dailyO
Politics

Sakshi Maharaj, what if all the four children a woman produces are girls?

Advertisement
Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
Sreemoyee Piu KunduJan 08, 2015 | 19:31

Sakshi Maharaj, what if all the four children a woman produces are girls?

A year or so ago, a gynecologist in a reputed South Delhi private nursing home told me I must surgically remove my uterus. I remember my mother telling me we must take a second opinion. "How can she just say that? Even your grandmother had endometriosis. How can she say that to an unmarried, young woman," my mother hissed, looking defeated.

Advertisement

At home, I cried, holding a pillow over my mouth. A part of me scared… a certain kind of failure staring obstinately at me. The part that dreamt of being a mother one day.

The girl inside me. Who was once told in her early teens, that she could give birth to a baby. Made to feel like a Goddess. Someone with a rare invincibility. Now that she had crossed the threshold into womanhood. A bloodied war. A debate. A decision. The beginning of what would translate into being a life-long struggle to understand her womb.

A complex coming of age. That was cruel. And cathartic.

 

This morning, Jamuna, our old Kolkata sweeper and a woman of tribal Rajput lineage, cried copiously sitting at my mother’s feet. Married at 13 to a man 19 years older, Jamuna went on to produce 11 children. Two died. Both boys.

"My youngest girl is about to get married. They have asked for a fat dowry... my husband is so old now... and me... after that tumor was removed... I have lost all my physical strength. It's only a few houses that employ us... still..." she whispered incongruously.

Advertisement

"Aren’t you happy about her marriage?" I interrupted, helping her up.

"Didi... I was 15 when I had my oldest... I bled for days after... I hated my child. At first... I still consider her bad luck in some way... all my ill luck, perhaps. Then before I knew it, I was pregnant again... another daughter. I was not even 18. My mother-in-law cursed me. Blamed my stars. I was taken to a Baba. He gave me a lot of jaribootis. I had no milk in my breasts. I hated the way he touched me navel downwards... I wasn’t ready for motherhood, but my husband was determined to produce a son, threatening me, at times, when he drank too much, that he'd bring another wife, someone more capable. We needed an heir; he’d throttle me, before climbing up on me. My womb was a factory. Produce or perish... After my first son died, we moved to Kolkata... we needed to make more money. There were always so many mouths to feed. The first day he left for work, he lied saying he had got a job in a government office. I was so happy. By the next year..." she fell strangely silent.

Advertisement

"All the women in the village where I was born got their foreheads tattooed on their marriage day. Maybe, they tried rewriting my fate or something... the wife of a common sweeper... who wipes commodes... cleans shit... daily... whose sons all died…" she wiped her eyes, swallowing slowly.

Jamuna didi is one of the last remaining symbols of my childhood. A reminder of my grandparents. Our ancestral home in the city. Hazy, winter mornings. The laughter that came easily. Once upon a time.

But, in another way, she stands as a metaphor of the millions of women in our country who are forced into motherhood for the sake of a male heir. There is nothing fancy in their choices. Victims, greatly, of centuries of rigorous unfailing patriarchy reinforced daily by a bunch of blind superstitions and religious mumbo jumbo.

Men. Maharaj's. Mother-in-laws.

All reiterating the same thing.

A woman's womb is ultimately worth nothing.

 

A few days ago, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj stated publicly at a gathering in Meerut, UP, that that all Hindu women must produce at least four children to protect Hinduism. What he didn’t specify was the sexes. Or maybe, like the majority of God-fearing Indians who even while blessing a pregnant woman, pray for a son, he too was naturally implying boys.

In 2011, a report in UK-based Daily Mail revealed that an increasing number of Indian families with one girl were aborting subsequent pregnancies when prenatal tests revealed the baby was also female. The research published in the medical journal Lancet revealed that a law passed in 1996 banning gender testing a fetus was largely ineffective. Officials, too, acknowledged that current laws have proved inadequate at combating the widening sex ratio gap. The study further declared that between four million and 12 million girls were supposedly aborted between 1980 and 2010.

Raw data from India’s census released in March said that the country’s population comprised 914 girls under age six for every 1,000 boys. Only a decade ago, many were horrified when the ratio was 927 to 1,000. Researchers studied census data and government surveys of more than 250,000 births to conclude that gap is even wider in families that already have a girl. The ratio was 906 girls under six to every 1,000 boys in 1990 and had declined further by 2005, when it was 836 to every 1,000.

The decrease is more pronounced in families where the mothers were wealthier and had been in education for ten years or more compared with poor and uneducated mothers.

Why is it that in a country that worships the Mother Goddess and celebrates the commencement of a girl’s menstrual cycle eventually bans her from entering a temple or the kitchen? Why do most Indian parents secretly prefer a beta to a beti. Trying again. Just once. They think. Why do even a beggar blessing you on a busy street crossing says, "aapko duwa karta hoon beta hi hoga iss baar".

Last updated: January 08, 2015 | 19:31
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy