War on the womb: India’s missing daughters
It is not easy looking at beaming, fresh faces of young girls as you set out to imagine blanks spaces – like the faceless outlines of a human form X-rays or black and white prints of ultrasound scans – to charge yourself to shock them into concern and hopefully a position on the issue of sex selective abortions and violence against women.
In the safe confines of one of Delhi’s prestigious women’s college, the gruesome reality of what it means to be a woman and seek a place of one’s own in a country that kills, burns and rapes it women.
As one of the girl said being a girl child in India is one of the most dangerous professions on earth.
While these girls attempted to cope with the cold statistics of foeticide through moving words strung together as poems and some with power point presentations, what was starkly missing was outrage and sense of urgency.
Looking hard in those eyes that had accustomed to a debatable sense of detachment from the gruesome stories violence against women, one felt the limiting impact it had on them.
Quiet dramatically, and some would say tragically, these girls are in middle of war. A war their mothers were witness to when the weapons of choice to exterminated girls were crude. A fist full of salt would give a new born sudden spike in blood pressure bursting inside the small body would become life less in no time, husk pushed down the throat would choke them and many other similar means.
Their engagement became less detached as we discussed how it is not the poor who kill their girls, it is not a phenomenon that dominates the rural world and it is not the social oppressed groups like dalits and tribal communities that did it.
So standard definition of awareness generation as the core strategy to save female foetuses and stop a war on the womb that has led to extermination of 50 million girls from India’s population, became less believable as the only way to survive.
This needs a fight, not just surviving.
Patriarchy, violence against women and ownership of the struggle at all levels are linked. We discussed how women with no education and massive odds, including threat to life, against them have not only stood up against their men aggressor and passive women conduits to take charge of India’s grassroots democracy.
The struggle for women and girls that starts in the womb and on their wombs changes forms but never quiet ends.
These girls hopefully would go beyond a sense of pain to rage and resolve. We will be going back.
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