion, let us grant the feminist pre supposition that abortion is not wrong in itself, i.e., the foetus has no right to life. But, feminists want to control one form of foeticide, viz. female foeticide... Feminists hold strongly that the decision to abort is the pre prerogative of the mother alone, which makes it all the more necessary to ask why the mother should not be provided with that information on the consequences of her decision."

Professor Kumar’s predictions have come true as revealed by the significant decline in the female sex-ratio. So, is she smiling in her heavenly abode? This is highly debatable. There is already a shortage of supply of eligible brides in Punjab and Haryana but there is no evidence that it has improved the status of women in general in those states. What has happened is that men have started to marry downwards in these states thus pushing the shortage downwards. Poorer Punjabis and Haryanvis are facing acute shortage of brides. Their solution has been to “import” brides from poorer regions, especially poor Nepalis, Bangladeshis, Bengalis and Jharkhandis. According to a BBC report, there are an estimated 45,000 brides who have been brought to Haryana from Jharkhand alone. Haryanvis even have a name for these imported girls whom they call “Paros” (this is ironic since many of these girls appear to have Muslim names). These girls are sometimes sold by their parents to brokers but are frequently also brought under false pretexts and sold off to needy men , the going rate being between Rs 4000 to Rs 30,000, depending upon the looks and complexion – the light-skinned Nepali girls fetching the highest price. The girls thus purchased are sometimes shared by more than one brother. Thus, far from vindicating Prof. Kumar’s stance, the sex determination in Punjab and Haryana has resulted in increased abduction and polyandry among poor women in poorer states, instead of enhancing the socio-economic status of Punjabi and Haryanvi women.

The problem of aborting female fetuses is, at its heart, a socio-economic problem, especially the dowry custom prevalent in India. The solution lies in the strict enforcement of laws relating to dowry, in addition to bringing the offending doctors and other professionals to justice. Mere platitudes and awareness campaigns by various governments since 1980s have been as ineffective as similar campaigns against female infanticide by the British rulers.

The arrest and conviction of Kartar Singh and Anil Sabhani is only a small step. If one has to go by the experience of the colonial British administrators in the 19th century, much stricter punishments for both the offending parents and facilitating “healthcare” professionals will be required if the government is sincere in its desire to root out the evil practice of aborting female foetuses.